''Five Colors for a Dime''
is a thread on AlternateHistory.com by Neamathla. The point of divergence is in 1945, when Max Gaines buys out Harry Donnenfield's investment in DC Comics, causing National Periodical Publications to fragment into DC and All American. The initial result is that the OTL DC Comics superhero stable is divided between two publishers, but there are several further ripple effects from this...
Five Tropes for a Dime:
- Alternate History: Obviously.
- Distaff Counterpart/Rule 63: With Wonder Woman and Black Canary in All-American's stable, this is how DC creates superheroines throughout the Silver Age. The first original female DC superheroes were Raven and a Bumblebee analogue.
- For Want Of A Nail: For starters, All American buys out Timely/Atlas (the company that would eventually have become Marvel Comics) and Stan Lee moves over to Archie and revives its superhero stable, eventually creating the imprint Mighty Comics, while Jack Kirby and Joe Simon start up their own comics company called Escape. Among other things, this means that in the Silver Age, Captain America answered to the name of Hal Jordan, and Buddy Baker became the new Human Torch. Also, the Challengers of the Unknown have superpowers. Oh, and comics are more generally accepted and much more diversified than in reality.
- In Spite of a Nail: However, the first two waves of the Underground Comics Scene still happened as in Real Life, and Mighty is still gobbled up by Disney... it happened in 1970. Also, by the mid-Eighties, all four remaining major publishers are in the hands of large conglomerates (but with the exception of Mighty, never the same companies), and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Mirage) and Cerebus the Aardvark get published on time in much of a recognizable form.
- Superhero: The biggest genre for most of the timeline. Then come Crime, Science Fiction, Humor, Fantasy, and Slice of Life, in that order.
