A couple of examples spring to mind. ElfQuest started basically as a self-publishing venture. (WaRP Graphics literally stands for Wendy and Richard Pini.) Marvel published it for a while in the 1980s and DC has picked up some rights. Currently, Dark Horse has printed collected editions. Apple Comics and StarBlaze both had the title for a bit in the '80s as well. That's six US publishers who've run the series.
Another that I can think of is Groo. The character debuted under Pacific Comics, and soon after went over to Eclipse. Marvel had the title for a decade, and Image ran with it for a year. Graphitti Designs ran a special, and Dark Horse has printed them most recently, I believe. That's also six. Plus, IDW had an Artist's Edition version -- arguably, that might not count, but it could be a potential tie-breaker.
Interestingly, Star Wars does not have many comics publishers to deal with, despite a more robust publishing history. There's Marvel and Dark Horse, naturally. Blackthorne did a 3-D version in 1987, and Tokyopop did a manga version a couple decades later, but I think that's it.
Star Trek has actually been passed around more. It started at Western Publishing, but later hit Marvel and DC. Malibu had it for a short while in the mid-1990s, and Tokyopop has done manga versions of it as well. It's currently published by IDW.
What about The Shadow, another long-lived property? Here again we see Marvel, DC, and Dark Horse. Street & Smith did the original run here, though. Archie Comics also took a stab at the character briefly in the 1960s. Dynamite is the current publisher. Six again, it appears.
I'm drawing a blank on who else to check. I know several that have had two or three publishers like Airboy and Bone. There are a few more than float in the five-to-seven-ish range -- a lot of the bigger Disney titles and Conan, for examples. There are some, like Judge Dredd and Tintin, that I wouldn't even count since they didn't originate in the US -- America's versions would be the foreign editions.
So, Tarzan then? Tarzan's had the most publishers of any comic? That's really curious given how notorious the ERB estate has been with licensing the characters. I recall an interview from several years back where Roy Thomas complained a lot about the hoops they had to jump through with Tarzan, both before and after securing the license at Marvel, while Robert E. Howard's Conan was infinitely easier. (Which is partly how Red Sonja came about -- the Howard estate said something to the effect of "New characters? Sure, go ahead! Even if you do retain ownership of them!") But the restrictions of what Thomas could do with Tarzan severely limited his storytelling potential.
4 comments:
Star Wars is a little bit bigger if you're getting into the more obscure comics media, and for some reason I know way too much about this.
The main ongoings were published by Marvel, Dark Horse, IDW, and (for just one series) Blackthorne. Titan also had some comics in its UK magazine, but those were never collected. Starwars.com's Hyperspace subscription platform had a few webstrips in the 00s, and a few free-to-read webcomics were serialized too, but only a few were ever collected in paper and most are available now only in fan archives, so I'm not sure if that counts.
For manga, though, it's a bit of a frenzy lately. Tokyopop did the 90s and 00s manga, but since 2015, it's been passed around much more. Viz Media, Yen Press, and Disney-Lucasfilm Press all published manga or YA graphic novels in the last ten years. There was also a webtoon serialized online, but I don't remember the publisher.
Also, I'm not quite sure if this counts as a comic, but Scholastic had that "Jedi Academy" series which was kind of a Diary of a Wimpy Kid style half-prose parody. There's also the LEGO magazine comics, but that also might be a stretch.
So, at maximum, that's around 12 publishers who have worked on notable Star Wars comics (and probably more I missed among kiddie comics), and I have a hard time seeing most media properties passing that. The main comics license has only ever been held by Dark Horse and Marvel, but the sheer size of Star Wars overpowers pretty much everyone else.
The only IP I think might go further are the ones that are both kid-friendly and have been around since the 30s or 40s, so publishers like Gold Key and Dell passed them around, and they didn't end up at a major conglomerate. Looney Tunes fits that for a while, but then it got absorbed into DC decades ago. Other non-strip longrunner franchises from the prewar era like Raggedy Ann and Felix the Cat had a lot of publishers, but faded too much in popularity to catch up, I think. Tarzan, if you count the comic strip reprints in the oldest 30s comics, might be in the 12-15 range, though, so it's sure a contender!
Wow, great summary of the Star Wars material! I knew there was a lot of comics, but I didn't realize it had passed through so many different publishers!
What about The Phantom? I feel like most US publishers have had a stab at The Ghost Who Walks n
Good call!
Offhand, I'm seeing Phantom comics published by Whitman/Gold Key, DC, Marvel, Moonstone, Dynamite, Mad Cave, Hermes (if you include comic strip reprints)... that's seven, but I expect I'm missing someone.
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