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49-567: The DNAgents is a comic-book series created by writer Mark Evanier and artist Will Meugniot and published by Eclipse Comics from 1983. The series centers on a team of superheroes created through genetic engineering by the Matrix Corporation to act as superhuman enforcers for the head of the company. Both Marvel Comics and DC Comics expressed interest in publishing The DNAgents , but Evanier and Meugniot decided against signing with them because they would have had to give up

98-402: A "pin-up" on the back cover". In June 2001, DIC Entertainment announced they would purchase Golden Books Family Entertainment for US$ 170   million (equivalent to $ 293 million in 2023) and take it out of bankruptcy. However, DIC would pass off the purchase due to high costs and instead Golden Books Family Entertainment was eventually acquired jointly by Classic Media , owner of

147-408: A cover by Dave Stevens . The series was then relaunched as The New DNAgents with a new #1 and Schauer as the main artist. The comic was initially as part of Eclipse's line of 75¢ titles - though the price proved unsustainable and the title reverted to 95¢ from #7. The New DNAgents ran to 17 issues, and featured guest art from Chuck Patton , Mike Sekowsky , Rick Hoberg before Erik Larsen became

196-607: A sample strip for pitching to TV networks. The DNAgents reappeared a brief cameo appearance as guests at the wedding of Barbaric and Ricochet in the Savage Dragon comic series. In 2004, About Comics reprinted several issues in digest form, and in June 2006, reprinted issues were collected into DNAgents Volume 1 by Image Comics . This comics -related article is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Mark Evanier Evanier identifies as Jewish . His father

245-528: A script and provided "'technical advice' about comic books" for Bob , Bob Newhart 's unsuccessful third sitcom for CBS . He has produced a number of comic books, including Blackhawk , Crossfire and Hollywood Superstars (with Dan Spiegle ), Groo the Wanderer (with Sergio Aragonés ), and The DNAgents (with Will Meugniot ). For the Spiegle comics, Evanier contributed lengthy essays on

294-548: A small group of people (estimated at six or fewer) who have attended every year. In 1973, he first hosted a panel at the yearly event and the volume soon escalated to the point where he was hosting as many as fourteen over a four-day convention. They usually include Quick Draw!, which pits fast cartoonists against one another to respond with drawings to challenges Evanier throws at them; the Annual Jack Kirby Tribute Panel, Cover Story (artists discussing

343-419: A trademark registration for a logo identical to the original Gold Key logo. Later that year the trademark registration was purchased by the newly-formed Gold Key Entertainment LLC. Gold Key Entertainment LLC consists of comic book enthusiasts Lance Linderman, Adam Brooks, Mike Dynes, and Arnold Guerrero. Linderman describes trading a copy of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #1 to Willis for the rights to Gold Key, in

392-546: A year, they had reverted to using inked panel borders and oval balloons. They experimented with new formats, including Whitman Comic Book , a black-and-white, 136-page, hardcover series consisting of reprints, and Golden Picture Story Book , a tabloid -sized, 52-page, hardcover containing new material. In 1967, Gold Key reprinted a number of selected issues of their comics under the title Top Comics . They were packaged in plastic bags containing five comics each and were sold at gas stations and various eateries. Like Dell, Gold Key

441-545: Is most noted in animation for his work on Garfield and Friends , a seven-season series for which Evanier wrote or co-wrote nearly every episode and acted as voice recording director. Since 2008, Evanier has been the co-writer and voice director of The Garfield Show , which won a Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Performer in an Animated Program for June Foray . Evanier credits himself with convincing Jack Kirby to stop using Vince Colletta as an inker, and he considers himself one of Colletta's "main vilifiers". He wrote

490-715: The Bill Finger Award for Excellence in Comic Book Writing . Several of the panels he hosts at Comic-Con also appear at the annual WonderCon in Anaheim, California. In April 2022, Evanier was reported among the more than three dozen comics creators who contributed to Operation USA 's benefit anthology book, Comics for Ukraine: Sunflower Seeds , a project spearheaded by IDW Publishing Special Projects Editor Scott Dunbier , whose profits would be donated to relief efforts for Ukrainian refugees resulting from

539-524: The Hanna-Barbera comic book division. He also wrote a number of variety shows and specials, and he began writing for animated cartoon shows, including Scooby-Doo and Scrappy-Doo , The Plastic Man Comedy/Adventure Show , Thundarr the Barbarian , The ABC Weekend Special , Yogi Bear's All Star Comedy Christmas Caper , Richie Rich , The Wuzzles , and Dungeons & Dragons . He

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588-770: The Jesse Marsh drawn Tarzan ; and some of the Russ Manning -produced Tarzan series. They started several revivals of characters under Jim Shooter , including Doctor Solar , Magnus , Turok , and Mighty Samson . The Checker Book Publishing Group, in conjunction with Paramount Pictures , began reprinting the Gold Key Star Trek series in 2004. Hermes Press reprinted the three series based on Irwin Allen 's science-fiction TV series, as well as Gold Key's Dark Shadows , My Favorite Martian , and

637-543: The 1960s, due to its offering of many titles based upon popular TV series of the day, as well as numerous titles based on both Walt Disney Studios and Warner Bros. animated properties. It was also the first company to publish comic books based upon the then current NBC TV series Star Trek . While some titles, such as Star Trek and The Twilight Zone , were published for many years, many other licensed titles were characterized by short runs, sometimes publishing no more than one or two issues. Gold Key considered suing over

686-456: The 1970s, the entire comics industry experienced a downswing and Gold Key was among the hardest hit. Its editorial policies had not kept pace with the changing times, and suffered an erosion of its base of sales among children, who instead of buying comic books, could now watch cartoons and other entertainment on television for free. It is also alleged by Carmine Infantino that in the mid to late 1960s, DC Comics attempted to pressure Gold Key from

735-529: The 1990s to launch Valiant Comics ' fictional universe. Dark Horse Comics (and later, Dynamite Entertainment ) have published reprints, including several in hardcover collections, of such original Gold Key titles as Magnus, Robot Fighter ; Doctor Solar ; Mighty Samson ; M.A.R.S. Patrol ; Turok: Son of Stone ; The Occult Files of Doctor Spektor ; Dagar the Invincible ; Boris Karloff's Tales of Mystery ; Space Family Robinson ; Flash Gordon ;

784-679: The Dell Comics era mostly continued into the Gold Key era. In the mid-1960s, a number of artists were recruited by the newly formed Disney Studio Program and thereafter divided their output between the Disney Program and Western. Writer/artist Russ Manning and editor Chase Craig launched the Magnus, Robot Fighter science-fiction series in 1963. Jack Sparling co-created the superhero Tiger Girl with Jerry Siegel in 1968, drew

833-565: The E in Wile E. Coyote stands for "Ethelbert", and comics for the Edgar Rice Burroughs estate. In 1974, he teamed with writer Dennis Palumbo and wrote for a number of television series, including The Nancy Walker Show , The McLean Stevenson Show , and Welcome Back, Kotter , on which he was a story editor. After leaving Kotter in 1977 and amicably ending his partnership with Palumbo, Evanier wrote for and eventually ran

882-684: The February 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine . On May 26, 2006, Evanier underwent gastric bypass surgery at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. Having peaked at around 344 pounds (156 kg ) by then, he subsequently lost nearly 99 pounds (45 kg) by June 2007. Series head writer denoted in bold . Gold Key Comics Gold Key Comics was an imprint of American company Western Publishing , created for comic books distributed to newsstands. Also known as Whitman Comics , Gold Key operated from 1962 to 1984. Gold Key Comics

931-406: The Gold Key imprint at that time as the comics could no longer be found on the newsstands, but in department, variety, and grocery stores. Our new management assumed that comics could be treated like coloring books or puzzles. That proved an ill-fated decision. The following years were characterized by delays and erratic distribution. Eventually, arrangements were made to distribute these releases to

980-521: The Invincible , and Tragg and the Sky Gods . Also in the 1970s, writer Bob Gregory started drawing stories, mostly for Daisy and Donald . Artist/writer Frank Miller had his first published comic book artwork in The Twilight Zone for Gold Key in 1978. Diana Gabaldon began her career writing for Gold Key, initially sending a query that stated, "I’ve been reading your comics for

1029-547: The Phantom. Bongo Comics published a parody of Gold Key in Radioactive Man #106 (volume 2 #6, Nov. 2002) with script/layout by Batton Lash and finished art by Mike DeCarlo that Tony Isabella dubbed "a nigh-flawless facsimile of the Gold Key comics published by Western in the early 1960s...from the painting with tasteful come-on copy on the front cover to the same painting, sans logo or other type, presented as

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1078-489: The TV and merchandising rights, and since both had extensive backgrounds and contacts in the television industry, they were confident that they would be able to sell DNAgents as a TV series without help from a publisher. Mike Friedrich served as an agent for Evanier and Meugniot, submitting The DNAgents to five different publishers. When all five offered to publish it, they decided on large independent publisher Eclipse Comics for

1127-407: The TV series. Editor Chase Craig stated that Gold Key would launch titles with Hanna-Barbera characters with direct adaptations of episodes of the program because "[t]he studio had approval rights and the people there could get pointlessly picky about the material ... but they rarely bothered looking at any issue after the first few. Therefore, it simplified the procedure to do the first and maybe

1176-466: The Whitman logo, as well as that of Marvel Comics, with its diamond (before the direct market even arrived). Former DC Comics executive Paul Levitz stated, "[The] Western program was enormous — even well into the 1970s, they were taking very large numbers of DC titles for distribution (I recall 50,000+ copies offhand)." In 1979, Western ceased to be an independent company when Mattel Inc. purchased

1225-403: The amount of creative freedom they were ready to allow and for their strong plan for promoting the series. Eclipse published DNAgents from March 1983 to July 1985, reaching 24 issues. After drawing the first 14 issues, Meugniot moved to other projects. Richard Howell , Dan Spiegle , Jerry Ordway and Mitch Schauer were among the artists to guest on the title, with the final issue featuring

1274-436: The catalog of United Productions of America , and book publisher Random House in a bankruptcy auction for the lower $ 84.4   million (equivalent to $ 145.2 million in 2023) on August 16, 2001. In turn, Random House, and Classic Media gained ownership of Golden Books' entertainment catalog (including the family entertainment catalog of Broadway Video which includes the pre-1974 library of Rankin/Bass Productions and

1323-430: The comics business through sheer volume of output. Among the original titles launched by Gold Key in the 1970s were Baby Snoots and Wacky Witch . By 1977, many of the company's series had been cancelled and the surviving titles featured more reprinted material, although Gold Key was able to obtain the rights to publish a comic book series based upon Buck Rogers in the 25th Century between 1979 and 1981. It also lost

1372-418: The comics for which he wrote were The Flintstones , Uncle Scrooge , Daffy Duck , Bugs Bunny , The Three Stooges , and Woody Woodpecker . Leo Dorfman , creator of Ghosts for DC Comics , also produced supernatural stories for Gold Key's similarly themed Twilight Zone , Ripley's Believe it or Not , Boris Karloff Tales of Mystery , and Grimm's Ghost Stories . One of Gold Key's editors at

1421-500: The company. The new management stopped selling returnable comics at newsstands, preferring the nonreturnable bagged comics sold at toy stores. In a 1993 interview, Del Connell, the managing editor at Western's West Coast office in the late 1970s, recalled, ...the Western comics line was killed by distribution. Perhaps you know that by early 1980 our comics were only being distributed in bagged sets of three. The Whitman label replaced

1470-559: The distributor for a refund, but the bagged comics were not. To discourage unscrupulous dealers from opening the plastic bags and returning the nonreturnable issues, Western published the newsstand versions under the Gold Key Comics label, and put the Whitman Comics logo on the bagged versions, although otherwise the issues were identical. Western, at one point, also distributed bagged comics from its rival DC Comics under

1519-652: The emerging collector market, containing classic stories of the Disney characters by Carl Barks and Floyd Gottfredson ( Best of Walt Disney's Comics ). In the late 1970s, somewhat higher-grade reprints of various licensed characters were also aimed at new venues ( Dynabrites ), plus Starstream , a four-issue series adapting classic science fiction stories by authors such as Isaac Asimov and John W. Campbell . Golden Press released trade paperback reprint collections such as Walt Disney Christmas Parade , Bugs Bunny Comics-Go-Round , and Star Trek: The Enterprise Logs . In

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1568-595: The entertainment industry. In 1985, he launched the DC Challenge limited series with artist Gene Colan . He wrote the New Gods series of 1989–1991. Evanier collaborated with Joe Staton on the Superman & Bugs Bunny mini-series in 2000. For many years, Evanier wrote a regular column, "Point of View", for Comics Buyer's Guide . Evanier's illustrated Jack Kirby biography, Kirby: King of Comics ,

1617-481: The last 25 years, and they’ve been getting worse and worse. I’m not sure if I could do better myself, but I’d like to try." Editor Del Connell provided a script sample and bought her second submission. According to former Western Publishing writer Mark Evanier , during the mid-1960s, comedy writer Jerry Belson , whose writing partner at the time was Garry Marshall , also did scripts for Gold Key while writing for leading TV sitcoms like The Dick Van Dyke Show . Among

1666-437: The late 1970s, the distribution of comic books on spinners and racks at newsstands, drug stores, and supermarkets continued, but Western Publishing also sold packages of three comics in a plastic bag to toy and department stores, gas stations, airports, and bus/train stations, "as well as other outlets that weren't conducive to conventional comic racks". The newsstand comics were returnable; the dealer could return unsold copies to

1715-426: The library of Total Television ), as well as production, licensing, and merchandising rights for Golden Books' characters and the Gold Key Comics catalogs, while Random House gained Golden Books' book publishing properties. Random House had previously acquired Dell Publishing through a series of mergers since 1976, effectively reuniting the remnants Gold Key Comics and Dell Comics . On July 23, 2012, Classic Media

1764-504: The nascent national network of comic-book stores. Western also prepared a prospectus in the early 1980s for a deluxe Carl Barks reprint project aimed at the collector market that was never published. In December 1983, a struggling Mattel sold Western Publishing to real-estate investor Richard A. Bernstein. Bernstein closed Western's comic-book publishing division in 1984. Three of Gold Key's original characters, Magnus, Robot Fighter , Doctor Solar , and Turok, Son of Stone , were used in

1813-420: The regular artist for the final five issues - among his earliest paid professional work. Further spin-offs included Crossfire (26 issues between May 1984 and February 1988), the 4-issue mini-series Surge and Crossfire and Rainbow , and the stereoscopy one-shot Three Dimensional DNAgents . In 1994, Antarctic Press released a single issue retelling their story; this had originally been produced as

1862-517: The rights to publish Star Trek -based comic books to Marvel Comics just prior to the revival of the franchise via Star Trek: The Motion Picture , with the final Gold Key-published Star Trek title being issued in March, 1979. In this period, Gold Key experimented with digests with some success. In a similar manner, to explore new markets in the mid-1970s, it produced a four-volume series, with somewhat better production values and printing aimed at

1911-577: The second issue as an adaptation. They couldn't very well complain that a plot taken from the show was inappropriate". Over the years, Gold Key lost several properties, including the King Features Syndicate characters ( Popeye , Flash Gordon , The Phantom , etc.), to Charlton Comics in 1966, numerous, but not all, Hanna-Barbera characters also to Charlton Comics in 1970, and Star Trek to Marvel Comics in 1979. The stable of writers and artists built up by Western Publishing during

1960-477: The similarly themed television series Lost in Space for its resemblance to the preexisting Space Family Robinson , but decided their business relationship with CBS and Irwin Allen was more important than any monetary reward resulting from such a suit; as a result, the Gold Key series adopted the branding Space Family Robinson Lost in Space with issue #15 (Jan. 1966), though its narrative had no connection to

2009-438: The skills involved in creating covers for comic books), and several panels about the art of providing voices for animated cartoons. For years, he hosted the annual Golden Age Panel featuring artists and writers who'd worked in comic books in the 1940s but it ended after 2010 due to a lack of available panelists and was replaced by That 70's Panel, celebrating comic book creators from that era. Evanier also serves as Administrator of

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2058-444: The time told Mark Evanier, "Leo writes stories and then he decides whether he's going to sell them to DC [for Ghosts ] or to us. He tells us that if they come out good, they go to us and if they don't, they go to DC. I assume he tells DC the opposite." Editor Frank Tedeschi , who left in 1973 for a job in book publishing, helped bring in such new comics professionals as Walt Simonson , Gerry Boudreau, and John David Warner. During

2107-634: The titles of the officers of the Merry Marvel Marching Society . He made his first professional sale in 1969; that same year, through a mutual association with a Marvel Comics mail-order firm, he was taken on as a production assistant to Jack Kirby . Several years later Evanier began writing foreign comic books for the Walt Disney Studio Program , then from 1972 to 1976 wrote scripts for Gold Key Comics , including "The Greatest of E's", where he revealed that

2156-784: The toyline tie-in Microbots one-shot , and illustrated comic book adaptations of the television series Family Affair and Adam-12 . Dan Spiegle worked on Space Family Robinson , The Green Hornet , The Invaders , Korak, Son of Tarzan , Brothers of the Spear , and many of Gold Key's mystery/occult titles. Among the other creators at Gold Key were writers Donald F. Glut , Len Wein , Bob Ogle , John David Warner , Steve Skeates , and Mark Evanier ; and artists Cliff Voorhees , Joe Messerli , Carol Lay , Jesse Santos , and Mike Royer . Glut created and wrote several series including The Occult Files of Dr. Spektor , Dagar

2205-522: Was Jewish and his mother was Catholic. He chose to be a writer after witnessing the misery his father felt from working for the Internal Revenue Service and contrasting that with the portrayal of a writer's life on The Dick Van Dyke Show . He graduated from University High School in 1969. Evanier attended UCLA but left before graduating. Evanier was president of a Los Angeles comic book club from 1966–69. In 1967, he suggested

2254-564: Was acquired by DreamWorks Animation for $ 155   million (equivalent to $ 206 million in 2023) and renamed DreamWorks Classics . On July 1, 2013, Random House merged with the Penguin Group , forming a new company called Penguin Random House . In April 2016, the acquisition of DreamWorks Animation (owner of DreamWorks Classics) by NBCUniversal was announced. In 2021, comics creator and hacker Robert Willis obtained

2303-422: Was created in 1962, when its parent, Western Publishing Company , switched to in-house publishing rather than packaging content for branding and distribution by its business partner, Dell Comics . Hoping to make their comics more like traditional children's books, they initially eliminated panel line-borders, using just the panel, with its ink and artwork evenly edged, but not bordered by a "container" line. Within

2352-521: Was one of the few major American comic book publishers never to display the Comics Code Authority seal on its covers, trading instead on the reputation of its child-friendly stories. Gold Key featured a number of licensed properties and several original titles, including a number of publications that were spun off from Dell's Four Color series, or were published as stand-alone titles. Gold Key maintained decent sales numbers throughout

2401-583: Was published in February 2008 by Abrams Books. It won the 2009 Eisner Award for Best Comics-Related Book. Evanier collaborated with Aragonés and Thomas Yeates on the Groo vs. Conan crossover for Dark Horse Comics in 2014. In 1970, Evanier attended the Golden State Comic Con in San Diego, the first annual gathering of what came to be known as San Diego Comic-Con . Evanier is one of

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