Red Circle Comics was an imprint used by Archie Comics Publications, Inc. to publish non-Archie characters, especially their superheroes, in the 1970s and '80s.
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The Red Circle Comics line was first used to publish Chilling Adventures in Sorcery in October 1973, which for its first two issues was called Chilling Adventures in Sorcery as told by Sabrina. With the third issue, the title was renamed and published under the Red Circle Comics line. With issue #6 it was renamed Red Circle Sorcery and lasted until issue #11 (Feb. 1975). Red Circle published one issue of The Super Cops (based on the movie of the same name) in July 1974. Shortly thereafter, Mad House (a re-title of Mad House Glads) would also be published under the Red Circle Comics line starting with issue #95 (Sept. 1974). This would end after #97 (January 1975), when the title reverted back to being a standard Archie humor title.
In 1978 and 1979, Archie published two digests collecting their superhero materials from the 1960s. The first was titled Archie's Super Hero Special. The second issue was titled Archie's Super Hero Comic Digest Magazine, and is notable for publishing the previously unpublished revamp of the Black Hood done by Gray Morrow and Neal Adams. There was nothing on their covers to indicate they were Red Circle titles; only the interior indicia indicated the publisher.
In the 1980s, Archie made a more concerted effort to reuse their superheroes. The first appearance was in JC Comics's JCP Features #1, in December 1981, which reprinted the new Black Hood materials that appeared in Archie Super Hero Comic Digest Magazine #2. In March 1983, the first issue of Mighty Crusaders appeared, which led to many new titles under the Red Circle Comics banner. With the February 1984 issues, this line had been renamed the "Archie Adventure Series." By September 1985, the entire line had been cancelled. The next attempt at using the characters would have been the promised "Spectrum" line, but that line never came out because the proposed changes to the characters were considered too radical by Archie Comics' management. Archie's super-heroes were later leased to DC Comics for use in its short-lived Impact line. Since then, there have been only occasional appearances in Archie titles, probably to preserve their ownership.
DC had previously revamped the Red Circle characters under the Impact Comics imprint back in the 1990's. [1]
Recently the entire catalogue of characters created by Red Circle have been licensed for use by DC Comics. The new licensing plan was to introduce them into the DC Universe through the series The Brave and the Bold in stories written by J. Michael Straczynski.[2] This plan changed and, with the same writer attached, they appeared in Red Circle line, a series of one-shots which lead into two ongoing Shield and Web titles, each of which was canceled after the publication of only ten issues. The characters were planned to be incorporated into the regular DC Universe,[3][4] but in July 2011, it was revealed that DC no longer had the rights to them.[5]
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