Harvey comics is a defunct comic book publisher, Founded by Alfred Harvey in New York city in 1941, although Harvey originally started publishing Super hero comics, it is better known by going into licensed characters, Especially casper the Friendly Ghost. Harvey comics become the main publisher of Casper comics, and created most ot the friendly ghost's supporting characters including Wendy, The Ghostly trio, Spooky, Nightmare and Hot stuff.
In 1957 Harvey Comics founded its own animation productuion division, Harvey films, which produced several Casper cartoons and films.
History:[]
Harvey Comics was founded by the Harvey brothers, Leon, Robert and Alfred, in the 1940s. Harvey Comics first acquired an existing faltering title from Brookwood Publications, Speed Comics. The title's headliners were Shock Gibson and Captain Freedom, a patriotic hero like The Shield. Harvey added more anthologies including Champion Comics and Pocket Comics. From the new titles only one would stay around for a while: The Black Cat, a Hollywood starlet-superhero, which was published into the 1950s
Harvey began a shift to licensed characters when in 1942 took over as the radio hero Green Hornet's publisher from Holyoke after six issues. Harvey added additional titles such that most of their titles were licensed. Licensed characters included Joe Palooka, Blondie, Dick Tracy, and other newspaper strip characters
On July 27, 1958,Harvey purchased the entire Famous line (including character rights and rights to the cartoon shorts). The Famous cartoons were repackaged and distributed to television as Harveytoons, and Harvey continued production on new comics and a handful of new cartoons produced for television. Casper the Friendly Ghost, who had been Famous' most popular original character, now became Harvey's top draw. Associated characters such as Spooky the Tuff Little Ghost, The Ghostly Trio, Casper's horse Nightmare, Hot Stuff the Little Devil, and Wendy the Good Little Witch were added to the Harvey line..
Notable Comic book series[]
Trivia:[]
- The Harvey family, From the 1995 Casper film took its last name from Harvey comics, as a tribute to casper's long time publisher.
- Harvey was known by its practice to publish comics that mixed new stories with old reprints, So some stories were reprinted and republished over and over again, plus their tendency to recolor old stories to put them in new comics, which can be considered one of the reasons of the company's decline and eventual bankruptcy.