Mighty Crusaders - Publication History

Publication History

The success of DC's and Marvel's Silver Age titles led Archie Comics to launch their own superhero comics. The Archie Adventure line (soon retitled Mighty Comics) included titles centered on The Fly, The Jaguar, and The Shield, a revamped Golden Age character. The success of The Avengers and the Justice League of America prompted Archie Comics to create their own team title, The Mighty Crusaders, where The Comet and Flygirl joined three characters with their own comics. The first issue was published in 1965, and the series was published on a bimonthly schedule. The Archie series mixed typical superhero fare with high camp. Don Markstein writes that they touched on "all the genre's cliches of the time", with Siegel's writing on the book being a "hokey rendition of Stan Lee".

In 1983 the team and the series were relaunched, with Rich Buckler as writer and penciller on the first issue. A contractual dispute between Buckler and DC Comics saw the publication of the first issue delayed. The series ran until the middle of 1985, being cancelled with issue 13, cover dated September 1985.

In 1992 DC Comics acquired a license to publish the characters, and launched a team book as part of the line. This series, titled only The Crusaders, launched in early 1992. The first issue saw scriptwriting by Mark Waid and Brian Augustyn. The series and the line itself, Impact Comics, were aimed at younger readers. DC Comics attempted to sell Impact Comics titles through news-stands in an attempt to expand the potential market. However, due to internal conflicts, this distribution never happened and the imprint eventually collapsed due to poor sales. The last issue of the DC series was issue 8, cover dated December 1992.

The team also served as a partial inspiration for Alan Moore's Watchmen series. Moore had initially imagined the story as being based around second string heroes; "I wanted more average super-heroes, like the Mighty Crusaders line ... original idea had started off with the dead body of the Shield being pulled out of a river somewhere." Moore used this idea when asked to submit a pitch for a treatment of DC Comics' then-newly-acquired Charlton Comics properties. Although the treatment was rejected for those characters, DC Comics commissioned Moore to base the story on all new heroes, and the project became Watchmen.