Charlton Comics

Charlton comics was a comic book publisher that published many popular comics including Blue Beetle Volume 4 and Captain Atom Volume 1 of the Action Heroes line of comics.

Founding
Charlton Comics when founded when immigrant John Santangelo Sr. and attorney Ed Levy began printing magazines that reprinted song lyrics. They originally were known as T.W.O. Charles Company but later changed into Charlton Comics. Their first comic was Yellowjacket which was first published in 1944.

40's and 50's
In the 40's, Charlton comics was a publisher of inexpensive comics during this time period and did not have many flagship titles like its competitors. In the 50's Charlton comics jumped onto the horror comics bandwagon and created many gory horror comics including Steve Ditko's The Thing! Vol 1, and also bought many comics from the defunct Superior Comics, Mainline Publications, St. John Publications and a few of the comics of Fawcett Comics. Charlton Comics also published many romance and western comics based on the comics they bought from other companies, as well as all-new comics. During this period they also bought Blue Beetle from Fox Comics.

Silver Age
Charlton Comics was most successful and popular in the Silver Age where they created their famous Action Heroes line of comics. In 1960 the first hero of this line, Captain Atom, was created by Joe Gill and Steve Ditko in Space Adventures #33 and the feature lasted until issue 42. Blue Beetle was revived in 1964 as Ted Kord in his own comic. Other Action Heroes were The Question, Son of Vulcan, Nightshade, Judomaster, Peter Canon the Thunderbolt and Peacemaker. Despite the fact that the Action Heroes line was well liked and fondly remembered to this day the line sputtered out after a few short years. Charlton also created war comics including the "FIghtin'" and "Attak" lines and continued their romance and horror lines.

Bronze Age
Through much of the Bronze Age Charlton continued making licensed, horror and romance comics that were inexpensive and similar to their Golden Age output. For a brief period in the 70's some new talent entered Charlton forming the "CPL Line" where they made comics like E-Man, Midnight Tales, and Doomsday + 1, they also created a fanzine called Charlton Bullseye but the talent soon left for Marvel and DC Comics. During their final years most of their comics were canceled and their Action Heroes line was sold to DC while the rest was given to a few different companies or went to the public domain. Charlton comics was shut down in 1985 and Charlton Publications failed in 1991.