Centaur Publications

Centaur Publications (also known as Centaur Comics) was one of the earliest American comic book publishers. During their short existence, they created several colorful characters, including Bill Everett's Amazing-Man.

History

Comics Magazine Company

Centaur developed primarily from the Comics Magazine Company, Inc. In 1936, comic-book entrepreneur

By January 1938, Ultem was bought out by Joe Hardie, Fred Gardner, and Raymond Kelly's Centaur Publications, Inc., which had been publishing pulp magazines since at least 1933. Hardie, Gardner, and Kelly used this base to create Centaur Comics, which began publishing in March 1938. They also drew on the back inventory of stories to fill out the early issues of their new titles with reprints. Centaur Publications, Inc. ceased production at the end of 1940, but continued to produce comics under the name Comic Corporation of America.

Centaur ceased publication four years later, primarily due to poor

In 1992, Malibu Comics revived several Centaur heroes—which by that time had lapsed into public domain—as the superhero team The Protectors. Malibu selected R. A. Jones to revamp and write the series^[4] Included were Airman, Amazing Man,^[4] the Arrow, the Clock (as a retired mystery man, then the President of the United States, Brian O'Brien), the Fantom of the Fair, also known as Fantoman (renamed by Malibu as Gravestone), the Ferret,^{[citation needed]} Man of War,^[4] the Masked Marvel (renamed Night Mask), Mighty Man, Prince Zardi the Eternal Man, and the Shark (renamed Thresher),^{[citation needed]} as well as completely original characters,^[4] such as Arc and Aura. Several of these characters had short-lived titles of their own. AC Comics reprinted a number of stories featuring Centaur characters in their anthologies.^{[citation needed]}

R. A. Jones was approached by a small book publisher, Westerntainment,^[5] to do a prose novel about the Centaur characters with the idea that the story take place in their original time period. By December 2014, his novel The Steel Ring was available. A second book, Twilight War, was green-lit by that time.^[4] Those Centaur heroes in Ring were Amazing Man, the Clock, Ferret, Iron Skull, Man of War plus others. In October 2016, Twilight War was available. Centaur characters add for the second novel included Airman, the Arrow, Eternal Man and Phantom Princess. Each novel would take place in a different year of World War II. So at the time of the second novel's release, Jones had planned to do a total of seven books in the series for each year of the war.^[5]

Characters

• Airman
• Amazing Man
• The Arrow
• Black Panther
• Blue Fire
• Blue Lady
• The Buzzard
• Chuck Hardy
• The Conqueror (enemy of Dean Denton)
• The Clock (at the Comics Magazine Co., character sold to Quality Comics
  but reprints of CMC stories appeared at Centaur)
• Dan Hastings
• Dash Dartwell
• Dean Denton
• Diana Deane
• Dirk the demon
• Dr. Darkness
• Dr. Hypno
• Dr. Mystic
• Dr. Synthe
• The Electric Ray
• The Eye
• Ermine
• Eternal man
• Fantom of the Fair/Fantoman
• The Ferret
• The Fire Man
• Iron Skull
• King of Darkness
• Liberty Guards
• Mad Ming
• Magician from Mars
• Man O'War
• Marksman
• The Masked Marvel
• Meteor Martin
• Mighty-Man
• Minimidget
• Miraco the Great
• Nightshade
• The Rainbow
• The Sentinel
• The Shark
• Scarlet Ace
• Skyrocket Steele
• Solarman
• Speed Centaur
• Super-Ann (Two characters of the same name)
• TNT Todd
• Vapo-man
• The Voice
• The Witch ( Migthy man villain)

Titles

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Centaur Publications.

• Centaur Publications at the Grand Comics Database
• AC Comics page about Centaur Publications
• Centaur character list
• Protectors site
• Steranko, Jim (1972). The Steranko History of Comics 2. Supergraphics. pp. 91–109. (offline)