[happyhuman]

Hello to everyone, does anyone maybe knows why AC Comics never reprinted Harvey's Black Cat comics?

They did reprint a lot of other Harvey characters (like Captain Freedom and War Nurse). Even their character 'She Cat', who is based on Harvey's Black Cat character has a different color outfit (while they didn't really changed Nightvile/Phantom Lady custom)

The Black Cat comics seems to be in public domain - is there another reason you think they didn't reprinted such an iconic character?

[bowers]

According to the site's listing of Black Cat issues, it appears the last three, 63-65, are not public domain. The Linda Turner character appeared in each of these 1960's issues. Possibly someone re-upped the copyright or registered a trademark for the character. I have a paper copy of 65, and although I haven't looked at it in years, I believe all the stories are reprints. I could be wrong. Cheers, Bowers

[narfstar]

The character is probably trademarked but the stories are PD

[josemas]

Those three 1960s issues of Black Cat from Harvey were indeed full of reprints.  Lorne-Harvey also put out 10 or 12 issues of Black Cat in the 1980s and 90s that were mostly reprints too.

Best

Joe

[happyhuman]

Thank you all for the answers.

It's still strange to me that while the character first appearance and her own series is in the Public Domain and yet the character and her PD stories are not in use.

I mean, her Harvey comics are here, in this website and trademark should not be an issue, like DC's Captain Marvel.

It just make me wonder why that is? even Dynamite and Image didn't use the character and Image had that 'next issue project' that they did and in their Speed Comics issue Black Cat did not appear while she should have been

Its very strange

[narfstar]

Probably just playing it safe. You do not see new Captain Marvel stories either.

[paw broon]

Just as a wee bit more on Black Cat, there were those 2 issues from Lorne/Harvey in '95 which had reprints but also feature a new story in colour by Mark Evanier and Murphy Anderson.  The title, and indicia, is, Alfred Harvey's Black Cat, the origins.
There is a comic titled, War Sirens and Liberty Belles, by Lorne-Harvey in  1991, featuring 2 b&w reprints of Black Cat plus reprints of Girl Commandos, Man in Black, Rocket man and Girl, and Shock Gibson (doesn't look much like a Siren or Belle to me).
Forgot to mention, War Heroes classics - same publisher, roughly the same cast list from 1991.  All b&w with a Paul Pelletier cover.

[Drahken]

My guess would be potential legal comflicts with marvel comics over the spiderman character of the same name. Just like DC can't publish any "captain marvel" comics due to marvel owning the trademark to the name for their own character (which exists & continues to get published, solely for the purpose of screwing DC out of the name), DC has to publish the character as "shazam". The character also seems to be very similar (especially visually) to marvel's "mockingbird" character, opening another area of potential litigation.

[jrasicmark]

Speaking of Mockingbird, I read somewhere the character first appeared as SHIELD agent, Bobbi Morse. I think she next appeared as a very obscure guest star in another Marvel character's book (I forget which one), but this time she appeared as a heroine called the Huntress. Later, they wanted to use the Huntress in Spider-Man Team-Up, but by that time, DC had established their own Huntress as Helena Wayne, the Earth-2 daughter of Batman and Catwoman in the Justice Society (and DC had previously had a much longer history using that name for various villainesses, most famously the Huntress who was married to the Sportsmaster and both were members of the Injustice Society). So Marvel ended up changing Bobbi Morse to the Mockingbird (ironically, DC had also previously used that name as the mysterious benefactor to the original Secret Six).
Mockingbird eventually joined the West Coast Avengers, which was led by Hawkeye at the time and they ended up in a relationship that kind of mirrored the relationship of Green Arrow and Black Canery at DC (even right down to the arrows and bird themes). And when DC redesigned Black Canary's costume after the Crisis on Infinite Earths, her new costume shared some similarities to Mockingbird's. Not sure how much of all this was intentional, accidental, or coincidental.