Here’s something you don’t see anymore, and for that matter didn’t see all that much when it was going on.

During the Golden-Age from the forties to early 50’s it was pretty common to reuse art with just a few changes, such as art or color to changes to a Calvary uniform to turn it into a masked hero outfit,  or new words over old art.

It wasn’t the sort of thing the major players like DC, Fawcett, Dell or Quality did, nor the second tier player of the time such as Timely, or Archie.

But among the third tier also-rans it was pretty common, not just buying the content that had been produced by another small company and using it all over again, but buying it and then blanking out the word balloons and turning it into a completely different story, after all while they didn‘t play the writers and artist a lot back then, 64 or 52 pages is a lot of fill every month.

As an example a lot of what made up The Masked Rider, were old western stories from other companies with the words changed and a mask drawn over one of the characters to turn him into the title characters.

Below is an example where  Harry "A" Chesler Comics character The Master Key is turned a couple of years later into a crime comic detective, all they had to do was take out the eye beams and change the words.

Or maybe it was the other way around and they turned a normal detective into a superhero. It could go either way. I mean it was not like anyone was paying any attention was it?

Suppose they still did that sort of thing?

Imagine you get a job at Johnny Comelately Comics, and NO they don’t want you’re innovations, you can keep Death Potato and his Vegetable Vigilantes to yourself thank you very much, they hand you a dozen comics from Marvel or DC that didn’t quite make it and they don’t care about anymore and J. C. C. Comics has bought the rights to the art, but not the names, characters or storyline and it’s your job to take Marvel’s Night Mask, or Rom the Space Knight, and change them into something completely different with only a few tweaks to the art work (hey we ain’t made of money and those guy charge a lot!) mostly to make sure characters that Marvel is still using are taken out, and all new words, or a collection of random House of Mystery’s from DC from the 80’s that don’t have a continuing character and you have to turn it into one with the same restrictions as above, perhaps you can have a costume put over one character in each story to tie them together.

You know, on second thought that might be kind of fun.

Anyway… they don’t do that anymore.