1.
Science fiction
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Science fiction often explores the potential consequences of scientific and other innovations, and has been called a literature of ideas. Science fiction is difficult to define, as it includes a range of subgenres and themes. Author and editor Damon Knight summed up the difficulty, saying science fiction is what we point to when we say it, a definition echoed by author Mark C. Glassy, who argues that the definition of science fiction is like the definition of pornography, you do not know what it is, in 1970 or 1971William Atheling Jr. According to science fiction writer Robert A, rod Serlings definition is fantasy is the impossible made probable. Science fiction is the improbable made possible, Science fiction is largely based on writing rationally about alternative possible worlds or futures. Science fiction elements include, A time setting in the future, in alternative timelines, a spatial setting or scenes in outer space, on other worlds, or on subterranean earth. Characters that include aliens, mutants, androids, or humanoid robots, futuristic or plausible technology such as ray guns, teleportation machines, and humanoid computers. Scientific principles that are new or that contradict accepted physical laws, for time travel, wormholes. New and different political or social systems, e. g. utopian, dystopian, post-scarcity, paranormal abilities such as mind control, telepathy, telekinesis Other universes or dimensions and travel between them. A product of the budding Age of Reason and the development of science itself. Isaac Asimov and Carl Sagan considered Keplers work the first science fiction story and it depicts a journey to the Moon and how the Earths motion is seen from there. Later, Edgar Allan Poe wrote a story about a flight to the moon, more examples appeared throughout the 19th century. Wells The War of the Worlds describes an invasion of late Victorian England by Martians using tripod fighting machines equipped with advanced weaponry and it is a seminal depiction of an alien invasion of Earth. In the late 19th century, the scientific romance was used in Britain to describe much of this fiction. This produced additional offshoots, such as the 1884 novella Flatland, the term would continue to be used into the early 20th century for writers such as Olaf Stapledon. In the early 20th century, pulp magazines helped develop a new generation of mainly American SF writers, influenced by Hugo Gernsback, the founder of Amazing Stories magazine. In 1912 Edgar Rice Burroughs published A Princess of Mars, the first of his series of Barsoom novels, situated on Mars
2.
Piracy
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Piracy is an act of robbery or criminal violence by ship- or boat-borne attackers upon another ship or a coastal area, typically with the goal of stealing cargo and other valuable items or properties. Those who engage in acts of piracy are called pirates, the earliest documented instances of piracy were in the 14th century BC, when the Sea Peoples, a group of ocean raiders, attacked the ships of the Aegean and Mediterranean civilizations. Narrow channels which funnel shipping into predictable routes have long created opportunities for piracy, as well as for privateering and commerce raiding. Historic examples include the waters of Gibraltar, the Strait of Malacca, Madagascar, the Gulf of Aden, a land-based parallel is the ambushing of travelers by bandits and brigands in highways and mountain passes. While the term can include acts committed in the air, on land, or in major bodies of water or on a shore. It does not normally include crimes committed against people traveling on the vessel as the perpetrator. Piracy or pirating is the name of a crime under customary international law. They also use larger vessels, known as ships, to supply the smaller motorboats. The international community is facing challenges in bringing modern pirates to justice. In the 2000s, a number of nations have used their naval forces to protect ships from pirate attacks. The English pirate is derived from the Latin term pirata and that from Greek πειρατής, brigand, in turn from πειράομαι, I attempt, from πεῖρα, attempt, the meaning of the Greek word peiratēs literally is one who attacks. The word is cognate to peril. The term is first attested to c, spelling was not standardised until the eighteenth century, and spellings such as pirrot, pyrate and pyrat were used until this period. It may be reasonable to assume that piracy has existed for as long as the oceans were plied for commerce, the earliest documented instances of piracy are the exploits of the Sea Peoples who threatened the ships sailing in the Aegean and Mediterranean waters in the 14th century BC. In classical antiquity, the Phoenicians, Illyrians and Tyrrhenians were known as pirates, the ancient Greeks condoned piracy as a viable profession, it apparently was widespread and regarded as an entirely honourable way of making a living. References are made to its perfectly normal occurrence many texts including in Homers Iliad and Odyssey, by the era of Classical Greece, piracy was looked upon as a disgrace to have as a profession. In the 3rd century BC, pirate attacks on Olympos brought impoverishment, among some of the most famous ancient pirateering peoples were the Illyrians, a people populating the western Balkan peninsula. Constantly raiding the Adriatic Sea, the Illyrians caused many conflicts with the Roman Republic and it was not until 229 BC when the Romans finally decisively beat the Illyrian fleets that their threat was ended
3.
Atmosphere of Earth
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The atmosphere of Earth is the layer of gases, commonly known as air, that surrounds the planet Earth and is retained by Earths gravity. The atmosphere of Earth protects life on Earth by absorbing solar radiation, warming the surface through heat retention. By volume, dry air contains 78. 09% nitrogen,20. 95% oxygen,0. 93% argon,0. 04% carbon dioxide, and small amounts of other gases. Air also contains an amount of water vapor, on average around 1% at sea level. The atmosphere has a mass of about 5. 15×1018 kg, the atmosphere becomes thinner and thinner with increasing altitude, with no definite boundary between the atmosphere and outer space. The Kármán line, at 100 km, or 1. 57% of Earths radius, is used as the border between the atmosphere and outer space. Atmospheric effects become noticeable during atmospheric reentry of spacecraft at an altitude of around 120 km, several layers can be distinguished in the atmosphere, based on characteristics such as temperature and composition. The study of Earths atmosphere and its processes is called atmospheric science, early pioneers in the field include Léon Teisserenc de Bort and Richard Assmann. The three major constituents of air, and therefore of Earths atmosphere, are nitrogen, oxygen, water vapor accounts for roughly 0. 25% of the atmosphere by mass. The remaining gases are often referred to as gases, among which are the greenhouse gases, principally carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide. Filtered air includes trace amounts of other chemical compounds. Various industrial pollutants also may be present as gases or aerosols, such as chlorine, fluorine compounds, sulfur compounds such as hydrogen sulfide and sulfur dioxide may be derived from natural sources or from industrial air pollution. In general, air pressure and density decrease with altitude in the atmosphere, however, temperature has a more complicated profile with altitude, and may remain relatively constant or even increase with altitude in some regions. In this way, Earths atmosphere can be divided into five main layers, excluding the exosphere, Earth has four primary layers, which are the troposphere, stratosphere, mesosphere, and thermosphere. It extends from the exobase, which is located at the top of the thermosphere at an altitude of about 700 km above sea level, to about 10,000 km where it merges into the solar wind. This layer is composed of extremely low densities of hydrogen, helium and several heavier molecules including nitrogen, oxygen. The atoms and molecules are so far apart that they can travel hundreds of kilometers without colliding with one another, thus, the exosphere no longer behaves like a gas, and the particles constantly escape into space. These free-moving particles follow ballistic trajectories and may migrate in and out of the magnetosphere or the solar wind, the exosphere is located too far above Earth for any meteorological phenomena to be possible
4.
Dwarf planet
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A dwarf planet is a planetary-mass object that is neither a planet nor a natural satellite. The International Astronomical Union currently recognizes five dwarf planets, Ceres, Pluto, Haumea, Makemake, another hundred or so known objects in the Solar System are suspected to be dwarf planets. Individual astronomers recognize several of these, and in August 2011 Mike Brown published a list of 390 candidate objects, Stern states that there are more than a dozen known dwarf planets. Only two of these bodies, Ceres and Pluto, have observed in enough detail to demonstrate that they actually fit the IAUs definition. The IAU accepted Eris as a dwarf planet because it is more massive than Pluto and they subsequently decided that unnamed trans-Neptunian objects with an absolute magnitude brighter than +1 are to be named under the assumption that they are dwarf planets. The classification of bodies in other systems with the characteristics of dwarf planets has not been addressed. Starting in 1801, astronomers discovered Ceres and other bodies between Mars and Jupiter which were for some decades considered to be planets. Between then and around 1851, when the number of planets had reached 23, astronomers started using the asteroid for the smaller bodies. With the discovery of Pluto in 1930, most astronomers considered the Solar System to have nine planets and it was roughly one-twentieth the mass of Mercury, which made Pluto by far the smallest planet. Although it was more than ten times as massive as the largest object in the asteroid belt, Ceres. In the 1990s, astronomers began to find objects in the region of space as Pluto. Many of these shared several of Plutos key orbital characteristics, and Pluto started being seen as the largest member of a new class of objects and this led some astronomers to stop referring to Pluto as a planet. Several terms, including subplanet and planetoid, started to be used for the now known as dwarf planets. By 2005, three trans-Neptunian objects comparable in size to Pluto had been reported and it became clear that either they would also have to be classified as planets, or Pluto would have to be reclassified. Astronomers were also confident that more objects as large as Pluto would be discovered, Eris was discovered in January 2005, it was thought to be slightly larger than Pluto, and some reports informally referred to it as the tenth planet. As a consequence, the became a matter of intense debate during the IAU General Assembly in August 2006. The IAUs initial draft proposal included Charon, Eris, and Ceres in the list of planets, dropping Charon from the list, the new proposal also removed Pluto, Ceres, and Eris, because they have not cleared their orbits. The IAUs final Resolution 5A preserved this three-category system for the bodies orbiting the Sun
5.
Aircraft
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An aircraft is a machine that is able to fly by gaining support from the air. It counters the force of gravity by using either static lift or by using the lift of an airfoil. The human activity that surrounds aircraft is called aviation, crewed aircraft are flown by an onboard pilot, but unmanned aerial vehicles may be remotely controlled or self-controlled by onboard computers. Aircraft may be classified by different criteria, such as type, aircraft propulsion, usage. Each of the two World Wars led to technical advances. Consequently, the history of aircraft can be divided into five eras, Pioneers of flight, first World War,1914 to 1918. Aviation between the World Wars,1918 to 1939, Second World War,1939 to 1945. Postwar era, also called the jet age,1945 to the present day, aerostats use buoyancy to float in the air in much the same way that ships float on the water. They are characterized by one or more large gasbags or canopies, filled with a relatively low-density gas such as helium, hydrogen, or hot air, which is less dense than the surrounding air. When the weight of this is added to the weight of the aircraft structure, a balloon was originally any aerostat, while the term airship was used for large, powered aircraft designs – usually fixed-wing. In 1919 Frederick Handley Page was reported as referring to ships of the air, in the 1930s, large intercontinental flying boats were also sometimes referred to as ships of the air or flying-ships. – though none had yet been built, the advent of powered balloons, called dirigible balloons, and later of rigid hulls allowing a great increase in size, began to change the way these words were used. Huge powered aerostats, characterized by an outer framework and separate aerodynamic skin surrounding the gas bags, were produced. There were still no fixed-wing aircraft or non-rigid balloons large enough to be called airships, then several accidents, such as the Hindenburg disaster in 1937, led to the demise of these airships. Nowadays a balloon is an aerostat and an airship is a powered one. A powered, steerable aerostat is called a dirigible, sometimes this term is applied only to non-rigid balloons, and sometimes dirigible balloon is regarded as the definition of an airship. Non-rigid dirigibles are characterized by a moderately aerodynamic gasbag with stabilizing fins at the back and these soon became known as blimps. During the Second World War, this shape was adopted for tethered balloons, in windy weather
6.
Steampunk
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Steampunk is a subgenre of science fiction or science fantasy that incorporates technology and aesthetic designs inspired by 19th-century industrial steam-powered machinery. Therefore, steampunk may be described as neo-Victorian, Steampunk may also incorporate additional elements from the genres of fantasy, horror, historical fiction, alternate history, or other branches of speculative fiction, making it often a hybrid genre. The first known appearance of the term steampunk was in 1987, Steampunk is influenced by and often adopts the style of the 19th-century scientific romances of Jules Verne, H. G. Wells, and Mary Shelley. Several more modern works of art and fiction significant to the development of the genre were produced before the genre had a name, the film Brazil was an important early cinematic influence that helped codify the aesthetics of the genre. The Adventures of Luther Arkwright was a comic version of the Moorcock-style mover between timestreams. In fine art, Remedios Varos paintings combine elements of Victorian dress, fantasy, in television, one of the earliest manifestations of the steampunk ethos in the mainstream media was the CBS television series The Wild Wild West, which inspired the subsequent film. Although many works now considered seminal to the genre were published in the 1960s and 1970s and it was coined by science fiction author K. W. G. Wells The Time Machine. Though of course, I did find her review in the March Locus to be quite flattering, personally, I think Victorian fantasies are going to be the next big thing, as long as we can come up with a fitting collective term for Powers, Blaylock and myself. Something based on the technology of the era, like steam-punks. They were far from the first modern science fiction writers to speculate on the development of steam-based technology or alternative histories, keith Laumers Worlds of the Imperium and Ronald W. Clarks Queen Victorias Bomb apply modern speculation to past-age technology and society. Michael Moorcocks Warlord of the Air is another early example, harry Harrisons novel A Transatlantic Tunnel, Hurrah. Portrays a British Empire of an alternative year 1973, full of atomic locomotives, coal-powered flying boats, ornate submarines, the Adventures of Luther Arkwright was the first steampunk comic. In February 1980, Richard A. Lupoff and Steve Stiles published the first chapter of their 10-part comic strip The Adventures of Professor Thintwhistle and His Incredible Aether Flyer. Indeed, both sensibilities recall the older but still modern eras in which technological change seemed to anticipate a better world, one of steampunk’s most significant contributions is the way in which it mixes digital media with traditional handmade art forms. As scholars Rachel Bowser and Brian Croxall put it, the tinkering and tinker-able technologies within steampunk invite us to roll up our sleeves, in this respect, steampunk bears more in common with DIY craft and making. This theme is carried over to Disneys theme parks, in the designs of The Mysterious Island section of Tokyo DisneySea theme park. Aspects of steampunk design emphasise a balance between form and function, in this it is like the Arts and Crafts Movement. But John Ruskin, William Morris, and the reformers in the late nineteenth century rejected machines
7.
Blackhawk (DC Comics)
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Blackhawk is the eponymous fictional character of the long-running comic book series Blackhawk published first by Quality Comics and later by DC Comics. Primarily created by Chuck Cuidera with input from both Bob Powell and Will Eisner, the Blackhawk characters first appeared in Military Comics #1, though the membership roster has undergone changes over the years, the team has been portrayed most consistently as having seven core members. At the height of his popularity in the early 1940s, Blackhawk titles routinely outsold every other comic book, Blackhawk also shares the unique distinction of being just one of four comic book characters to be published continuously in his own title from the 1940s through the 1960s. The comic series has spawned a film serial, a radio series, like many of his golden age and silver age comic book counterparts, the creation of Blackhawk has been the subject of sometimes-contentious debate. Will Eisner has at times considered the characters primary creator, with Eisner himself acknowledging the contributions of Chuck Cuidera. Over the years, Cuidera became increasingly vocal that he did more work on Blackhawk than Eisner. According to Cuidera, he and Powell fleshed out the concept, deciding on everything from names and nationalities, to the distinguishing traits, uniforms. In 1999, Eisner addressed his view of the matter during a Comic-Con panel, Its not important who created it. its the guy who kept it going, whether or not Chuck Cuidera created or thought of Blackhawk to begin with is unimportant. The fact that Chuck Cuidera made Blackhawk what it was is the important thing, the Blackhawks debuted in August 1941 as the lead feature in the first issue of Quality Comics anthology series Military Comics, billed as featuring stories of the Army and Navy. Viewed by Will Eisner as a version of the Robin Hood legend. When Cuidera joined the services in 1942, Reed Crandall took over as artist. Jim Steranko has observed, Where Cuidera made Blackhawk a best-seller, Crandall turned it into a classic and it was during Crandalls run that the series hit its sales and popularity zenith. The Blackhawks success earned them their own title in Winter 1944 and that issue, Blackhawk #9, picked up the numbering of Qualitys canceled Uncle Sam Quarterly. They meanwhile continued to be featured prominently in Military Comics, later renamed Modern Comics and it was French, also an accomplished songwriter, who infused the team with the quirky desire to sing celebratory songs from their cockpits as they swooped in and out of battle. Quality Comics ceased operations with comics cover-dated December 1956, with Blackhawk #107 being the issue published by Quality. The character and title trademarks were initially leased on a royalty basis to National Periodical Publications before eventually being sold in their entirety, Blackhawk was one of the few Quality series that DC chose to keep running uninterrupted. Penciller Dick Dillin and inker Chuck Cuidera remained on the title, the duo would stay with the title through nearly its entire first run at DC. The Blackhawks also gained a new ally in Blackhawk #133, Lady Blackhawk, after a couple of appearances, she was granted honorary status and became a semi-frequent member of the supporting cast
8.
Last Exile
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Last Exile is a Japanese animated television series created by Gonzo. It featured a team led by director Koichi Chigira, character designer Range Murata. The three had worked together in Blue Submarine No. 6, one of the first CG anime series, Last Exile aired on TV Tokyo between April 7,2003 and September 29,2003. A sequel series, Last Exile -Fam, The Silver Wing-, a film adaptation of the series, Last Exile -Fam, The Silver Wing-, Over the Wishes, was released on February 6,2016. The story is set on the world of Prester, where its inhabitants use aerial vehicles known as vanships as a means of transportation. Although Prester itself is not a representation of Earth, it features technology reminiscent of nineteenth-century Europe at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, many of its designs were also inspired by Germanys technological advances during the interwar period. Last Exile was well received in North America, and the series was licensed for the English language by Geneon Entertainment in June 2003, funimation began licensing the series after Geneon ceased production of its titles, later licensing the sequel series. It was also licensed for English releases in the United Kingdom by originally ADV Films until its closure in 2009 and is now licensed by Manga Entertainment, other published media included two soundtracks, two manga adaptions and artbooks. Last Exile is set on the world of Prester. Presters two nations of Anatoray and Disith are separated by a turbulent region of the sky known as the Grand Stream and are engaged in eternal conflict according to the code of chivalric warfare, a superior faction known as the Guild enforces these rules. It also provides the two nations with technology but, unknown to them, has dishonorable intentions, to preserve the status quo, although the story is set in the future, the technology employed differs from that in a typical space opera. Instead, the shows retro-futuristic dieselpunk setting resembles nineteenth-century Europe at the height of the Industrial Revolution, various scenes in the series also show existing tension between the upper and lower classes. Anatorays nobility and military officers believe that commoners do not understand their codes of chivalry. On the other hand, the class also despise the aristocracy for their monopoly on resources. This tension extends to the accessibility of water, which varies in price according to purity grades. In the larger story, the advanced Guild society is portrayed as degenerate and lazy, while the people of Anatoray and Disith are creative, the series introduces viewers to a wide range of naval and military vocabulary. More primitive navigational methods such as dead reckoning and instruments such as the sextant are also used in the series, the story revolves around fifteen-year-old pilot Claus Valca and navigator Lavie Head, who fly their vanship as sky couriers in the nation of Anatoray
9.
Zeppelin
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A Zeppelin was a type of rigid airship named after the German Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin who pioneered rigid airship development at the beginning of the 20th century. Zeppelins notions were first formulated in 1874 and developed in detail in 1893 and they were patented in Germany in 1895 and in the United States in 1899. After the outstanding success of the Zeppelin design, the word came to be commonly used to refer to all rigid airships. Zeppelins were first flown commercially in 1910 by Deutsche Luftschiffahrts-AG, the worlds first airline in revenue service, by mid-1914, DELAG had carried over 10,000 fare-paying passengers on over 1,500 flights. During World War I the German military made use of Zeppelins as bombers and scouts. The defeat of Germany in 1918 temporarily slowed down the airship business, an exception was made allowing the construction of one airship for the US Navy, which saved the company from extinction. In 1926 the restrictions on airship construction were lifted and with the aid of donations from the public and this revived the companys fortunes, and during the 1930s the airships Graf Zeppelin and the larger LZ129 Hindenburg operated regular transatlantic flights from Germany to North America and Brazil. The Hindenburg disaster in 1937, along political and economic issues. The principal feature of Zeppelins design was a rigid metal framework made up from transverse rings. The advantage of design was that the aircraft could be much larger than non-rigid airships. The framework of most Zeppelins was made of duralumin, early Zeppelins used rubberised cotton for the gasbags, but most later craft used goldbeaters skin, made from the intestines of cattle. The first Zeppelins had long cylindrical hulls with tapered ends and complex multi-plane fins and they were propelled by several engines, mounted in gondolas or engine cars, which were attached to the outside of the structural framework. Some of these could provide reverse thrust for manoeuvring while mooring, early models had a comparatively small externally mounted gondola for passengers and crew which was attached to the bottom of the frame. This space was never heated so passengers during trips across the North Atlantic or Siberia were forced to bundle themselves in blankets, the flight ceiling was so low that no pressurization of the cabins was necessary, though the Hindenburg did maintain a pressurized air-locked smoking room. Access to the Zeppelin was achieved in a number of ways, the Graf Zeppelins gondola was accessed while the vessel was on the ground, via gangways. This describes a large rigidly framed outer envelope containing several separate gasbags and he had previously encountered Union Army balloons in 1863 when he visited the United States as a military observer during the American Civil War. Count Zeppelin began to pursue his project after his early retirement from the military in 1890 at the age of 52. Convinced of the importance of aviation, he started working on various designs in 1891
10.
Warhammer 40,000
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Warhammer 40,000 is a tabletop miniature wargame produced by Games Workshop, set in a dystopian science fantasy universe. Warhammer 40,000 was created by Rick Priestley in 1987 as the companion to Warhammer Fantasy Battle. Expansions for Warhammer 40,000 are released periodically which give rules for urban, planetary siege, the game is in its seventh edition, which was released on May 24,2014. Players assemble and paint individual 28-millimetre scale miniature figures that represent futuristic soldiers, monsters and these figurines are collected to constitute squads in armies that can be pitted against those of other players. Each player brings a roughly equal complement of units to a battlefield with handmade or purchased terrain. The players then decide upon a scenario, ranging from simple skirmishes to complex battles involving defended objectives, the models are physically moved around the table and the actual distance between models plays a role in the outcome of combat. Play is turn-based, with various outcomes determined by tables and the roll of dice, battles may last anywhere from a half-hour to a whole weekend, and battles may be strung together to form campaigns. Many game and hobby stores host games, and official gaming events are held on a regular basis, Warhammer 40, 000s space fantasy is set in a fictional future during the 41st millennium AD. The background and playing rules of each faction are covered in the rule books and supplemental army codex, along with articles in the Games Workshop magazines, White Dwarf. The games miniatures are produced by Citadel Miniatures and Forge World, the Warhammer 40,000 setting is used for several tabletop games, video games, and works of fiction, including licensed works published by Black Library, a subsidiary of Games Workshop. Since before joining Games Workshop, Priestley had been working on a science fiction tabletop game called Rogue Trader. Priestley added Warhammer elements such as magic and science fiction counterparts to Elves, Warhammer 40,000, Rogue Trader was released in 1987. The first edition of the game was more of a game focusing on small skirmishes. Priestley realized that players wanted a proper wargame rather than a game, and in the second edition the umpire was removed. Warhammer 40,000 became even more successful than its precursor, and soon Games Workshop released a range of spin-off games such as Necromunda, Battlefleet Gothic. Since childhood, Rick Priestley was heavily into roleplaying games and miniatures wargaming, particularly strong influences on Warhammer 40,000 were Battle. Practical Wargaming by Charles Grant and Laserburn by Bryan Ansell, Priestley cites J. R. R. Tolkien, H. P. Lovecraft, Dune, Paradise Lost, and 2000 AD as major influences on the setting. The story of the Emperors favored sons succumbing to the temptations of Chaos deliberately parallels the fall of Satan in Paradise Lost, the Imperium of Man is a critique of organized religion, To me the background to 40K was always intended to be ironic
11.
DC Comics
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DC Comics, Inc. is an American comic book publisher. It is the unit of DC Entertainment, a subsidiary of Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc. a division of Time Warner, the company has also published non-DC Universe-related material, including Watchmen, V for Vendetta and many titles under their alternative imprint Vertigo. The initials DC came from the popular series Detective Comics. Random House distributes DC Comics books to the market, while Diamond Comic Distributors supplies the comics shop specialty market. DC Comics and its major, longtime competitor Marvel Comics together shared 70% of the American comic book market in 2016, entrepreneur Major Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson founded National Allied Publications in autumn 1934. The company debuted with the tabloid-sized New Fun, The Big Comic Magazine #1 with a date of February 1935. That title evolved into Adventure Comics, which continued through issue #503 in 1983, in 2009 DC revived Adventure Comics with its original numbering. In 1935, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, the creators of Superman, created Doctor Occult. Wheeler-Nicholsons third and final title, Detective Comics, advertised with a cover illustration dated December 1936, the themed anthology series would become a sensation with the introduction of Batman in issue #27. By then, however, Wheeler-Nicholson had gone, Detective Comics, Inc. was formed, with Wheeler-Nicholson and Jack S. Liebowitz, Donenfelds accountant, listed as owners. Major Wheeler-Nicholson remained for a year, but cash-flow problems continued, shortly afterward, Detective Comics, Inc. purchased the remains of National Allied, also known as Nicholson Publishing, at a bankruptcy auction. Detective Comics, Inc. soon launched a fourth title, Action Comics, Action Comics #1, the first comic book to feature the new character archetype—soon known as superheroes—proved a sales hit. The company quickly introduced such popular characters as the Sandman and Batman. That year, Gaines let Liebowitz buy him out, and kept only Picture Stories from the Bible as the foundation of his own new company, at that point, Liebowitz promptly orchestrated the merger of All-American and Detective Comics into National Comics. Next he took charge of organizing National Comics, Independent News, National Periodical Publications became publicly traded on the stock market in 1961. The company began to move aggressively against what it saw as copyright-violating imitations from other companies, such as Fox Comics Wonder Man and this extended to DC suing Fawcett Comics over Captain Marvel, at the time comics top-selling character. Despite the fact that parallels between Captain Marvel and Superman seemed more tenuous, the courts ruled that substantial and deliberate copying of copyrighted material had occurred, faced with declining sales and the prospect of bankruptcy if it lost, Fawcett capitulated in 1955 and ceased comics publication
