Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci, more Leonardo da Vinci or Leonardo, was an Italian polymath of the Renaissance whose areas of interest included invention, painting, architecture, music, engineering, anatomy, astronomy, writing and cartography. He has been variously called the father of palaeontology and architecture, he is considered one of the greatest painters of all time. Sometimes credited with the inventions of the parachute and tank, he epitomised the Renaissance humanist ideal. Many historians and scholars regard Leonardo as the prime exemplar of the "Universal Genius" or "Renaissance Man", an individual of "unquenchable curiosity" and "feverishly inventive imagination", he is considered one of the most diversely talented individuals to have lived. According to art historian Helen Gardner, the scope and depth of his interests were without precedent in recorded history, "his mind and personality seem to us superhuman, while the man himself mysterious and remote". Marco Rosci notes that, while there is much speculation regarding his life and personality, his view of the world was logical rather than mysterious, although the empirical methods he employed were unorthodox for his time.
Leonardo was born out of wedlock to notary Piero da Vinci and a peasant woman named Caterina in Vinci in the region of Florence, he was educated in the studio of Florentine painter Andrea del Verrocchio. Much of his earlier working life was spent in the service of Ludovico il Moro in Milan, he worked in Rome and Venice, he spent his last years in France at the home awarded to him by Francis I of France. Leonardo is renowned as a painter; the Mona Lisa is the most famous of his works and the most parodied portrait, The Last Supper is the most reproduced religious painting of all time. His drawing of the Vitruvian Man is regarded as a cultural icon, being reproduced on items as varied as the euro coin, T-shirts, his painting Salvator Mundi sold for $450.3 million at a Christie's auction in New York on 15 November 2017, the highest price paid for a work of art. 15 of his paintings have survived. These few works compose a contribution to generations of artists rivalled only by that of his contemporary Michelangelo, together with his notebooks, which contain drawings, scientific diagrams, his thoughts on the nature of painting.
Leonardo is revered for his technological ingenuity. He conceptualised flying machines, a type of armoured fighting vehicle, concentrated solar power, an adding machine, the double hull. Few of his designs were constructed or feasible during his lifetime, as the modern scientific approaches to metallurgy and engineering were only in their infancy during the Renaissance; some of his smaller inventions, entered the world of manufacturing unheralded, such as an automated bobbin winder and a machine for testing the tensile strength of wire. A number of his most practical inventions are displayed as working models at the Museum of Vinci, he made substantial discoveries in anatomy, civil engineering, geology and hydrodynamics, but he did not publish his findings and they had no direct influence on science. Leonardo was born on 15 April 1452 "at the third hour of the night" in the Tuscan hill town of Vinci, in the lower valley of the Arno river in the territory of the Medici-ruled Republic of Florence.
He was the out-of-wedlock son of the wealthy Messer Piero Fruosino di Antonio da Vinci, a Florentine legal notary, Caterina, a peasant. Leonardo had no surname in the modern sense—"da Vinci" meaning "of Vinci"; the inclusion of the title "ser" indicated. Little is known about Leonardo's early life, he spent his first five years in the hamlet of Anchiano in the home of his mother, from 1457 lived in the household of his father and uncle in the small town of Vinci. His father had married a 16-year-old girl named Albiera Amadori, who loved Leonardo but died young in 1465 without children; when Leonardo was 16, his father married again to 20-year-old Francesca Lanfredini, who died without children. Piero's legitimate heirs were born from his third wife Margherita di Guglielmo and his fourth and final wife, Lucrezia Cortigiani. In all, Leonardo had 12 half-siblings, who were much younger than he was and with whom he had few contacts, but they caused him difficulty after his father's death in the dispute over the inheritance.
Leonardo received an informal education in Latin and mathematics. In life, Leonardo recorded only two childhood incidents. One, which he regarded as an omen, was when a kite dropped from the sky and hovered over his cradle, its tail feathers brushing his face; the second occurred while he was exploring in the mountains: he discovered a cave and was both terrified that some great monster might lurk there and driven by curiosity to find out what was inside. Leonardo's early life has been the subject of historical conjecture. Vasari, the 16th-century biographer of Renaissance painters, tells a story of Leonardo as a young man: A local peasant made himself a round shield and requested that Ser Piero have it painted for him. Leonardo responded with a
Magic (supernatural)
Magic is a category in Western culture into which have been placed various beliefs and practices considered separate from both religion and science. The term had pejorative connotations, with things labelled magical perceived as being primitive and Other; the concept has been adopted by scholars in the study of religion and the social sciences, who have proposed various different—and mutually exclusive—definitions of the term. The term magic derives from the Old Persian magu, a word that applied to a form of religious functionary about which little is known. During the late sixth and early fifth centuries BCE, this term was adopted into Ancient Greek, where it was used with negative connotations, to apply to religious rites that were regarded as fraudulent and dangerous; this meaning of the term was adopted by Latin in the first century BCE. Via Latin, the concept was incorporated into Christian theology during the first century CE, where magic was associated with demons and thus defined against religion.
This concept was pervasive throughout the Middle Ages, when Christian authors categorised a diverse range of practices—such as enchantment, incantations, divination and astrology—under the label magic. In early modern Europe, Italian humanists reinterpreted the term in a positive sense to create the idea of natural magic. Both negative and positive understandings of the term were retained in Western culture over the following centuries, with the former influencing early academic usages of the word. Since the nineteenth century, academics in various disciplines have employed the term magic but have defined it in different ways and used it in reference to different things. One approach, associated with the anthropologists Edward Tylor and James G. Frazer, uses the term to describe beliefs in hidden sympathies between objects that allow one to influence the other. Defined in this way, magic is portrayed as the opposite to science. An alternative approach, associated with the sociologists Marcel Mauss and Émile Durkheim, employs the term to describe private rites and ceremonies and contrasts it with religion, which it defines as a communal and organised activity.
Many scholars of religion have rejected the utility of the term magic, arguing that it is arbitrary and ethnocentric. Throughout Western history, there have been examples of individuals who engaged in practices that their societies called magic and who sometimes referred to themselves as magicians. Within modern occultism, there are many self-described magicians and people who practice ritual activities that they term magic. In this environment, the concept of magic has again changed being defined as a technique for bringing about changes in the physical world through the force of one's will; this definition was pioneered by the influential British occultist Aleister Crowley. The historian Owen Davies stated that the word magic was "beyond simple definition"; the historian Michael D. Bailey characterised magic as "a contested category and a fraught label". Scholars have engaged in extensive debates as to how to define magic, with such debates resulting in intense dispute. Throughout such debates, the scholarly community has failed to agree on a definition of magic, in a similar manner to how they have failed to agree on a definition of religion.
Among those throughout history who have described themselves as magicians, there has been no common understanding of what magic is. Concepts of magic serve to demarcate certain practices from other, otherwise similar practices in a given society. According to Bailey: "In many cultures and across various historical periods, categories of magic define and maintain the limits of and culturally acceptable actions in respect to numinous or occult entities or forces. More they serve to delineate arenas of appropriate belief." In this, he noted that "drawing these distinctions is an exercise in power". The scholar of religion Randall Styers noted that attempting to define magic represents "an act of demarcation" by which it is juxtaposed against "other social practices and modes of knowledge" such as "religion" and "science"; the historian Karen Louise Jolly described magic as "a category of exclusion, used to define an unacceptable way of thinking as either the opposite of religion or of science".
Within Western culture, the term "magic" has been linked to ideas of the Other and primitivism. In Styers' words, it has become "a powerful marker of cultural difference", it has been presented as the archetypally non-modern phenomenon. Among Western intellectuals in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, magic was seen as a defining feature of "primitive" mentalities and was attributed to marginal groups and periods; the concept and term "magic" developed in European society and thus using it when discussing non-Western cultures or pre-modern forms of Western society raises problems, as it may impose Western categories that are alien to them. While "magic" remains an emic term in the history of Western societies, it remains an etic term when applied to non-Western societies. During the twentieth century, many scholars focusing on Asian and African societies rejected the term "magic", as well as related concepts like "witchcraft", in favour of the more precise terms and concepts that existed within these specific societie
Phantom Stranger
The Phantom Stranger is a fictional character of unspecified paranormal origins, who battles mysterious and occult forces in various titles published by DC Comics, sometimes under their Vertigo imprint. The Phantom Stranger first appeared in an eponymous six-issue comics anthology published in 1952 and created by John Broome and Carmine Infantino. After an appearance in Showcase #80, he received another series beginning May–June 1969 that lasted until February–March 1976; the Showcase appearance and the first three issues of Phantom Stranger consisted of reprints from both the 1950s title and the "Dr. 13: Ghost-Breaker" feature from the last nine issues of Star Spangled Comics at the same time, with new, brief framing sequences. These had Dr. Thirteen, certain. Beginning with issue #4, the series began featuring all-new material, with stories produced by Robert Kanigher, Len Wein, Jim Aparo, Neal Adams, Tony DeZuniga, others. In these stories, while the Stranger's past remained a mystery, the writers added a semi-regular cast of characters for him.
A demonic sorceress named. The stories hinted at a romantic attraction between the Stranger and Craft, but he left her, deciding she could not be part of his life, convincing her he had been killed in their final battle against the Dark Circle, she learned differently and turned up occasionally. Doctor Thirteen, dropped along with the reprints, was given a back-up series here as of #12 which morphed into "The Spawn of Frankenstein" in #23; the Phantom Stranger is better known for his role as a supernatural assistant to other heroes, such as the Justice League. His status as either a full, reserve, or honorary member of the League is debatable. After a vote of the majority of the team in Justice League of America #103, they offered him membership, with Superman declaring the Stranger "a member" without qualification, though he left before accepting; this issue was part of an unofficial metafictional crossover with Marvel Comics, spanning titles from both of the major comics companies. Beginning in Marvel's Amazing Adventures #16, the story continued in DC's Justice League of America #103, is concluded in Thor #207.
Each comic featured writers Steve Englehart, Gerry Conway, Len Wein, as well as Wein's first wife Glynis, interacting with Marvel or DC characters at the Rutland Halloween Parade in Rutland, Vermont. The Phantom Stranger has at least twice asserted his membership status when other Leaguers challenged his input, during the vote on the League's re-admission of Wonder Woman and during the crossover with The Avengers. In contrast, many in-story accounts of League membership fail to include the Stranger. Writer Len Wein commented on the Phantom Stranger's relationship with the JLA in a 2012 interview stating that the character "only sort of joined, he was offered membership but vanished, as per usual, without accepting the offer. Over the years, other writers have just assumed was a member, but in my world, he never said yes."The Stranger starred in a mini-series in 1987. This series portrayed him as an agent of the Lords of Order, they temporarily stripped the Stranger of his powers, due to his desire to continue a battle against the Lords of Chaos.
This went against the wishes of the Lords of Order, who had believed a victory by darkness over light was necessary and preordained. This series featured Eclipso as an agent of Chaos. However, the Stranger claims; the Lords of Order threaten to strip him of his powers, he leaves, claiming that he shall continue to wander. The Phantom Stranger received a new ongoing series in September 2012 written by Dan DiDio and drawn by Brent Anderson; this series was retitled as Trinity of Sin: The Phantom Stranger as of issue #9 and cancelled as of #22. Unusual for a comic book character of such longevity, nothing in the way of personal data about the Phantom Stranger—his real name, his true nature, or his origins—has been revealed. DC produced a special issue of Secret Origins that postulated four possible origins: The Stranger was a man in Biblical times, spared God's wrath by an angel. Questioning God's actions, he commits suicide; the angel forbids his spirit from entering the afterlife, reanimates his body and condemns him to walk the world forever as part of humanity, but forever separated from it.
He discovers his divine charge: to turn humanity away from evil, one soul at a time. Some versions of this story imply that the angel was the incarnation of The Spectre of that time period. In a variation of the Wandering Jew story, he was a man named Isaac with a wife and a son during the time of Jesus' childhood; when King Herod heard that there was born a child who would be king of the Jews, he orders the Massacre of the Innocents in order to kill the Christ child. Among the people killed were Isaac's wife and son. Blind with anger, he spends the next 30 years raging against Jesus. During the Passion of Christ, Isaac bribes a guard to take his place in the flagellation of Christ. Jesus
DC Universe
The DC Universe is the fictional shared universe where most stories in American comic book titles published by DC Comics take place. DC superheroes such as Superman and Wonder Woman are from this universe, it contains well known supervillains such as Lex Luthor, the Joker and Darkseid. In context, the term "DC Universe" refers to the main DC continuity; the term "DC Multiverse" refers to the collection of all continuities within DC Comics publications. Within the Multiverse, the main DC Universe has gone by many names, but in recent years has been referred to by "Prime Earth" or "Earth 0"; the main DC Universe, as well as the alternate realities related to it, began as the first shared universe in comic books and were adapted to other media such as film serials or radio dramas. In subsequent decades, the continuity between all of these media became complex with certain storylines and events designed to simplify or streamline the more confusing aspects of characters' histories; the fact that DC Comics characters coexisted in the same world was first established in All Star Comics #3 where several superheroes met each other in a group dubbed the Justice Society of America.
Subsequently, the Justice Society was reintroduced as the Justice League of America, founded with Major League Baseball's National League and American League as inspiration for the name. The comic book that introduced the Justice League was titled The Brave and the Bold However, the majority of National/DC's publications continued to be written with little regard of maintaining continuity with each other for the first few decades. Over the course of its publishing history, DC has introduced different versions of its characters, sometimes presenting them as if the earlier version had never existed, among them the Flash, Green Lantern, Hawkman, in the late 1950s, with similar powers but different names and personal histories, they had characters such as Batman whose early adventures set in the 1940s could not be reconciled with stories featuring a still-youthful man in the 1970s. To explain this, they introduced the idea of the Multiverse in Flash #123 where the Silver Age Flash met his Golden Age counterpart.
In addition to allowing the conflicting stories to "co-exist", it allowed the differing versions of characters to meet, team up to combat cross-universe threats. The writers gave designations such as "Earth-One", "Earth-Two", so forth, to certain universes, designations which at times were used by the characters themselves. Earth-One was the primary world of this publication era. Over the years, as the number of titles published increased and the volume of past stories accumulated, it became difficult to maintain internal consistency. In the face of diminishing sales, maintaining the status quo of their most popular characters became attractive. Although retcons were used as a way to explain apparent inconsistencies in stories written, editors at DC came to consider the varied continuity of multiple Earths too difficult to keep track of, feared that it was an obstacle to accessibility for new readers. To address this, they published the cross-universe miniseries Crisis on Infinite Earths in 1985, which merged universes and characters, reducing the Multiverse to a single unnamed universe with a single history.
However, not all the books rebooted post-Crisis. For example, the Legion of Superheroes book acted as if the Pre-Crisis Earth-1 history was still their past, a point driven home in the Cosmic Boy miniseries, it removed the mechanism DC had been using to deal with continuity glitches or storylines that a writer wanted to ignore resulting in a convoluted explanation for characters like Hawkman. The Zero Hour limited series gave them an opportunity to revise timelines and rewrite the DC Universe history; however this failed right out of the gate as the writers had Waverider state all alternate histories had been wiped and yet have the Armageddon 2001 saga in the timeline which required multiple timelines to work. As a result once per decade since the 1980s, the DC Universe experiences a major crisis that allows any number of changes from new versions of characters to appear as a whole reboot of the universe, restarting nominally all the characters into a new and modernized version of their lives.
Meanwhile, DC has published occasional stories called Elseworlds, which presented alternate versions of its characters. One told the story of Bruce Wayne as a Green Lantern. In another tale, Superman: Speeding Bullets, the rocket ship that brought the infant Superman to Earth was discovered by the Wayne family of Gotham City rather than the Kents. In 1999, The Kingdom reintroduced a variant of the old Multiverse concept called Hypertime which allows for alternate versions of characters and worlds again; the entire process was inspired by Alan Moore's meta-comic, Supreme: Story of the Year. The Convergence crossover retconned the events of Crisis after heroes in that series went back in time to prevent the collapse of the Multiverse. However, Brainiac states "Each world has evolved but they all still exist", it has been confirmed that all previous worlds and timelines now exist, that there multiple Multiverses now in existence, such as the Pre-Crisis infinite Multiverse, the collapsed Earth, the Pre-New 52 52 worlds Multiverse.
The Infinite Crisis event remade the DC Universe yet again, with new changes. The limited series 52 established that a new multiverse now existed, with Earth-0 as the primary Earth; the 2011 reboo
Golden Age of Comic Books
The Golden Age of Comic Books describes an era of American comic books from the late 1930s to circa 1950. During this time, modern comic books were first published and increased in popularity; the superhero archetype was created and many well-known characters were introduced, including Superman, Captain Marvel, Captain America, Wonder Woman. The first recorded use of the term "Golden Age" was by Richard A. Lupoff in an article, "Re-Birth", published in issue one of the fanzine Comic Art in April 1960. An event cited by many as marking the beginning of the Golden Age was the 1938 debut of Superman in Action Comics #1, published by Detective Comics. Superman's popularity helped make comic books a major arm of publishing, which led rival companies to create superheroes of their own to emulate Superman's success. Between 1939 and 1941 Detective Comics and its sister company, All-American Publications, introduced popular superheroes such as Batman and Robin, Wonder Woman, the Flash, Green Lantern, Doctor Fate, the Atom, Green Arrow and Aquaman.
Timely Comics, the 1940s predecessor of Marvel Comics, had million-selling titles featuring the Human Torch, the Sub-Mariner, Captain America. Although DC and Timely characters are well-remembered today, circulation figures suggest that the best-selling superhero title of the era was Fawcett Comics' Captain Marvel with sales of about 1.4 million copies per issue. The comic was published biweekly at one point to capitalize on its popularity. Patriotic heroes donning red and blue were popular during the time of the second World War following The Shield's debut in 1940. Many heroes of this time period battled the Axis powers, with covers such as Captain America Comics #1 showing the title character punching Nazi leader Adolf Hitler; as comic books grew in popularity, publishers began launching titles that expanded into a variety of genres. Dell Comics' non-superhero characters outsold the superhero comics of the day; the publisher featured licensed movie and literary characters such as Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Roy Rogers and Tarzan.
It was during this era. Additionally, MLJ's introduction of Archie Andrews in Pep Comics #22 gave rise to teen humor comics, with the Archie Andrews character remaining in print well into the 21st century. At the same time in Canada, American comic books were prohibited importation under the War Exchange Conservation Act which restricted the importation of non-essential goods; as a result, a domestic publishing industry flourished during the duration of the war which were collectively informally called the Canadian Whites. The educational comic book Dagwood Splits. According to historian Michael A. Amundson, appealing comic-book characters helped ease young readers' fear of nuclear war and neutralize anxiety about the questions posed by atomic power, it was during this period that long-running humor comics debuted, including EC's Mad and Carl Barks' Uncle Scrooge in Dell's Four Color Comics. In 1953, the comic book industry hit a setback when the United States Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency was created in order to investigate the problem of juvenile delinquency.
After the publication of Fredric Wertham's Seduction of the Innocent the following year that claimed comics sparked illegal behavior among minors, comic book publishers such as EC's William Gaines were subpoenaed to testify in public hearings. As a result, the Comics Code Authority was created by the Association of Comics Magazine Publishers to enact self-censorship by comic book publishers. At this time, EC canceled its crime and horror titles and focused on Mad. During the late 1940s, the popularity of superhero comics waned. To retain reader interest, comic publishers diversified into other genres, such as war, science fiction, romance and horror. Many superhero titles were converted to other genres. In 1946, DC Comics' Superboy and Green Arrow were switched from More Fun Comics into Adventure Comics so More Fun could focus on humor. In 1948 All-American Comics, featuring Green Lantern, Johnny Thunder and Dr. Mid-Nite, was replaced with All-American Western; the following year, Flash Comics and Green Lantern were cancelled.
In 1951 All Star Comics, featuring the Justice Society of America, became All-Star Western. The next year Star Spangled Comics, featuring Robin, was retitled Star Spangled War Stories. Sensation Comics, featuring Wonder Woman, was cancelled in 1953; the only DC superhero comics to continue publishing through the 1950s were Action Comics, Adventure Comics, Detective Comics, Superboy, Wonder Woman and World's Finest Comics. Plastic Man appeared in Quality Comics' Police Comics until 1950, when its focus switched to detective stories but his solo title continued bimonthly until issue 64, cover dated November 1956. Timely Comics' The Human Torch was canceled with issue #35 and Marvel Mystery Comics, featuring the Human Torch, with issue #93 became the horror comic Marvel Tales. Sub-Mariner Comics was cancelled with issue #42 and Captain America Comics, by Captain America's Weird Tales, with #75. Harvey Comics' Black Cat was cancelled in 1951 and rebooted as a horror comic that year—the title would change to Black Cat Mystery, Black Cat Mystic, Black Cat Western for the final two issues, which included Black Cat stories.
Lev Gleason Publications' Daredevil was edged out of his title by the Little Wise Guys in 1950. Fawcett Comics' Whiz Comics, Master Comics and Captain Marvel Adventure
Paracelsus
Paracelsus, born Theophrastus von Hohenheim, was a Swiss physician and astrologer of the German Renaissance. He was a pioneer in several aspects of the "medical revolution" of the Renaissance, emphasizing the value of observation in combination with received wisdom, he is credited as the "father of toxicology". He had a substantial impact as a prophet or diviner, his "Prognostications" being studied by Rosicrucians in the 1700s. Paracelsianism is the early modern medical movement inspired by the study of his works. Paracelsus was born in Egg, a village close to the Etzel Pass in Schwyz, he was born in a house right next to a bridge across the Sihl river. The historical house, dated to the 14th century, was destroyed in 1814; the Restaurant Krone now stands in its place. His father Wilhelm was a chemist and physician, an illegitimate descendant of the Swabian noble family Bombast von Hohenheim, it has been suggested that Paracelsus's descent from the Bombast of Hohenheim family was his own invention, that his father was in fact called Höhener and was a native of Gais in Appenzell, but it is plausible that Wilhelm was the illegitimate son of Georg Bombast von Hohenheim, commander of the Order of Saint John in Rohrdorf.
Paracelsus's mother was a native of the Einsiedeln region and a bondswoman of Einsiedeln Abbey, who before her marriage worked as superintendent in the abbey's hospital. Paracelsus in his writings made references to his rustic origins and used Eremita as part of his name. Paracelsus' mother died in 1502, after which Paracelsus's father moved to Villach, where he worked as a physician, attending to the medical needs of the pilgrims and inhabitants of the cloister. Paracelsus was educated by his father in botany, mineralogy and natural philosophy, he received a profound humanistic and theological education from local clerics and the convent school of St. Paul's Abbey in the Lavanttal, he accounts for being tutored by Johannes Trithemius, abbot of Sponheim. At the age of 16 he started studying medicine at the University of Basel moving to Vienna, he gained his doctorate degree from the University of Ferrara in 1515 or 1516. Between 1517 and 1524, he worked as a military surgeon, in Venetian service in 1522.
In this capacity he travelled across Europe, as far as Constantinople. He settled in Salzburg in 1524 but had to leave in the following year due to his support of the German Peasants' War. In 1525, he was active at the University of Freiburg. In 1526, he bought the rights of citizenship in Strasbourg to establish his own practice, but soon after he was called to Basel to the sickbed of printer Johann Frobenius curing him. During that time, the Dutch Renaissance humanist Erasmus von Rotterdam at the University of Basel, witnessed the medical skills of Paracelsus, the two scholars initiated a letter dialogue on medical and theological subjects. In 1527, Paracelsus was a licensed physician in Basel with the privilege of lecturing at the University of Basel. Basel at the time was a center of Renaissance humanism, Paracelsus here came into contact with Erasmus of Rotterdam, Wolfgang Lachner, Johannes Oekolampad. Paracelsus's lectures at Basel university unusually were held in German, not Latin, he stated.
He published harsh criticism of the Basel physicians and apothecaries, creating political turmoil to the point of his life being threatened. In a display of his contempt for conventional medicine, Paracelsus publicly burned editions of the works of Galen and Avicenna, he was prone to many outbursts of abusive language, abhorred untested theory, ridiculed anybody who placed more importance on titles than practice. During his time as a professor at the University of Basel, he invited barber-surgeons, alchemists and others lacking academic background to serve as examples of his belief that only those who practiced an art knew it:'The patients are your textbook, the sickbed is your study.' Paracelsus was compared with Martin Luther because of his defiant acts against the existing authorities in medicine. Paracelsus rejected that comparison. Famously Paracelsus said, "I leave it to Luther to defend what he says and I will be responsible for what I say; that which you wish to Luther, you wish to me: You wish us both in the fire."
Being threatened with an unwinnable lawsuit, he left Basel for Alsace in February 1528. In Alsace, Paracelsus took up the life of an itinerant physician once again. After staying in Colmar with Lorenz Fries, in Esslingen, he moved to Nuremberg in 1529, his reputation went before him, the medical professionals excluded him from practicing. The name Paracelsus is first attested in this year, used as a pseudonym for the publication of a Practica of political-astrological character in Nuremberg. Pagel supposes that the name was intended for use as the author of non-medical works, while his real name Theophrastus von Hohenheim was used for medical publications; the first use of Doctor Paracelsus in a medical publication was in 1536, as the author of the Grosse Wundartznei. The name is interpreted as either a latinization of Hohenheim or as the claim of "surpassing Celsus", it has been argued that the name was not the invention of Paracelsus himself, who would have been opposed to the humanistic fashion of Latinized names, but w
Quality Comics
Quality Comics was an American comic book publishing company which operated from 1937 to 1956 and was a creative, influential force in what historians and fans call the Golden Age of Comic Books. Notable, long-running titles published by Quality include Blackhawk, Feature Comics, G. I. Combat, Heart Throbs, Military Comics, Modern Comics, Plastic Man, Police Comics, Smash Comics, The Spirit. While most of their titles were published by a company named Comic Magazines, from 1940 onwards all publications bore a logo that included the word "Quality". Notable creators associated with the company included Jack Cole, Reed Crandall, Will Eisner, Lou Fine, Gill Fox, Paul Gustavson, Bob Powell, Wally Wood. Quality Comics was founded by Everett M. "Busy" Arnold, a printer who saw the rising popularity of the comic book medium in the late 1930s. Deducing that Depression-era audiences wanted established quality and familiar comic strips for their hard-earned dimes, in 1937 the enterprising Arnold, formed the suitably titled Comic Favorites, Inc..
Comic Favorites, Inc.'s first publication was Feature Funnies, which began with color reprints of hit strips from all three co-owning syndicates alongside a small number of original features. The original material came from various sources, including the company's in-house staff and/or freelancers and the Eisner & Iger shop. A frequent point of confusion is whether and how comic packaging shop Harry "A" Chesler was involved with the company's early days. Several sources list Chesler as the publisher of Feature Funnies, but the only primary source to mention Chesler is an interview with Arnold in which he describes purchasing content from the shop for Military Comics and Police Comics, neither of which began until 1941. An interview with Will Eisner quoted in The Quality Companion indicates that Arnold was not always an owner of Comic Favorites, Inc. but the authors of that reference were unable to find any corroborating evidence amidst a large volume of evidence to the contrary. In 1939, Arnold and the owners of the Register & Tribune Syndicate's parent company, brothers John Cowles, Sr. and Gardner Cowles, Jr. bought out the McNaught and Markey interests.
Arnold became 50% owner of the newly formed Comic Magazines, Inc. the corporate entity that would publish the Quality Comics line. That year Quality released Smash Comics #1, the company's first comic book with new material. Buying features from Eisner & Iger, a prominent "packager" that produced comics on demand for publishers entering the new medium, Quality introduced such superheroes as Plastic Man and Kid Eternity, non-superhero characters including the aviator hero Blackhawk. Quality published comic-book reprints of Will Eisner's "The Spirit", the seven-page lead feature in a weekly 16-page, tabloid-sized, newsprint comic book, known colloquially as "The Spirit Section", distributed through Sunday newspapers; the name Quality Comics debuted on the cover of Crack Comics #5. "Seemingly never an official publishing title," the Connecticut Historical Society noted, "the Quality Comics Group is a trademarked name encompassing Comic Favorites Inc. E. M. Arnold Publications, Smash Comics, any other imprints owned by Arnold".
A 1954 federal document noted that the Quality Romance Group, owned by Everett M. and Claire C. Arnold, with an office at 347 Madison Avenue, in New York City, published two titles as Arnold Publications, Inc. two titles as Comic Favorites, Inc. and 14 titles as Comic Magazines, Inc. By the mid-1950s, with television and paperback books drawing readers away from comic books in general and superheroes in particular, interest in Quality's characters had declined considerably. After a foray into other genres such as war, humor and horror, the company ceased operations with comics cover-dated December 1956. Many of Quality's character and title trademarks were sold to National Periodical Publications, which chose to keep only four series running: Blackhawk, G. I. Combat, Heart Throbs and Robin Hood Tales. There has been much confusion over whether the original Quality Comics and/or the characters they published are in public domain; the original copyrights for Quality's publications have never been renewed by either Arnold or DC, leaving those original stories in the public domain.
However, the trademarks to the characters, to the titles of the various comic book series, were sold to DC, which has periodically published stories with them in order to keep their claims alive. Over the decades, DC revived other Quality characters. Plastic Man has starred in several short-lived series starting in 1966, as well as a Saturday morning cartoon from 1979–1981, he went on to become a member of the Justice League in the 1990s. According to DC canon, the Quality characters, before the DC revamping event called Crisis on Infinite Earths, existed on two separate realities in the DC Multiverse: Earth-Quality and Earth-X. While Earth-Quality followed much the same history as the main Earths, Earth-X was radically different from most Earths, in that World War II continued there until 1973, enabling the Freedom Fighters to continue their fight against the Nazis. Crisis on Infinite Earths #11 established a new "Post-Crisis" continuity in which the Quality and other DC characters have instead always lived on the single, unified DC Ea
