Harvey Comics was founded by the Harvey brothers Alfred, Leon and Robert in the 1940s with the acquisition of Brookwood Publications' faltering title
Speed Comics. Their early headliners were
Shock Gibson and
Captain Freedom, a patriotic hero similar to The Shield. Harvey added more anthologies, including Champion Comics and Pocket Comics. Only one of their early titles find longevity:
The Black Cat, a Hollywood starlet-superhero, which was published into the 1950s. Harvey began a shift to licensed characters in 1942 when it took over the license to the radio hit
Green Hornet from Holyoke, which has published six comics issues. Harvey added additional titles, most licensed, including
Joe Palooka,
Blondie,
Dick Tracy, and other newspaper strip characters. These include
Little Audrey,
Casper the Friendly Ghost,
Baby Huey, and
Herman and Katnip. Harvey purchased the cartoon properties of Famous Studios (October 1950–December 1959), including character rights and rights to the cartoon shorts but excluding the
Popeye cartoons. The Famous cartoons were repackaged and distributed to
television as
Harveytoons, and Harvey continued production on new comics and a handful of new cartoons produced for television.
Casper the Friendly Ghost, who had been Famous' most popular original character, now became Harvey's top draw. Associated characters such as
Spooky the Tuff Little Ghost, The
Ghostly Trio, Casper's horse Nightmare,
Hot Stuff the Little Devil, and
Wendy the Good Little Witch were added to the Harvey line. In 1963, when Paramount entered into a $78,000 agreement with Harvey to produce
The New Casper Cartoon Show, they also sold their pre-April 1962 library of cartoons to Harvey for $1. Harvey also licensed popular characters from newspaper
comic strips, such as
Mutt and Jeff and
Sad Sack. In addition, Harvey developed such original properties as
Richie Rich,
Little Dot In summer 1984,
Steve Geppi (owner of
Diamond Comic Distributors and
Geppi's Comic World) paid $50,000 for, among other properties, Harvey's entire archive of original art from the Harvey comic
Sad Sack. Geppi made this agreement with
Steve Harvey, who at the time was president of Harvey Publications Inc., as well as president of Sad Sack Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Harvey Publications, Inc. In 1985 the Marvel imprint
Star Comics published a title called
Royal Roy. Harvey sued Star for copyright infringement, claiming that Roy was a blatant copy of
Richie Rich. Veteran Harvey writer-artist Lennie Herman had created
Royal Roy for Star Comics. Herman died in 1983 before the first issue of
Royal Roy was published. The
Royal Roy comic ended after six issues and the lawsuit was dropped. under the leadership of Alan Harvey (Alfred's oldest son), focusing on a few core titles,
digests, and reprints. In 1987, Harvey sued
Columbia Pictures, for $50 million, claiming that the ghost in the logo of the film
Ghostbusters was too reminiscent of
Fatso from the Casper series. The court ruled in Columbia's favor, due to Harvey's failure to renew the copyrights on early Casper stories and the "limited ways to draw a figure of a cartoon ghost".
Later history In 1989, Harvey Comics was sold to Jeffrey Montgomery's HMH Communications and was renamed as
Harvey Comics Entertainment, later named The Harvey Entertainment Company. located in
Santa Monica, California. Under the new ownership, the company emphasized on re-syndicating their properties for both television and in press. Following the initial wave of syndicating the Harvey catalogue, Harvey began producing their own original programs including
The Baby Huey Show and
Richie Rich, as well as producing feature-length films under an agreement with
Universal Pictures, including
Richie Rich and
Casper, later outsourcing the production of
direct-to-video material for both franchises over to
Saban Entertainment. Montgomery was ousted from the company in March 1998, and following various acquisitions and expansions to add content outside of the Harvey Classics including the purchase of
PM Entertainment, Harvey was close to going into liquidation. In February 2001, The Harvey Entertainment Company announced that it would sell the entire Harvey catalogue over to
Classic Media, a deal of which would close by June 2001. The rights to
Sad Sack,
Black Cat, and certain other Harvey characters are still owned by Alan Harvey, and have been published under the names of
Lorne-Harvey Publications and
Re-Collections. In late 2000, Alan Harvey sued Steve Geppi over his 1984 acquisition of the
Sad Sack original art, charging that Geppi had plundered Harvey's warehouses. Geppi countersued, claiming that he had legal title to the original art. == Distribution of cartoons ==