Comic Books (1983: Doomsday)

**Comic books** are books or magazines of sequential art, usually accompanied by text in the form of narration or speech bubbles. Comics as a form of entertainment have experienced a huge boom in popularity after Doomsday due to the destruction of most major film and television production.

## Effects of Doomsday on Comics

In the first years after Doomsday, entertainment took the backseat to survival, but as things began to settle in various areas, the need for escape became apparent. With Hollywood and New York gone, American film and television production was eliminated. The printed word became the norm for entertainment in most of the doomsday affected world, but for some, it wasn't enough. Old copies of comics as well as smaller self-published books began circulating and gaining popularity due to the more visual focus of the media. With the establishment of larger publishers and access to a wider audience comics managed to establish themselves as a major player in the entertainment market.

Copyright laws were a major question post-doomsday with most survivor communities ignoring copyright altogether. The Commonwealth of Australia and New Zealand being the sanctuary to the US government became the last holdout of American copyright law, and due to the destruction of many intellectual property holders, held "fire-sale" auctions of many intellectual properties. Other nations such as Victoria, simply deemed all intellectual property created prior to Doomsday to be in the public domain.

As of 2010, Anglophone comics predominate the industry internationally. The closest post-Doomsday competition, Russo-pop (Socialist Siberia), Manhwa (Korea), and Manga (Japan), are more domestic in scale.

## List of Comic Book Publishers

* American Comics - Currently the world's largest comics publisher. Owns the copyrights to most of the old Marvel and DC properties in the ANZC territories, and attempts to enforce them in other territories.
* Omega Level Comics - Subsidiary of Omega Level Entertainment. The major comics publisher of Victoria. Has a joint publication deal with American Comics that has Omega Level publish AC titles in Victoria, and AC publishes Omega Level titles in the ANZC. Recently expanded into the North American Union, Canada, Astoria, and Oregon, where titles are proving popular.
* Virginian Comics - The major comics publisher of Virginia. Currently the most popular (and only) comics publisher in the former southeastern states of the United States.
* Black Shuck Comics - Named after a giant hound said to haunt the coast of the English counties of Suffolk and Norfolk, this small comics publisher from Woodbridge prints a number of comics based on ghosts, vampires, werewolves, and other such creatures.
* Peace World - A comic book in in which the USSR balkanized in 1980, and there is no Doomsday. It tells stories about the world without Doomsday, like the communist regime in China falling in 1990.
* Marvelo Comics - Bilingual comics publisher in Mexico. Now owns the copyrights to most of the Marvel properties in Mexico.
* New Britain Comics - A comic publisher in New Britain. It has the rights to a few DC comics, but mostly makes it's own.
* Fuji Dawn - A manga publisher in Kobe, Japan. Has the rights to Tatsunoko and Sunrise properties.