The Spirit and Doc Savage, amongst others, are now up for grabs.

http://comicsbeat.com/no-more-spirit-or-pulp-heroes-at-dc/

I get the feeling that Dynamite will come calling very, very soon for these.

 

In the absence of Kitchen Sink, I hope Fantagraphics picks up The Spirit. They don't need to (and shouldn't, imo) create any new stories, but they'd be a great publisher to keep the original series in print, which is the most important thing.

The rest of the characters, yeah, who cares. DC wasn't the right place for them. I guess Dynamite is the most realistic choice, but it all depends who they get to write and draw. If they can get a name creator, like Ennis on the opening Shadow arc, maybe they can do something positive. But they also publish an awful lot of crap based on Golden Age and Pulp characters. They hire Alex Ross to do covers with insides by bland jobbers. But at least they are more likely to take chances than DC was.

 

Actually Alex Ross is painting a new Series- cover and insides- called Masks which is all the Dynamite pulp heroes team up.

 

Yeah, Masks is great (issue 2 is out tomorrow!). It's based on a series of Spider novels in which a fascist party comes to power in New York City. If Dynamite hurries on getting the rights, maybe Doc Savage could make his introduction in it.

 

I'm a big Spider fan from way back, and I like the Shadow okay. I've even enjoyed the Dynamite series for either, for what they are... although the Spider reimagining is a little iffy, to be honest. But I have no desire to see the characters team up or even exist in the same universe.

 

http://comicsbeat.com/dc-does-retain-rights-to-the-spirit-archives/ says the rights to the reprints are still over at DC. If they get volumes back into print this is a good thing since I can't find an affordable copy of Vol 14.