tonyrivers wrote:
Incidentally Superman should not count since he was first created as a comic strip character and then Shuster had to take the comic strip panels and recut them to fit into comic book form. And after he did come out in comic books, he was picked up as a comic strip.

Also Zorro was published successfully in Dell 4-color Comics and then when Disney made the Guy Williams TV series, Dell continued with a rather successful comic book series with photo covers.


Since DC Comics owns Superman, not the McClure Syndicate (which put out the comic strip), in this case "created for" extends to intent prior to debut, not intent a few weeks ahead of time. The McClure Syndicate strip came out due to the success of the comic book, not vice versa. I will treat those two bamboozled youngsters refitting their work as a comic book as part of the creation process. It served as the registering/trademarking/copyrighting of the intellectual property. (If anyone brings up, for example, Star Wars and other films whose novelizations or comic book adaptations came out ahead of the actual film, well, that just plays into routine marketing; a book store or comic book store has more room on its shelves than a theater has number of screens.)

Those Zorro series you mentioned lasted hardly a dozen or so issues, if that.