Parent company DC Comics Founded 1991 Country of origin United States | Status defunct (1993) Successor DC's Red Circle line Publication types Comics | |
Impact Comics was an imprint of DC Comics that was aimed at younger audiences. It began in 1991 and ended in 1993. (The initial "I" in the logo looked like an exclamation point, but the name of the imprint was not !mpact.)
Impact's titles featured the adventures of revamped versions of superheroes licensed from Archie Comics including the Fly, the Comet, the Shield, the Jaguar, the Web, and the Black Hood. Changes included making the new Jaguar a woman and making the Web an organization instead of a solo hero. This was the third attempt to revive the old Archie heroes, after the Mighty Comics line of the 1960s and the Red Circle line of comics in the early 1980s.
In an effort to reach out to kids who were not aware of the direct market system, DC Comics attempted to sell Impact Comics titles through newsstands, however that never happened. The imprint eventually collapsed due to poor sales. A final series The Crucible was initially intended to relaunch the line, but instead served as its finale. Archie Comics relicensed their superheroes to DC in 2008 before re-launching them as part of its own digital Red Circle/Dark Circle imprint in 2012.