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Mighty Crusaders

The Mighty Crusaders is a fictional superhero team published by Archie Comics. The team originally appeared in Fly-Man No. 31, #32 and No. 33 before being launched in its own title, The Mighty Crusaders. Written by Superman co-creator Jerry Siegel, the series lasted seven issues before being cancelled. The team was revived under Archie's Red Circle Comics line in 1983. In 1992 DC Comics licensed the characters and relaunched the team as The Crusaders, aiming the comic at younger readers as part of its !mpact line. This series lasted eight issues, cover-dated May to December 1992.

The popularity of DC's and Marvel's Silver Age superhero titles led Archie Comics to revive their own line of superhero comics. The Archie Adventure line began with titles centered on the Fly, the Jaguar, and a superheroic/spy version of the 1930s pulp character The Shadow. After suggestions and fan-art began suggesting a team made up of the characters published by Archie Comics precursor MLJ in the 1940s, Archie's superhero imprint, soon retitled Mighty Comics, re-introduced many of these characters, and brought them together in several issues of Fly-Man.

This team, which followed the success of the Avengers and the Justice League of America, was made up of the Shield, the Fly (re-dubbed Fly-Man), the Black Hood, and the Comet. Calling themselves the Mighty Crusaders, they initially came together as part of a plan by the Fly's nemesis the Spider to trap the hero. After appearing as a team for two more issues of Fly-Man, and gaining Flygirl as a member in the process, they spun off into their own series, The Mighty Crusaders, which ran bimonthly for seven issues. The Archie series mixed typical superhero fare with high camp. Don Markstein writes that they touched on "all the genre's cliches of the time", with Siegel's writing on the book being a "hokey rendition of Stan Lee".

In 1983 the team and the series were relaunched, with Rich Buckler as writer and penciller on the first issue. A contractual dispute between Buckler and DC Comics saw the publication of the first issue delayed. Buckler recruited Cary Burkett to write several issues of the Mighty Crusaders title. The series ran until the middle of 1985, being cancelled with issue #13 (September 1985).

In 1992 DC Comics acquired a license to publish the characters, and launched a team book as part of the line. This series, titled only The Crusaders, launched in early 1992. The first issue saw scriptwriting by Mark Waid and Brian Augustyn. The series and the line itself, Impact Comics, were aimed at younger readers. DC Comics attempted to sell Impact Comics titles through newsstands in an attempt to expand the potential market. However, due to internal conflicts, this distribution never happened and the imprint eventually collapsed due to poor sales. The last issue of the DC series was issue #8 (December 1992).

The team also served as a partial inspiration for Alan Moore's series Watchmen. Moore had initially imagined the story as being based around second-string heroes: "I wanted more average super-heroes, like the Mighty Crusaders line ... [the] original idea had started off with the dead body of the Shield being pulled out of a river somewhere." Moore used this idea when asked to submit a pitch for a treatment of DC Comics' then-newly acquired Charlton Comics properties. Although the treatment was rejected for those characters, DC Comics commissioned Moore to base the story on all-new heroes, and the project became Watchmen. Moore later used the Crusaders as inspiration for the Minutemen, the Golden Age predecessors of the Watchmen main characters.

The first Mighty Crusaders group was created by Archie under their Mighty Comics line in the 1960s. At that time, the members of the team consisted of:

The second Mighty Crusaders group was created by Archie Comics under their Red Circle Comics line of the 1980s. At this time, members of the team consisted of:

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