leveret1 wrote:
Perseus wrote:
 I wonder why WB or someone hasn't reprinted all the old Looney Tunes strips? Maybe they dont own them? Not sure.
Even though DC is owned by TW, they would still have to pursue the license.  There's a ton of Looney Tunes stuff from Dell that would be great collected, but I doubt that it'll happen unless some other publisher licenses it. 
I wouldn't be so sure of that. Dell never owned the license in the first place. Western Printing and Lithographing (the Little Golden Books people) owned the licenses. They also did the actual packaging of the comic books. Dell was simply the publisher they let release the books (until they took the publishing end in house with Gold Key Comics).

In any event, licensing agreements generally stipulated that the copyright on the material (and hence, reprint rights) would remain with the original owner of the property. It's why Disney has always retained the rights to their comic book material. In this case the rights would have been retained by Leon Schlesinger and then Warner Brothers when they bought Schlesinger out. So the rights remain with Warner Brothers and hence, would present no problem for Warner-owned DC.

In fact, DC already DID publish a collection of vintage Looney Tune reprints in 1998 - Bugs Bunny & Friends: A Comic Celebration.



It contained reprints of the only Carl Barks' Porky Pig story, the first meeting of Mary Jane and Sniffles, and material from the Dell, Gold Key, and even DC eras of Looney Tunes comics.

A second volume - or better still, an ALL-Mary Jane & Sniffles volume is way overdue!