DC Comics has announced the July revival of National Comics as a new ongoing series of one-shots that will put the focus on interesting characters from the margins of the “New 52.”  The July issue of National Comics will feature a variation on the Quality Comics character originally known as “Kid Eternity” written by Eisner-nominated writer Jeff Lemire (Essex County) with art by Cully Hamner (Red). Other non-mainstream “New 52” characters whose stories will be told in the pages of National Comics include Madame X, Rose and Thorn, and Looker (from The Outsiders).
 
According to Wired’s Geek Dad, Lemire’s Eternity is not the teenage Kid Eternity who was mistakenly killed in a U-Boat attack and then given his original 75-year lifespan back, he is police coroner Christopher Freeman, who after being given a second chance at life, finds he has the ability to resurrect the dead, which he uses to revivify murder victims, who can then bring justice to their killers.
 
“National Comics” was one of DC’s monikers before it became DC (after Detective Comics its lead publication), but it was also the title of an anthology comic published by Quality Comics in the 1940s that featured among other characters Will Eisner’s Uncle Sam.  Quality, which published comics from 1939 until it was sold to DC in 1956, featured lots of great Golden Age creators like Eisner, Lou Fine, Jack Cole, Bill Fox, Bob Powell, and Wally Wood. Blackhawk, Plastic Man, G.I. Combat, and The Spirit were just a few of the long-running Quality titles.  A number of these Quality characters including Uncle Sam ( a major presence on Earth 2) and Quicksilver (who became Max Mercury), have been absorbed into the DC Universe.  National Comics #18, which came out a month before Pearl Harbor in November of 1941, featured a lead story in which the Nazis pulled a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor.