Curiously Familiar #8: Doctor Occult and Doctor Mystic

We turn once again to "Curiously Familiar," a series of posts where I've been examining various comic book characters who were published by at least two different companies, but wore a different name at each one. This is not the same as characters who were created in homage - in this instances, the two characters were actually intended to be the same entities. Step aboard!

Doctor Occult, the Ghost Detective, faced down weird supernatural threats, but was certainly capable of rising to the challenge due to his own vast array of supernatural abilities, including astral projection.

Doctor Mystic, the Occult Detective, faced down weird supernatural threats, but was certainly capable of rising to the challenge due to his own vast array of supernatural abilities, including astral projection.

The Story Behind the Story: Doctor Occult was a very early series conceived of by Jerry Siegel & Joe Shuster, one of the many rejected comic strip proposals they were able to retrofit into a recurring DC Comics feature beginning in 1936. However, for some reason, early in the character's publishing history one of their stories wound up at Centaur, along with various other (retitled) DC strips. This proved to be an anomaly as the rest of Doctor Occult continued to appear with DC.

Considering the troubles Siegel & Shuster's families have had with the Superman rights, I wonder where Doctor Occult fits into everything? Did they also trade him for pennies? The existence of the Doctor Mystic episode certainly points to Doctor Occult being a work-for-hire series. At the very least, one assumes the estates could publish their own Doctor Mystic comics and DC wouldn't be able to stop them. Boy, that would get their goat, stealing away both of Doctor Occult's fans!