after quality comics went out of business in 1956, dc acquired their superhero characters. doll man and several other former quality properties were re-launched in "justice league of america" #107 (october 1973) as the freedom fighters. as was done with many other characters dc had acquired from other publishers or that were holdovers from golden age titles, the freedom fighters were located on a parallel world, one called earth-x where nazi germany had won world war ii. the team were featured in their own series for fifteen issues (1976–1978), in which the team temporarily leaves earth-x for "earth-1" (where most dc titles were set). doll man was an occasional guest star in "all-star squadron", a superhero team title that was set on "earth-2", the locale for dc's wwii-era superheroes, at a time prior to when he and the other freedom fighters are supposed to have left for earth-x. doll man then appeared with the rest of dc's entire cast of superheroes in "crisis on infinite earths", a story that was intended to eliminate the similarly confusing histories that dc had attached to its characters by retroactively merging the various parallel worlds into one. this erased doll man's earth-x days, and merged the character's "all-star squadron" and "freedom fighter" histories so that he is primarily a member of the squadron, of which the freedom fighters are merely a splinter group.