A managed fiction franchise preserves an identifiable character or series while distributing production across changing contributors. Continuity of the public identity does not require continuity of individual manuscript authorship.
The stable identity and the changing organization
The original Executioner publication history and its Gold Eagle continuation distinguish character creation, later editorial involvement and new manuscript production. Pendleton’s 1980 franchise agreement and subsequent consulting role mark an organizational change without the disappearance of Mack Bolan as the recurring identity.
The significance of the transition is therefore not simply that more books followed. The relation between the name associated with the character and the work of producing each installment changed.
Several things can remain recognizable
A franchise can preserve a character name, a series label, recurring attributes and links to associated series. Able Team, Phoenix Force, Stonyman and Super Bolan extended the documented Executioner franchise into additional series identities.
These continuities need separate descriptions. A shared fictional setting does not establish the same protagonist. A continuing creator credit does not establish the same manuscript author. A stable series label does not establish unchanged tone or politics.
Production rules and character continuity
The Nick Carter example supplies a comparison from another production arrangement: recurring weapons were prescribed while writers supplied plots. It demonstrates one way to define a stable subset of attributes without standardizing every feature of the prose.
That comparison does not establish that Bolan used the same rules. Its function is to show what a continuity requirement can preserve and what it leaves open.
What the transition establishes
The documented Bolan transition establishes persistence of a franchise identity across a change in production responsibility. It does not establish that every literary property remained unchanged.
Whether a particular value, characterization or political theme persisted requires comparison of identified texts. Continued publication alone cannot answer those questions.
The distinction is between maintaining an identity and reproducing every property of its earlier instances. A managed franchise can accomplish the first through coordinated production while leaving substantial variation in the second.