Slashdot Mirror

tverbeek writes "After more than half a century of stifling the comic book industry, the Comics Code Authority is effectively dead. Created in response to Fredric Wertham's Seduction of the Innocent, one of the early think-of-the-children censorship campaigns, and Congressional hearings, the Code laid out a checklist of requirements and restrictions for comics to be distributed to newsstand vendors, effectively ensuring that in North America, only simplistic stories for children would be told using the medium of sequential art. It gradually lost many of its teeth, and an increasing number of publishers gave up on newsstand distribution and ignored the Code, but at the turn of the century the US's largest comics publishers still participated. Marvel quit it in 2001, in favor of self-applied ratings styled after the MPAA's and ESRB's. Last year Bongo (publishers of the Simpsons comics) quietly dropped out. Now DC and Archie, the last publishers willingly subjecting their books to approval, have announced that they're discontinuing their use of the CCA, with DC following Marvel's example, and Archie (which recently introduced an openly gay supporting character, something flatly forbidden by the original Code) carrying on under their own standards. The Code's cousins — the MPAA and ESRB ratings, the RIAA parental advisory, and the mishmash of warnings on TV shows — still live on, but at least North American comic publishers are no longer subject to external censorship."

theodp writes "MAD Magazine is about to put out its 500th issue, but starting with its April publication, the mag is cutting down to only four issues per year. The feedback we've gotten from readers,' quipped Editor John Ficarra, 'is that only every third issue of MAD is funny, so we've decided to just publish those.' MAD Kids and MAD Classics are ceasing publication entirely. Keep up the what-me-worry game face, Alfred!"

The Canadian superhero Captain Copyright has finally expired, not due to pirates or to the passage of 50 years after the death of the author, but because "the current climate around copyright issues will not allow a project like this one to be successful." The cartoon was intended to provide an education in copyright law for children, but it became a focus for criticism when even the Canadian Library Association condemned it for lacking balance because it ignored issues like Fair Dealing (Canada's version of Fair Use). Personally, I was hoping we'd see them get sued by DC & Marvel, who claim to own the trademark on the word "superhero", and vanish in a puff of logic.

An anonymous reader writes "GeekPunk is announcing that their flagship comic book title featuring superheroes patronizing their favorite bar & grill during their off-hours will now be entitled Hero Happy Hour beginning with the fifth issue of the ongoing series. According to creator Dan Taylor, "The decision to change the title was brought upon by the fact that we received a letter from the trademark counsel to 'the two big comic book companies' claiming that they are the joint owners of the trademark 'SUPER HEROES' and variations thereof." " Read the recent boingboing post for more background as well.

SerpicoWasTaken writes "Here is an interesting article about a group of comic book heroes from the golden age that are in the public domain. Apparently, a bunch of golden age heroes were never copyrighted and just faded into obscurity. The article also contains a long discussion of copyright and the public domain. It is an interesting read for all those interested in the public domain." Update: 09/25 17:51 GMT by M : Link removed at the request of the site maintainers because it's killing their server. Update: 09/25 19:02 GMT by M : They've put the document on a static page instead of a cgi script. :)