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Public Domain Superheroes?

Posted by michael on from the stretch-dude-and-clobber-girl dept.

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. :)

3 of 237 comments (clear)

  1. Re:This raises an interesting question.. by Kierthos · · Score: 3, Interesting

    You do realize that for many years, the Batman comic was incredibly campy as well, right? I mean, Batman, for quite some time, time-traveled quite extensively, fought villians in lairs that were filled with giant props ("Holy giant typewriter, Batman!"), etc.

    It was really only after years of that crap that he became serious again (in the early issues of Detective Comics, Batman was incredibly serious, and casually killed criminals).

    But it was during the campy years in the comics that the Adam West TV series was done.

    Kierthos

    --
    Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
  2. Captain Good vs. Doctor Evil by John+Biggabooty · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Did you ever notice how many heros are called "captain," and how many villains are called "doctor?" What does that say about our ideals? Why do we value brawn over brain so much? Is stupid but strong the ideal we strive for? Is there something wrong with being smart? Why not Doctor Good and Captain Evil? Is the military all good and science all evil?

    --
    That's Bigboo TAY! TAY!
  3. How long... by Nomad7674 · · Score: 3, Interesting
    The heroes are slated to get a return engagement in 2003 when Peter Hogan pens a Terra Obscura miniseries for ABC [with art by Yanique Paquette and Karl Story], utilizing the same characters on the same world. Ideally, interest will be high enough, according to Hogan, in the miniseries that ABC will launch the heroes of Terra Obscura in their own ongoing monthly
    So how long until ABC sues someone who uses these "public domain" superheroes in their own work, for violation of copyright, trademark, or something else? I don't imagine it will take some lawyer long to try and argue that once the characters have appeared in an ABC miniseries that they "belong" to ABC and that allowing other people to use the characters will cause damage to ABC's unique use of them.