Public Domain
Originally posted on 21 January 2024
Like many of us, I've been thinking a lot about the public domain recently. For me it's specifically superheroes, because it looks like some of the big ones should be going into the public domain in the 2030s, which really doesn't feel that far off now. Standard disclaimers, I'm not a lawyer, I might be wrong about everything, and anything I'm right about might be wrong outside the US, but assuming that everything follows the same rules as Steamboat Willie, this is what the picture should look like for some of the more well-known characters by the end of that decade:
| Year of publishing | Presumed year of public domain | DC | Marvel |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1938 | 2034 | Superman | |
| 1939 | 2035 | Batman | Namor the Sub-Mariner |
| Blue Beetle | Human Torch (the original robot character, not the Fantastic Four one) | ||
| 1940 | 2036 | Flash | |
| Green Lantern | |||
| Captain Marvel (the Shazam one) | |||
| Robin | |||
| 1941 | 2037 | Aquaman | Captain America |
| Green Arrow | |||
| 1942 | 2038 | Wonder Woman |
Of course, Marvel didn't really get going until the 1960s, so it's a bit lopsided currently. And I know there are comic companies other than DC and Marvel, but they barely even factor in here - they're all either too obscure, too recent, or now owned by one of the big two.
Anyway, I had some fun thinking about what you could do with these characters individually, but it took me surprisingly long to even consider the fact that divisions like DC/Marvel completely fall away once these characters are in the public domain. None of them can be said to be a "DC character" or a "Marvel character" at that point - they're just characters, the same as how Tom Sawyer and Dracula and Oliver Twist are characters. And as a result, there's no need to constrain them to their original continuities or companies. After all, the majority of creators making use of Sherlock Holmes don't insist on turning it into an "Arthur Conan Doyle universe" alongside his less well known characters like Professor Challenger and Brigadier Gerard (although it looks like some have tried).
I'm picturing what a comic book that makes full use of this could be. I know you can do all of this as a fanfic even now, but I mean a for-profit comic book (or film, TV series, etc.) that would come up against copyright issues if you tried to make it before the characters were public domain. Your new comic wouldn't be titled after anything from those continuities, because you'd want to avoid coming up against trademark law (as opposed to copyright). So let's say you create an original setting, and one or two original main characters to be the cover stars, and then the existing heroes can be their supporting cast.
So you'd have your main characters, they would have their own major villains, and you'd build the setting, its rules and its history, around that. Then you'd take each of the existing heroes you want to use, look at what aspects of their powers and backstory fit in your new setting (as long as they're only parts that are from the comic issues that are public domain by then, of course) and work them in. Your interpretation of them is going to end up unique to a degree just because of the new setting, and you won't have to infringe on any later copyrights to achieve it!
All of that was what I'd like to see generically. I hope as many different people as possible go ahead with things like this, so that no-one can point to just one of them and say "this is where that concept came from" and try to sue anyone else over it. Now, a little about my own ideas for something like this.
I'm picturing the setting as a fictional large island somewhere in the North Atlantic, not part of the territory of any other nation and with cultural influences from all over the world. It means I could do whatever I like about the politics of the place without conflicting with any real world events, while still keeping it Earth-based and therefore able to interact with other countries if necessary. While looking for inspiration for an island like this, I was amused to learn of a city in the Azores islands called Angra do Heroísmo, "Cove of Heroism", which you'd think would be too on-the-nose if I made it up myself. Whatever it ends up being called, the comic should probably be named after it.
The main heroes: two girls, both non-white, partially to balance out how white and male the rest of the cast are going to be (the lawyers would probably insist that you don't change the design of any of the existing characters, in case it infringes on a later incarnation of the character). I'd try to put their powers in niches that don't exist yet among the early superheroes. Being younger than the majority of the existing heroes, I think they should look up to them, but perhaps part of their character development could be to learn not to idolise them too much. I'm also thinking that one of their main villains could somehow be an allegory for the evils of copyright law, but I'd have to think carefully about how to do that and not have it come off as too cheesy.
So, you can see how some of the existing characters could fit into this new island setting. Batman and Captain Marvel would have been born and raised there. Superman's space capsule would have landed there. It's easy to see how Namor might end up on any given island setting. I'm imagining Captain America arriving from the US initially in response to some threat, after which he continues to hang around, perhaps with some of the other characters resenting his status as an American "invader" muscling in on their territory.
Another thing I'd like to do is to go back to how comics used to be, to some degree. I don't mean in terms of the social attitudes of those times, of course! But one thing you could do is make each issue as standalone as possible. For decades, the major comics have been heading in the direction of "you need to have read these few dozen other issues to fully understand this one", with every attempt at rebooting them eventually falling back into those patterns. When you're starting from scratch, as it were, you can make sure every issue contains all the context you need, whether you use a recap page or just have the characters mention the relevant events.
Another thing you could return to is having more story per issue - modern comics have bigger panels, more silent panels, more "artsy" panels, that end up stretching everything out so that it takes 3 or more issues to tell a story that could have been 1 issue in the 1960s. Where's the incentive for the reader to spend money on one tiny piece of a larger comic puzzle, especially when they always put out omnibuses later on anyway? Every issue should be worth owning on its own.
Wow, it turns out I had more opinions about this than I thought! I hope that wasn't too much of a rant. But Steamboat Willie was a massive first step, and I honestly hope the impending avalanche of public domain produces things even better than I can imagine (and not just terrible horror films).