[dwilt]

I'd like to use a couple of illustrations from some Novelty Press comics (1941-45 era) for a book chapter I'm contributing to a forthcoming anthology on World War II comic books.  The publisher (in fact, most publishers these days) want either a signed release from the copyright holder or (in this case), some verification that the source comics are in the public domain.  Even though I'm pretty darn sure Novelty Press titles are PD (they're available here, for example, and full stories have been reprinted in books like the "Spacehawk" book), I would like to lay out the steps I took to verify this.
I'm certainly not asking for anyone to DO this for me, but if you can direct me to the proper sources, I'll do the legwork myself.  The Stanford Copyright Renewal database only does Class A (books), and the Copyright Office site refers you to Archive.org for pre-1978 material, but once I get there, I'd appreciate a hint as to where to start.
Thanks in advance!

[MarkWarner]

Use these links!

http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/cce/

And beware some years are 6 monthly!

Best regards

Mark

PS: The Copyright office refer people to archive.org how very, very interesting! lol

[narfstar]

Lazy government workers. Archive.org has tons of non PD stuff

[dwilt]

Thanks!

Just a clarification, the Copyright Office has 1978-and-later material in a searchable database, but for previous copies of the Copyright Catalog, they link to Archive.org, which has digital copies of (some) earlier volumes.  Google Books has also digitised earlier volumes, but they seem to have only done Class A (books) and not the Serials volumes (which would cover comic books).

The library where I work has print volumes of the Copyright catalogs that would have the renewals (i.e., 28 years after the original copyright) and I haven't seen any Novelty Press titles in there, but I want to be able to make a solid case to the publisher.

Thanks again!

[Muffaroo]

Are all of the Spirit sections between, say, 1941 and 1945, in the public domain? Or are the ones here incomplete because some of them are copyrighted?

I ask because I have a goodly number of sections that Mom saved (all from the Chicago Sun) during WW2.

Also, forgive me if this is explained elsewhere, but what are your preferred standards for the scans themselves? I'm thinking 300 dpi at actual size, using JPG at something like 10 out of a possible 12 for quality, and I welcome correction -before- I start scanning. I scanned one already, a couple of years ago, but haven't arrived yet at the point of finding out if it's here or not. (I'm going through them in order, and loving it.)

I've been scanning for a long time. I would likely do slight color correction

[movielover]

Most likely incomplete because they were incomplete. Apparently not every paper had the full section.

300 dpi works just fine, that is what is told to people nowadays.

If you choose to do color correction, that is entirely up to you as the scanner and editor.

[Muffaroo]

To clarify, I don't think the individual sections are incomplete. Just that there are gaps. I'll see what I can do, and thanks for the information.