[chinaski]

I was looking at Swinnerton's works, when I realized that some of his stuff was syndicated by King Features.

I'm interested in knowing now, does King/Hearst still own the rights to any of Swinnerton's works, as I know they still own the rights to some other early comic strips (or at least the characters) like Betty Boop and Popeye.

I assume Swinnerton's earliest works, late 1800s to the 1920s are public domain, but I saw that King syndicated "Little Jimmy" right around the 40s, so I'm curious if those are in the public domain or not.

Where all do you do your research?

[narfstar]

Wildthing was our copyright guru but we have not heard from him in a while. John at DCM does a lot of their searches. Anything US before 1923 is automatically PD. Anything after that that was not renewed is PD. King is the most likely syndicate IMHO to have renewed their copyrights. I am sure some of their minor strips have slipped through the cracks. But without checking I would not carry anything by King after 1922 because they are also one of the most protective

[chinaski]

Yeah. That's what I figured. I tried looking at King's website for details, and they apparently have a "vintage" pay service for mobile devices, that includes Little Iodine strips, so yeah.

Know anything about "International Feature Service"? Whether those might be safe or not.

[narfstar]

I can not find anything on the company but the works it published looks to have been long ago. I suspect they would be OK

[chinaski]

Ok. cool. Yeah, I assume they're defunct now. I have some Swinnerton strips being sent to me, so I'll scan and upload them when I get 'em then.

[narfstar]

thanks

[unclerobin@att.net]

I guess what narf said about King Features pretty much takes care of my Popeye question from another topic - I'm still holding out hope for Alley Oop, though!

[narfstar]

There may be some Alley Oops that have slipped through the cracks. I am a big fan.

[unclerobin@att.net]

narf, I just learned that there were Alley Oop reprints in early issues of Red Ryder Comics. I saw that there weren't any here, is the title not public domain, or did you just not come across any issues to print here? I'm sure you already know, but it was a Dell comic, by the way.

[narfstar]

Unfortunately Red is not PD