Comic Book Plus Forum
About The Comic Books We Have => Comics Not Allowed => Topic started by: OtherEric on November 15, 2008, 01:22:08 AM
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Just wondering if this one would be allowed in the Classic Newspaper Strips category. I have the Dover reprint of the first book (which is itself out of print and not easy to find) and would be willing to find the original 40's hardcovers if those were usable as source material but the Dover wasn't for some reason. Dover tends to focus on PD material so I thought it would be worth asking.
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I have several volumes of the Del Rey Barnaby reprints, and they do NOT have a copyright notice from Johnson or his family or a syndicate. The books are only copyrighted to Random House (who owned Del Rey). This would indicate that there was no copyright renewal for the Barnaby strips, but it should be checked against the appropriate databases to be sure.
Plus, you would most likely not be able to just post a page for page scan of the Dover book if there is a copyright notice on the book from Dover. The content may be PD, but that particular packaging of the material can (and often is) copyrighted by the publisher.
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The only copyright date in the Dover reprints is that of the original book, not the reprint. Which was 42 and 43, and copyright Crockett Johnson. Which, unless the book was pre-1971 or post-1990 or so, and assuming it was a legitimate reprint, should put it as PD in both the original and the Dover Edition. (When did the law eliminating a correct copyright statement go into effect?)
With that said, I would be happy to spend the $30 or so to get the original HC and use that as the source material if it would be viewed as safer by the copyright gurus on the site.
I envy you the Del Ray editions; those are not easy to find at all.
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I would love to see any and all reprints of Barnaby, Eric or any one. I owned the Dover book (back in the 60s I'm pretty sure), but it is long gone. Dover reprinted many public domain things at the time. I'd be quite surprised if it were not PD.
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I'm not an expert, but it seems like a fairly good chance the two books from the 40's (And the three issues of Barnaby Quarterly) would be allowable. The catch is they're very rare- Overstreet only lists one issue of the quarterly, for example.
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None of the books would be PD, the original 2 done by Holt in the 40's were renewed, only the original strips would be considered PD.
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Rats, I certainly don't have access to the original strips. Still, it was worth checking. Thank you!