Comic Book Plus Forum
About The Comic Books We Have => Comics Not Allowed => Topic started by: Aussie500 on December 11, 2006, 05:03:15 PM
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For the time being, we will not allow these ones, l need to do a a bit more research on whether they are actually public domain
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I hope the Harvey Comics eventually turn out to be in the public domain. I'd really like to see scanned issues of the Simon/Kirby "Fighting American." My guess would be that Marvel may own the rights to those, now. Wikipedia says that the original publisher was Crestwood/Prize Comics (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fighting_American), the same outfit that did "The Green Lama."
I don't really understand the complexities of this. I haven't seen the "Fighting American" anthology that Marvel published in 1989. Does publishing that collection mean that they now control the rights to the original catalog? For that matter, since DC has reprinted several issues of Whiz Comics, how does that impact the legal status of the original editions of those? (Are we better off not asking?)
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I didn't think I had to ask about this one since your original news/chatbox had this
We are currently looking for comics by the publishers:
* Avon Comics
* Biro Publishing
* Centaur Publishing
* Charlton Comics
* Fawcett Comics
* Fox
* Fiction House
* Funnies
* Harvey Comics
* MLJ
* Nedor
* Quality Comics
* Ziff
Tigger
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Sorry about that, Serj did the list and l did not know how to change it, as far as l know the problem is only with the Sad Sack and Black Cat titles. Although Harvey did publish comics under licence from other sources, and some of them could still be under copyright protection. ie: Felix the Cat is not Public Domain. That is the reason why l never did a Harvey section, since l am still not absolutely sure which are public domain. l am pretty sure Sad Sack is not and Black Cat was another copyright that the Harvey family hung onto. The Sad Sack renewel would be in the serials section most likely as it was originally a newspaper strip, which l have not found records for yet, and l cannot find the Black Cat renewal. They are both currently owned by Lorne-Harvey Publications as far as l know
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The publisher list I posted was a accurate at the time (as far as we knew) as we do more research we gain more info and know what are in public domain and what are not, this is why we try to manually approve uploads etc.
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I have a copy of Hello Pal Comics #2 (March 1943) with the Charlie McCarthy photo cover by Harvey Comics I'd like to upload if you think that one woud be okay. McCarthy does not appear anywhere inside the book. The interior is all anti-Fascism stuff related to the War with no memborable heroes. It's already scanned ;)
~Michael
P.S. In regards to the above post about Fighting American. I do have the 1989 hardcover reprints by Marvel. It's a nice, full-color production. Inside the front page it says, "The Fighting American and all characters appearing in this book and the distinctive likenesses thereof are trademarks of Joe Simon and Jack Kirby."
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Hello Pal Comics would be fine to upload Michael.
Trademark is a bit different to copyright, although Marvel own the trademark on Fighting American that would not stop us from sharing scans of the original comics. To be public domain it is the copyright we need to check.
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Fighting American is owned by Joe Simon and/or his estate. He licensed that and Boy's Ranch to Marvel to reprint. If you go to his website http://www.simoncomics.com (http://www.simoncomics.com) , he has copyright notices up. given that he's fought for many decades with Marvel over what rights he did or did not sell back in the 40's, I'd trust any copyright claims to have been verified by lawyers.
Simon and Kirby had a publishing agreement with Crestwood/Prize. They owned some of the titles, and later sold some of the titles to Crestwood/Prize when Crestwood staked them for their own publishing imprint. the Black Magic reprints from the early 70's reprinted Prize published material, but was licensed from Simon (and DC basically bought Prize out in the 50's for the Young Love/Young Romance books). So basically any Crestwood/Prize book that is Simon/Kirby related is probably still copyrighted (unfortunately). I've always wanted to try the Bullseye stories, but Simon has never licensed them for reprint. But any non-Simon/Kirby Crestwood/Prize material is most likely out of copyright.
as for Sad Sack, there was a long legal battle between the Harvey estate and the creator (George Baker?) over what rights he had sold way back when. I never heard what the final results were over that dispute, but the very fact that it's being disputed means that someone renewed the copyrights somewhere. So I'd avoid those books too, unfortunately. I remember really enjoying some of those books when I was younger.
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Unfortunately for the Simons, it's unrelated to who can be convinced to pay for a license or whether there's a copyright notice on a website.
The following URL isn't a conclusive search because there may be oversights, but it's a good starting point:
http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/cce/firstperiod.html
Neither Fighting American nor Black Magic were renewed, so their copyrights have lapsed, plain and simple. Well, it's plain and simple assuming someone traces back to better sources, verifies them there.
Conversely, you can see at a glance that pretty much anything from Street and Smith (mentioned elsewhere) was definitely renewed.