[argosail]

I hope nobody will mind the shameless promotion of my new site here, but I think it's a site that many people on these boards might be able to appreciate.  I have created a site dedicated to gathering information on public domain and freely licensed comic characters.  Much of the information comes from the classic golden age comics on this site.  My hope is to cultivate a community who will work together to create new stories, and possibly even a collaborative continuity for many of these characters.

If you are interested, the site is called, "The Free Universe" and it can be found at: http://universe.1free.ws

The profiles also features some original new artwork of classic golden age characters (in some cases, slightly revamped) that I learned about from the comics on this site.

[Janus Wolf]

Your site is good. It would be nice that you consider goldenagecomics.co.uk a favorite, considering your promoting your site here for everyone here to see.

My question, is that since your building new creations from PD characters and then are considered copyright. What do you do with the new characters? Sell books? etc?

Janus

[argosail]

Actually, I hope that is not a point of confusion with visitors.  I am revamping a few of the characters on the site, but ONLY for the sake of securing the new character features FOR the public domain.  For example, I gave Silver Streak a silver costume, so that nobody else can claim that is proprietary to their version of the character.  The bottom of each page says that all character designs are to be considered public domain.  All changes and new features are public domain.  I only claim copyright on the the specific images I made.

I may use some of these characters in upcoming webcomics, but I'm not selling anything myself.  The purpose of the site is to cultivate a community of creators who are interested in shared characters that can compete with corporately owned characters.  I know that there are already a number of new webcomics featuring golden age heroes, including the "Out of Print" strip, "Heroes, Inc" and a few others.  The purpose of my site is promote and encourage such efforts.  I want these golden age characters to thrive again, because I want to see feature films and videogames featuring Captain Battle and John Aman and other great characters.

[carbon_psycho]

nice site.

[Janus Wolf]

A revamped character would be copyrighted, a new movie, video games, would then be using your copyrighted characters, for this? Is that your hope. Then profit from it and to what end is that?

You do know the wiki has a character database that preserves the characters as they are, so what your doing, in terms of copyrighting characters probably has other motives behind it, (can you advise?) that is why one own copyrights to protect their works so only they have the rights to it.

Don`t get me wrong here, unlike others I am all over how this site goldenagacomics.co.uk has been used over the years. Little credit is often given to anything here. I have monitored this, and similar sites over the years.

I encourage all members to go to your site, and other sites that have used / use goldenagecomics.co.uk as a base. Perhaps others will also understand, how its important that this site also move forward or else be left behind in all the new changes with Ipad coming out.

I am on top of all the trends here, and aim to have goldenagecomics.co.uk the source for free books, but also manage it strategically now. Poor coding and direction have weakened the site over the years, and caused to many spin offs which make goldenagecomics.co.uk struggle and have internal conflicts in terms of keeping things as they are, and not seeing the technology that we use, and looking into the future and what other sites are doing, from goldenagecomics.co.uk causes the site limp by.

While I am promoting your site, and I see your not promoting this site, I do want to see what other sites are doing using goldenagecomics.co.uk as a source or at least one of the sources to build sites. There are alot of spin offs of this site, and alot of new ideas out there, and this site will monitor them to not be left behind.

Your site and ideas are excellent, while we have similar ideas to this, we do not have the corporate touch that it appears you do, I know how we can promote PD characters, but make it all non-profit as well.

Being a free source of comics and being non-profit is the message from myself.

However your site is more a wakeup call for this site, moving forward. It my hope that anyone who is interested in providing free comics, with a non-profit focus, that we can work together and unite. I am a very team oriented person, and understand its important to recognize everyone's efforts to make this a community and a united one.

Off to the COMIC CON...

Janus

[argosail]

Janus,

No offense intended, but I think you might be a little cynical about my intentions.  Like I said, I hope I am not sending my visitors the wrong message.  I know the idea of the site takes some explaining.

I am voluntarily revoking my copyright to the character revisions on my site.  I know I own the copyright to any changed character, and therefore, it is my right to donate them to the public domain.  Anyone who doubts this can get it from me in writing.  I only claim copyright on my particular drawings, because it constitutes a unique draw to my site, and without a unique draw, my site would be quickly rendered useless when there are much bigger sites like the wiki.  My ideas would never reach anyone and my efforts would have been in vain (and considering that I have worked on that site for over a year, I would prefer my efforts actually served some purpose).

I'll give you an example of what I'm doing.  I drew Silver Streak with a silver costume.  By being the first to publicly do so, I can claim some ownership of the idea.  Now, I am donating that idea to the public domain, so that it can not be claimed by a corporation like Dynamite Entertainment.  I see groups like Dynamite as a bit of a threat to the public domain.  They claim trademarks, and they can claim ownership over minor and intuitive revisions of characters.  I can't stop them from taking the trademarks.  But I can beat them to the punch on revisions, to keep those ideas in the public domain. 

Other sites like the wiki preserve the characters exactly the way they are.  And that's fantastic.  I am trying to keep some additional options open though.  I am presenting the characters in the way, I would want to draw them, and making it possible for others to use those ideas as well.  I forget which comic first used the name "Double Dare" for Daredevil, but they recently granted permission to another artist to use that name as well, which threatens their own trademark.  But I think it was done in a spirit of cooperation.  That is what I am trying to cultivate.  An anti-corporate culture.

And I wasn't trying to say that I want to see a movie or videogame of MY version of the characters....I'd like to see it, regardless of the version of the character they use.  I am only offering up my version as a free contemporary revision.  Batman looks a lot different now, then he did in the Golden Age, and there is a reason for that.  Wouldn't it be nice if that version was free?  If anyone really wanted to make a movie or videogame based on my version, I'm sure their legal department would make the effort to ensure I wasn't going to sue them or something.  I'd sign anything they'd like me to, not that it is necessary, as those ideas are already public domain.  I know it may be hard to believe, but my ultimate goal is to promote and expand creative freedom.

As far as why there is not a link back to this site from my site, I omitted it for a few reasons.  First, with all the problems on this site recently, I was under the impression that this site was already fairly overwhelmed with traffic.  Second, I was trying to keep my list of links short, and focused on sites with easily accessible character information.  Issue numbers are listed for each character, and anyone who is looking for those issues is almost certain to end up at this site.  Third, I believe there is a prominent link to this site, on the pages of my first three links.  It is most likely that anyone who comes to my site at all, is already well aware of this site.  That said, I will happily add the link, if you feel this site needs more promotion.

If you have any further suggestions, or ways in which I might make the purpose of the site more clear, by all means, let me know.  Thank you for your comments.