[Kevin Yong]

Hi. Does anyone know the rules regarding the copyright status of non-American books for this site?

A friend of mine passed away and left me a portion of his Golden Age comic collection that I hope to have scanned soon. While I understand how to check the copyrights for the American books in the collection, there's a few international titles that I don't know how to confirm public domain status.

For example: Included in the mix are a Golden Age anthology reprint comic from Canada (Jumbo Comics #1 - 1948 - B&G Publishing), and a Silver Age anthology reprint comic from Australia (Climax Adventure Comic #2 - 1963 - Colour Comics Pty. Ltd.), as well as two issues of the Australian green-suited "Catman" (issues #15, 16).

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

-- Kevin

[MarkWarner]

The Australian 1963 is a No as anything mid 1950's onwards would certainly be! The Canadian one may be OK.

[Kevin Yong]

OK, thanks.

One other portion of this collection was a batch the German-language comic "Sigurd". (Issues #189, 190, 191, 195, 196, 199). I don't see any publication dates listed in the comics but according to the grand comics database, it appears that the series lasted from 1958-1968. Should I assume these would be too recent for inclusion here on the site too?

[narfstar]

Not sure about the German books maybe Paw would know. The Canadian one is OK because the original work is PD so any reprints are PD by default. Only if there were significant changes made could it be copywritten. Coloring or removing color has been ruled not significant enough from what I have read.

[Kevin Yong]

The Canadian "Jumbo" anthology book is... strange. It's a Canadian anthology collection of Canadian reprints of American titles. It looks like they literally just wrapped a new cover on top of a bundled stack of leftover titles that they stapled together. Under the outer cover of "Jumbo Comics" is an issue of Marvel's "Miss America Magazine", then an issue of "Sunny Comics", an issue of "Teen Town", and an issue of "Laugh Comics starring Archie"... and the titles on these inside "covers" don't even match their own indicia! It's confusing.

I'll have to see if I can post a few snapshots of this to share as an example, until it finally has a chance to get scanned.

-- Kevin

[narfstar]

Unfortunately if the originals are not PD then it is not PD. This was a common practice even in the US. Covers were sent back to distributors for credit and the comics were to be destroyed. That is why you will see indicia with strong warnings that it is illegal to sell comics without covers. Many places did not discard the comics but repackaged them to make an extra dime.

[Drusilla lives!]

I'd keep that Canadian anthology as it is, it's an interesting historical artifact.  A real physical example of this much talked about GA practice of re-covering unsold comics... and an extreme example at that!

[paw broon]

I'm not sure we can host Sigurd. I have a pile of digital versions and a small physical collection of Sigurd in Dutch lilliputs.  Created by Hansrudi W

[Kevin Yong]

I'll have to see if I can post a few snapshots of this to share as an example, until it finally has a chance to get scanned.

And as promised, here's a blog post I put together with snapshots of the Canadian anthology of "Jumbo Comics", showing the jumbled up mix of titles and non-matching cover indicia. Good luck trying to untangle the public domain copyright status on this one!

http://writerlad.wordpress.com/2014/11/21/golden-age-comics-jumbo-comics-1-1948-anthology/

-- Kevin

[jimmm kelly]

The Canadian "Jumbo" anthology book is... strange. It's a Canadian anthology collection of Canadian reprints of American titles. It looks like they literally just wrapped a new cover on top of a bundled stack of leftover titles that they stapled together. Under the outer cover of "Jumbo Comics" is an issue of Marvel's "Miss America Magazine", then an issue of "Sunny Comics", an issue of "Teen Town", and an issue of "Laugh Comics starring Archie"... and the titles on these inside "covers" don't even match their own indicia! It's confusing.

I'll have to see if I can post a few snapshots of this to share as an example, until it finally has a chance to get scanned.

-- Kevin

That is the only comic listed in the GCD that B&G published. However, the address for B&G is the same as for Bell Features.

During the war years, Bell published all Canadian comics. But in the period between 1946 and 1948, Bell repackaged American comics, with a new cover on them, and sold those comics to Britain. From 1948 to 1951, Bell reprinted the American comics for sale in Canada. MISS AMERICA MAGAZINE, TEEN COMICS and LAUGH COMICS, under those titles, were reprinted by Bell for sale in Canada.

According to the GCD, there was only one issue of SUNNY COMICS published in the U.S. by Pioneer Publications in 1948. Without seeing the B&G comic, I can't say for sure, but I would guess this is the same comic that was reprinted in whole or in part in the B&G JUMBO COMICS one-shot.

My guess is that this comic falls in between when Bell was repackaging American comics for Britain and reprinting the same for sale in Canada. Maybe they had all this material ready, so they dumped it in one issue and sold it for 25 cents (most Canadian comics had less pages and were sold for 10 or 15 cents).

There was lots of creative book keeping going on, so they probably had a good reason for publishing this issue as a B&G publication.

[Kevin Yong]

Thanks for the feedback everyone. Given the date range, I'll assume the issues of "Sigurd" I have (a random collection of issues between the #180s and #200s) are too recent to include here.

Since the 1948 Canadian anthology seems to consist of separate books bound together, I wonder if it would at least be appropriate to scan and share the "Sunny Comics" and "Teen Town" portions of the anthology, while omitting the reprint portions of Marvel and Archie material that presumably have more questionable copyright status?

As for the 1963 Australian anthology, I found out more details on it from the ausreprints.com site. It looks like all the reprinted contents of the book were originally from 1950s-era American comics (Fiction House, Farrel, Charlton, Ziff-Davis). Not sure if that changes anything as to whether or not it might be appropriate to include some or all of the scans of this issue here at CB+.

[jimmm kelly]

Actually, after doing more searches on the GCD, I find that Pioneer Publications was also a Canadian publisher--located in London, Ontario. I suspect that like B&G, Pioneer had some association with Bell.

The information I could find on TEEN TOWN from the GCD isn't much. It only lists two issues from Pioneer Publications from 1950 and one issue from Bell from 1951. The Bell comic (No. 15) reprints material from Marvel's Patsy Walker. Pioneer's issue 48 reprints some pages from BEE 29 THE BOMBARDIER No. 1, published originally by Spotlight.

The GCD hasn't indexed the contents of Pioneer's SUNNY COMICS, but identifies this as teen humour.

It seems that Pioneer, like Bell, was probably repackaging material from other publishers. So I would guess you'd have to trace back what material in TEEN TOWN and SUNNY COMICS was published by which original publisher--and if that material has gone in the public domain or not. It's also possible that Bell/B&G/Pioneer padded out content with material produced for Bell (since Bell had been creating its own material during the war).

[jimmm kelly]

Comic Book Plus at this time only has one comic published by Spotlight--LATEST COMICS No. 2, which features Bee-29, as well as other funny characters. But you can compare these features with those in your JUMBO COMICS to see if they might be from the same source.

https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=28362

[narfstar]

We have Teen Town 48 (my copy and scans

https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=7025

[jimmm kelly]

I see. According to the GCD (as I said above) that issue was published by Pioneer.
http://www.comics.org/issue/311049/

The GCD says that the Bee-29 story came from BEE-29 THE BOMBARDIER No. 1 (maybe). The other contents looks like it could have come from BEE-29 or LATEST.

[Kevin Yong]

FYI, if anyone else feels like playing detective to help figure out the source material of the "Jumbo Comics" Canadian reprints, there's a photo gallery of more of the interior story pages over at the DCM's Facebook page.

[jimmm kelly]

Clearly, Patsy Walker from Timely, Sunny from Fox, Hedy from Timely and Laugh from MLJ.

The Sunny pages are reprinted from Fox's SUNNY No. 12 (February '48)*--with some edits. Comic Book Plus would be safe to put scans up from those pages of Pioneers JUMBO COMICS, I assume. But I don't think they can use any of the Timely or MLJ pages.

*edit: While Comc Book Plus already has the original SUNNY No. 12 in the Fox category of the Comic Books section--they might want to put the JUMBO pages in the Small Press category of the Comic Books section.

[Yoc]

Sorry, I thought I'd passed this along already.

Jumbo contains Miss America v7 #7 (Timely-not PD), Sunny Comics #12* (Fox), Teen Town #nn (Timely reprint from?-not PD), and Laugh Comics #26 (Archie non-PD)

Very interestingly the Sunny book has a Different ifc with a different title from the Sunny12 comic already on the site!

-Yoc