Public Domain Comics
As comics are still a young artform in relation to copyright law, only the very earliest examples of what became the comic book are starting to fall into the public domain. However, due to lapsed copyrights many comics fell into the public domain in the 20th century on legal technicalities despite other works contemporary to them being very much still owned by their respective publishers. This has led to these comic properties being reprinted or reimagined by later publishers.
Name:
Public Domain Comics
Aliases:
Start year:
1956
First issue:
Nature Boy (1956) #4
History
In the traditional sense, public domain in literary works who have been around long before having a copyright license in 1925 are available for anyone to access. Characters from literature (i.e. Sherlock Holmes, Captain Nemo, Allan Quartermain, etc.), fairy tales (i.e. Snow White), fables (The Lion and The Mouse, The Boy Who Cried Wolf), folklore (i.e. vampires, werewolves, etc.), myths and legends (i.e. Hercules, King Arthur, Robin Hood, etc.) as well as various religious works (i.e. God, angels, demons, etc.) and even historical figures (Julius Caesar, George Washington, etc.) can be used for anything beyond the limits of a writer's own imagination for storytelling. In the realm of comic books, a new breed of public domain characters emerged from the early-20th century America. After the success of Superman and Batman in the late-1930s, dozens of new publishers sprang up and unleashed hundreds of new superheroes to comic readers of the Golden Age. By the end of World War II, however, most comic book superheroes fell out of favor with readers due to government censorship. As quickly as they had arrived, the majority of those heroes and their publishers disappeared.
Copyrights were not well protected as adamantly in those days, and many of those characters and their adventures have since fallen into the public domain. This allows any publisher or creator to use the characters and the original Golden Age material any way they wish. AC Comics was one of the first publishers to capitalize on this by both reprinting Golden Age classics and incorporating these "forgotten" heroes into their new material as well. Other comic book publishers (Dynamite Entertainment and Antarctic Press) and creators (like Alan Moore, Erik Larsen, and Todd McFarlane) have also taken to the idea and have created new universes featuring these characters. Sometimes they focus on the superheroes and even sidekicks from only one company, and other times picking the best characters from several companies. Super-villains, on the other hand, are rarely used over outdated and racist portrayals during WWII.
Public domain comic book superheroes not only applies to just the United States, but also in other countries around the world (each country has different copyright laws around their own works in public domain) with characters like Nelvana of the Northern Lights in Canada, Octobriana in Russia, Captain Universe and Ace Hart in England, and Ōgon Bat in Japan.
