What will DC, Marvel and other companies do when popular characters like Batman go into the public domain? Then anyone can use them.
What will DC, Marvel and other companies do when popular characters like Batman go into the public domain? Then anyone can use them.
They'll spend a lot of time being very litigious against anyone who deviates from the very narrow scope of what will actually be in the public domain to discourage people from even trying.
Batman is kinda fricked, within 5 years of Batman himself going PD, everything recognizably Batman goes public domain (Including Robin, Joker, Catwoman, the iconic costume, a version of Alfred, every important detail, a significant amount of the rogues)
See that's where you're wrong. The entire rogues gallery will never be public domain so long as they keep making new villains. They'll just have to pick up the pace and make new rogues that people wanna see. Basically, the PD will encourage creativity as it was meant to. Bane, Killer Croc, Mad Hatter, Hush, the Court of Owls, all the Robins besides Dick, and many other characters only really showed up in the 80s or later, so will barely if ever be PD within our lifetimes.
Really tho, trademarks effectively make the PD worthless since they can be renewed endlessly. You'd have to really spam a PD character enough that you can argue in court they're genericized, which I suppose if it's possible is inevitable with a character as popular as Batman.
>>See that's where you're wrong. The entire rogues gallery will never be public domain so long as they keep making new villains.
That doesnt matter when fricking Joker, Catwoman, Scarecrow, Two-Face, Hugo Strange, Penguin, one version of Clayface, Sal Maroni, Grundy, Riddler, Deadshot, and essentially most of the iconic rogues are all introduced by 1950.
Sure, in terms of raw numbers, barely any will be PD, but the most important ones and the ones most associated with Batmans mythology and iconography will be.
Eh, that Clayface can't use clay powers so it doesn't really count. You have a point, tho.
With a proper marketing campaign you can elevate anything in just a few years. Bane became an iconic villain just a year in. BTAS made Mr. Freeze a big player. Harley Quinn was fairly popular but exploded int he lat 12 years.
Clayface pre-1950 is an actor/serial killer with a mask. The one with superpowers doesn't get introduced until 1961.
Deadshoot was introduced in 1950, but 99% of what we know of Deadshot came from later creators. Englehart and Marshal Rogers revamped him in the 1970s and Rogers gave him the costume that all subsequent costumes were based on. John Ostrander and Kim Yale developed Deadshot's backstory in the late 80s.
The 1950 Deadshot had a completely different look seen here.
>Really tho, trademarks effectively make the PD worthless since they can be renewed endlessly.
It's really not that true. At best DC could do what ERB is doing and basically start calling their comics the True Canon or something
There is probably a point in time where the trademark doesn't become as strong because a significant number of things become public domain. The Zorro trademark got declared invalid in Europe, for instance.
>The entire rogues gallery will never be public domain so long as they keep making new villains.
They can' even move away from Joker.
DC probably wouldn't worry much yet. When Batman goes PD it's just the first year, where he's looking like your image and he doesn't have his major villains yet (maybe Hugo Strange, but it depends on when his first appearance was released).
A lot of important designs, characters and storylines weren't there from the start. Like you can't use the yellow oval logo because that was first published in 1964, so DC will be pushing to use that logo more. Dick Grayson was created in 1940 but Jason Todd doesn't get introduced until 1983 and Dick Grayson didn't become Nightwing until 1984. PD versions of Batman are stuck with Dick Grayson as Robin for a long, long time.
I think they’re leaning hard into the Bat logo with yellow edges now. I was in wal-mart the other day and all the toys that weren’t movie-based had this signal
Dick Grayson isn’t a problem he’s the most iconic Robin to begin with
Though actually, is each individual Bat-symbol copyrighted separately? I know the yellow oval comes from the New Look era 25 years after Batman debuted, but is the yellow oval Bat symbol a legally distinct entity from a plain black Bat symbol?
I think the yellow oval logo definitely is, I don't know about others though
>stuck with Dick as Robin
that's fine with me.
As long as it's not The Exact Same Thing as previously published you could probably get away with it, though that's pretty limited since Batman and Superman have been around for 80+ years, and over 1000 issues.
I would honestly enjoy seeing a series exploring the concepts from the first year, imagining how they would have taken off if that was all there was to work with. Lord knows DC has never done anything substantial with The Monk or Doctor Death (besides giving him a bone disease). You could even use Charles Maire as a version of The Question if you wanted Batman to have some sort of superhero ally.
I recognise the Monk and Doctor Death, who're the other two?
Duc D' Orterre and Carl Kruger (sitting).
Before his backstory was given in Detective Comics 33 (Batman Wars Against The Dirigible Of Doom), Bruce Wayne really does seem like his genuine personality, as opposed to some act he puts on. The second ever Batman story just says he is a “bored young socialite.” He’s flippant and dismissive in all his interactions. It’s funny to imagine a Batman: The First Six Issues comic, based only on
>The Case Of The Chemical Syndicate
>Frenchy Blake’s israeliteel Gang
>Doctor Death 1
>Doctor Death 2
>Monster Men
>Mad Monk
With no tortured backstory, no Robin, no Alfred, Bruce is engaged and fully intends to marry, and his motivation to be Batman is simply boredom
His interactions and vague excuse with the "family doctor" in the Doctor Death story was pretty funny too. You could actually use that guy as a sort of substitute for Alfred.
Not going to happen. Even if the characters themselves become public domain, Marvel and DC will still own the rights to make comics, movies, etc with those characters.
>Not going to happen. Even if the characters themselves become public domain, Marvel and DC will still own the rights to make comics, movies, etc with those characters.
You're confusing trademark with copyright. If C.C. Beck's Captain Marvel is in the public domain, anyone can make fiction using him in any medium whatsoever, but Disney's Marvel subsidiaries is monopolizing "Captain Marvel" as a title for periodicals and films.
Trademark literally means a mark your business can exclusively put on a product and the law protects you from brand confusion. So as soon as 1938 works enter PD, so long as you title your Superman fiction something not already trademarked (Super Alien?), you won't be violating Warner-Discovery's rights.
We'll kill the public domain by then
>We'll kill the public domain
OK, smart guy, whose intellectual property will the Iliad be? The Odyssey? King Arthur?
Things that are already public domain will for the most part stay that way, but nothing will enter it again until it’s been so long nobody cares
Disney shills out in full force.
Somewhat
https://comicvine.gamespot.com/articles/when-did-batmans-villains-first-pop-up/1100-153856/
If Batman was public domain, what kind of story you would write? Hard mode: no porn, no edgy horror.
I would pick up on the early elements from the first year like
Give some of the early villains more focus and explore them, pick up on some of the ideas that were later dropped (Bruce Wayne evidently writes mystery stories according to #35, superstitious people thinking Batman is the devil like in #31, Batman relying on Wong of Chinatown for info).
I'd write him as an actual person, not
>"My TRUE personality is actually le Batman--who is allergic to killing (no matter the context, even in absolute self-defense or protection of others) and guns
I've actually been working on a 1930s Batman/Gotham comic on and off for about two years now, and honestly since I've stuck so much to the mythos of what was present from 1939-1944, I might wait a decade for all that to be public domain if DC rejects me.
I don't want to say too much about it because I'm an unironic published write-gay who might be able to legitimately make it eventually, but it's a mix of Mad Men and Fight Club with Slam Bradley and Harvey Kent as the main characters.
I've had a similar idea with early Superman since I first heard of the possibility of it going public domain like 10 years ago. Ive been steadily writing and rewriting something for years.
>no edgy horror.
gtfo, I'd make Batman straight out of a Gothic Romance
I want a silver age style comic. A lot of modern chastity lines would be better condensed into short 13 page stories, and just be made generally more uplifting
>modern chastity lines
I don't get it.
But I agree with you about the condensation of stories.
I have no idea where “chastity” came from, Freudian slip I guess. That should say “comic story” lines.
Typos happen anon. It is all good.
> don't want to say too much about it because I'm an unironic published write-gay
Interesting if true. I mean I guess asking what you wrote would defeat the whole point of anonymously posting. But still anon, sounds interesting, I'd say go for it. And honestly... If you're eager to get your story out there sooner, doing it with just as much public domain stuff as you could manage would be good.
I haven't done anything with the big two yet, but I've only been writing a few years. I have a lot of DC ideas, but I don't really share them on here a lot. For one, because in the event I can actually get them published I don't want to have any sort of paper trail back to my shitposting. But two, a lot of times when I do share them they get shit on, like my idea for a Blade Runner-esque Martian Manhunter elseworlds where he has to terminate white martians impersonating people in positions of power during the red scare.
It doesn't fricking matter whether they're in the public domain or not. People have been making their own comics about their favourite superheroes forever. What difference does it make if they actually start calling their expies Batman and Robin instead of having to make up a new name?
Why do you think they are trying to push race and sexuality flipped versions, or kids taking up the mantle?
The executives will all sit at a table, pull out a gun and collectively shoot themselves in the head after losing their cash cow
bemp
Marvel's batman would be kek.