EC Comics

[John C]

Hmmm ...  we seem to be drifting off-topic.

True, and really not going anywhere interesting, for the most part, so I'll mostly just quickly nod at a couple of points and move on.

Bascially, I don't find today's comics very reader-friendly because there's a lack of single-issue stories for long-running books.  Every story is treated as "something special", but when everything is special, nothing really is.  It would be like watching wrestling and every match was in a steel cage.  How long would it be before cage matches become boring to hardcore fans?  Not long.

There's a lot of that, but I can't help but think that there's a quality issue, as well.  It seems like nobody's really interested in telling a story any more, so much as "shaking things up" or "deconstructing the genre," which is also very antagonistic to new readers.

I would imagine that the problem lies in people's unwillingness to check things out for themselves.  They listen to someone else whose opinions they respect, so everything that respected person says must be "true", and anyone who they encounter, especially the anonymous folks on the internet, must be "wrong" if they disagree.  "Sad but true" that it happens at all, but some people don't care enough to want to know better, they're simply happy to have something say.

That's probably a big part of it, yeah.  But it's scary when I get the same sort of reactions out of friends who have jobs finding loopholes in laws or developing new ways to use nanotechnology.  To hear them fall into the "media bias" arguments, for example, where one party must be right, is worrisome in a lot of ways.

[Aussie500]

I was just curious as to why certain EC Comics' titles are not allowed on this site.  I've looked for Copyright Renewals for a few titles, and in some cases I found nothing (specifically, Vault of Horror 12 & 13, War Against Crime 1-11 and Moon Girl 1-5).  Did I miss something that explains why these books are not considered Public Domain?

I can look at the renewals from 1978 which are online and see canny Mr. Gaines renewed pretty much everything from 1950 onwards. For all we know some of the earlier renewals have simply not been found yet, misfiled or simply misplaced, does not mean they were not renewed. The online records we have for the renewals prior to 1978 are not infallible. At the moment considering all the EC reprint projects going on, that the publisher is still around and that EC showed they wanted their material protected, we will wait.

Not being able to find a few renewals in a series does not mean they are public domain, or that a renewal was not lodged.
All issues of Vault of horror were renewed, issues 14 onwards have renewals in the online records issues 12 and 13 were renewed in 1977.

War Against Crime had issue 10 renewed in 1977, could not find anything else, but I am no expert.

No I have never seen a Moon Girl renewal, but for the time being that does not mean we will be hosting them.

[bchat]

All issues of Vault of horror were renewed, issues 14 onwards have renewals in the online records issues 12 and 13 were renewed in 1977.

War Against Crime had issue 10 renewed in 1977, could not find anything else, but I am no expert.

No I have never seen a Moon Girl renewal, but for the time being that does not mean we will be hosting them.

See, that's why I ask questions.  I'll have to go back and figure-out why I didn't see the renewals for VofH and WAC 10.

Again, I wasn't looking to stir-up anything, I was just curious what the mindset was on these books.  I certainly understand the desire to avoid trouble and I appreciate your taking the time to answer my question.

[Yoc]

And there is no harm in asking bchat.

-Yoc

[happyhuman]

I have a queastion if I may, and I'm hoping I'm phrasing my self correctly, when looking for a renewal of a comic for reprinting for sale or wanting to use a character from that comic in a new story dose finding a renewal for issue #1 mean that issues #2,3,4 ect... are too renewaled? or is it possible that issues #1, 3, and 11 got renewaled but the rest of the issues of said comic weren't renewaled?

[bchat]

As I understand things (and John C would probably know & be able to explain better than me), each issue has to be renewed seperately.  The Copyright status of one issue doesn't affect the status of another.  Each successive issue should be viewed as a seperate "Derivative Work", built upon the elements (character designs & names, plus the actual stories involved) of previous issues.

Issues # 1  & 3 could have a renewal, while issues 2, 4, 5 and 6 could be Public Domain.  You could reprint issues 2 & 4-6 without a problem since technically nobody owns them.  Creating new stories based on those issues would more than likely create a problem, as you couldn't reference any of the elements with a valid Copyright, such as a superhero costume that first appeared in issue # 1.

[happyhuman]

Does this apply to today's comics? or just works before 1978?

It's strange for me to see how big compenies like Marvel and DC renewaling every issue they print

[bchat]

Anything published since 1964-on (including today's comics) receive "automatic renewals", so no paper work needs to be filed for that material.  Anything published from 1963-on-back needed to have a Renewal filed with the Copyright Office before the initial 28 year Copyright term expired.

The reason "big companies" were renewing everything they could is that they were smart enough to do so AND they survived long enough to be around to file the renewals.  Companies like Rural Home or Spark Publications, for example, were long gone by the time the Renewals on their books had to be filed.

[OtherEric]

One slight correction; there's a post-1964 window during which the work must have been correctly copyrighted in the first place.  Now you don't even need that but I'm not sure what the cutoff is.

[John C]

Copyright statements were abandoned (as a legal tool) as recently as 1989, oddly the first of March, rather than the first of the year.  However, don't get too excited, since there was a progressively-widening gap when an omission could be "corrected."  It was only six months in the '60s, as I understand it, but by 1989 (I can't find when), you had five years.

For comics, this isn't going to be an issue, since they're not expected to be on sale long enough for the correction to circulate.  But for anything else, you need to check the same item as it went on sale five year  later, in some cases.

The only other comment I might make is that, while individual issues of a series will usually get registered individually, publishers had the option of registering a year's worth of periodicals as a single book.  I can't think of an example of where it's happened to a comic book, but it's certainly possible.

For an example of the other situation, though, where only some books in a series got renewals, search the Copyright Office database for the Fighting American books.  You'll see that only a handful were renewed, for whatever reason.

Oh, and as to why DC and Marvel have all their renewals in order, bchat has half the story.  But the other half is that they hired lawyers whose job it was to check the original registrations and then make sure the proper forms got filed every six months.  There are lawyers who specialize in that kind of work, and they don't come cheap...unless you happen to have hundreds of renewals to keep track of each year, in which case it's certainly cheaper than doing it yourself.

[JVJ]

seperately.  seperate

I KNOW this is petty, and I know it doesn't matter in the long run, but this word seems to be misspelled more than any other on this board. For the record: sEpArAtE is spelled with two "E"s separated by two "A"s. It isn't that hard to be right. I'll shut up now.

(|:{>

[narfstar]

And Jim's teaching has worked for me I now spell separate correctly and have since he first taught it here some time ago

[bchat]

seperately.  seperate

I KNOW this is petty, and I know it doesn't matter in the long run, but this word seems to be misspelled more than any other on this board. For the record: sEpArAtE is spelled with two "E"s separated by two "A"s. It isn't that hard to be right. I'll shut up now.

(|:{>

I'm sure at one point in my life I knew how to spell that correctly, but thank you for pointing it out (and I'm being sincere, not sarcastic ... I'm not afraid of being corrected, even on something so simple).  Keep in mind that's no guarantee ("guarantee" - a word I always have trouble with because it never looks right to me) that I'll spell "separate" correctly in the future ... I believe that's one of many words that are "hit-or-miss" with me.  When it comes to "informal" forums such as message boards & blogs, the ideas behind the words are more important than whether or not those words are spelled correctly.

[Roygbiv666]

Does this apply to today's comics? or just works before 1978?

It's strange for me to see how big compenies like Marvel and DC renewaling every issue they print

And that would be "renewing", not "renewaling". Since we're correcting spelling today...

[Drusilla lives!]

Apparently the Moon Girl character has fallen into the public domain... at least according to the statements in this CBR article by two indie web comic authors Johnny Zito and Tony Trov.  As for the original stories/art, I doubt it... unfortunately (from GAC's perspective).