General Category > Comic Related Discussion

Are comic strips like Shinbone Alley characters and Krazy Kats public domain?

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hufflepuffle:
Hi,
This question is for the knowledgeable staff or mod here. Whether some famous very old comic strips such as Archie and Mehitabel and Krazy Kats are public domain? 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archy_and_Mehitabel

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krazy_Kat

SuperScrounge:
Supposedly everything printed in the USA before the year 1923 should be Public Domain.

I am not a lawyer however, so this is not legal advice, just information that comes up doing an internet search.

Yoc:
Newspaper strips are a real bugger for checking HP.
JohnC writes about that in the FAQ section here:
https://digitalcomicmuseum.com/forum/index.php?topic=3778.0

I'd think Archie and Mehitabel are PD but I'm not sure on Krazy Kat. 
To be safe I would say DCM would likely not share Krazy Kat.

NOTE - any of these shared here would have to come from original newspaper sources and not from later reprints which would still be under copyright to their publishers.

-Yoc

SuperScrounge:
The pre-1923 strips of Krazy Kat should be okay. (Again, not a lawyer.) It's just the post-1923 strips where someone might have renewed the copyright that could be a problem.

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