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What makes a Canadian comic Canadian?

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jfglade:
 Just to make the subject even murkier, I'll point out that Steve Rogers/Eric Schumaker posted a story from one of the "Canadian Whites" which featured Captain Marvel Jr. in a story written an American writer (Binder, if I remember correctly) who wrote many stories for Fawcett, which was then illustrated by Canadian artists and published in Canada. Canada declared war on the Axis earlier than the U.S.A. did and one of the earliest effects was that the importation of American comic books was deemed non-essential, which resulted in Canadian Comics designed to fill the vacume. Fawcett material was very popular in Canada, and Fawcett collarerated with a Canadian publisher (if I wasn't so darned tired I could probably remember which publisher, but I am certain it was not Superior) to take scripts written by Fawcett writers, and turn them into "Canadian comics." I believe that some of the same scripts were later recycled and were published by Fawcett in the States with artwork by the regular freelances who provided work for Fawcett, so essentially there are both Canadian and American versions of some stories.

John C:

--- Quote from: archiver_USA on April 21, 2010, 03:29:07 PM ---The book was published and printed in Canda, but was using a US distributor. Is this book truly Canadian if the target market was in the US?

--- End quote ---

As I said, my perspective is a copyright perspective, since that determines what's in the public domain.  And in that case, it's a matter of where it's published.

Publication, for copyright purposes, is defined as offering copies of a work for sale and/or distributing it outside a circle of associates.  So I'd say that if the book was exclusively (or first) distributed in the United States, then it's not Canadian, because the copyright would be assigned and expire on United States terms.

In the case of reprints/rewrites, that's pretty much the situation we have with many licensed works:  Even if its own copyright is clear, it might not be legal to distribute because the underlying/original work may have a current copyright.

That is, a hypothetical rewritten and Union Jacked "Captain America" story might be public domain (though I know absolutely nothing about Canadian copyright law), but it still wouldn't be legal to reprint without Marvel's permission.

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