Superman originaly was to be an Earth Man from the future... lettersofnote.com

[Yoc]

Hi gang,
I thought I'd shared this link ages ago but I don't see it now.  This wonderful blog is Packed full of history from Mary Queen of Scots to Harlan Ellison to Mark Twain to Iggy Pop to George Washington.  All are personal letters scanned, shared and transcribed for your reading pleasure.  lettersofnote.com

There are several letters to and from Jerry Siegel - co creator of Superman.  Of most interest to me was a letter Siegel wrote to Buck Rogers artist Russell Keaton when searching for a new artist to draw the Superman daily newspaper strip he was trying to develop.

Siegel's letter includes a script covering a DIFFERENT origin of Superman.  An origin set in Earth's future!  It's a fascinating read which was covered in Alter Ego some time back in more detail.

Here's a link to the letter but be sure to stay and enjoy the amazing look into history this blog provides everyone.  Gotta love the net when you can find treasures like this for free out there!

http://www.lettersofnote.com/2010/01/superman-man-of-tomorow.html

-Yoc

[Yoc]

The 'Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus' editorial of 1897 by Francis Pharcellus Church in New York's now-defunct newspaper, The Sun is considered a classic.
Virginia's letter and the reply are also on the same site at the link below!

http://www.lettersofnote.com/2009/12/yes-virginia-there-is-santa-claus.html

[John C]

I don't know the provenance (so I'm not sure about how copyrights would shake out for them beyond a plausible Fair Use claim) and I believe I saw more elsewhere that I can't think of, but looking here might provide something interesting on the topic.  Err...Not the Santa topic.

http://uncivilsociety.org/2008/08/the-mystery-note.html

[narfstar]

Since these predate Action 1 they were probably never copyrighten

[Yoc]

We would never share them here anyways Narf. 
But the actual strips are not shared on lettersofnote, just the letter to Russell Keaton.

[John C]

The publication date rules, Jim, not creation, and I can't believe that nobody ever noticed a 1934 Superman comic strip drawn by Russell Keaton in the papers.  If it was never actually published (for example, if it was circulated among fans after finding it at an auction--as I said, I have no clue how these came to light), the copyright would be Life+70.

The only situation I could imagine where there might not be copyright is, if this was produced by the Siegel estate as part of trying to reclaim the assigned copyright, its first publication would be in court records.  The records generally are (I believe) generally considered public domain, because case law is kind of important for people to see, but I don't know what the rules are on evidence, and I don't know if that's how the strips came to be known.

[bminor]

Absolutely fascinating stuff.
You never know what will be surfacing here at DCM.

DCM is becoming THE public domain repository library for everything relating to comic book history.

B.

[Yoc]

I don't know the provenance (so I'm not sure about how copyrights would shake out for them beyond a plausible Fair Use claim) and I believe I saw more elsewhere that I can't think of, but looking here might provide something interesting on the topic.  Err...Not the Santa topic.

http://uncivilsociety.org/2008/08/the-mystery-note.html

I missed this yesterday John.  Thanks.
You know the first thing I notice when using that link is the horrendous bloody SPAM that jerks seem to be doing these days in the comments sections of blogs.  It's a blight on an otherwise great way to share stuff of interesting on the net.  Bastards.

[John C]

I understand spam.  It's dirt cheap to put your message in front of enough people that, even if you get an abyssmal tenth of a percent click-through, it's probably a good deal, especially if the link installs malware to compromise security.

What I can't understand is inept spam.  Occasionally I'll check links in a safe environment (a virtual machine, say, that I can delete afterwards), and a surprising number of links are usually dead.

Or you occasionally get messages with no links, just garbage text.  No clue what the heck that's about.  Some sort of Lovecraftian plot to infect humanity with bad dreams about poorly-spelled male enhancement drugs and African ex-princes with no bank accounts?

[Yoc]

A plague on all spammers!
There goes John again, give the jerks ideas and now us nightmares.

[Mark Warner]

Just to add a bit of color, I think that one thing a lot of people are not aware of is the spammer is often not directly looking for the links to be clicked. It's cool if they are, but there is a more devious plan in operation.

The idea is I register a domain for just a few bucks ... cram it with ads or phishing stuff. It is a really rubbish site.

I then spam the hell out of every forum. Now the search engines spot the links and say hey DCM is a cool site and they are respectable and they are linking to xyzspam ... so it looks like that is a cool site as well so let's move them up the rankings ... so in the very short term when people do searches for whatever your spam site is trying to promote, you are near the top of the list and get more hits.

BUT VERY soon the search engines realize ... hey the links to this site come from all over the place: a comic site, a caravan site,  a pet store etc ... this looks suspicious .... and the spam site gets booted. But meanwhile Mr Spammer has started the process all over again. And the old spam site is worthless so is recycled. Search engines are getting really good at spotting the spam links, plus realizing that it is a low value site. It is a cat and mouse game.

The other effect of this is that these links can theoretically harm DCM's rankings. If they are not removed, or it is a very frequent occurrence, the search engines say hey .... this site has lots of outgoing spammy links which are not good for visitors ... it is a signal of a badly maintained site .. lets's drop them down the rankings a bit.

Anyway I HATE spammers .. they are a massive drain on resources and I'd be in favor of very severe punishments for them. If a kid hacks into the Pentagon (which he should not be able to do) they throw the book at him .. but spammers must cost industry billions!

Anyway rant over, and hopefully that has explained a bit about their modus operandi

[Yoc]

Thanks John.
Isn't there also some monetary gain for these jerk spammers as well?  Eyeballs on banner ads or something?  Otherwise I don't see any gain for all the effort.

[John C]

I'm sure there's some, and the return on investment probably isn't terrible, but I'd guess the big money comes from either malware (growing a bigger botnet to sell to the next criminal enterprise) and the sort of domain-based "pump and dump" scam Mark is talking about--I think the part you're missing, Mark, is that you auction the domain off while the page rank is still high.

If you want to really worry over the sorts of things criminals can do...

http://www.futurecrimes.com/

[Mark Warner]

Nah ... what I am talking about and what we are dealing with DCM/CB+, they just last a day or so .. a week max ... no one buys them. Google/Bing are very good at spotting them.

Malware sites you would do primarily via email, not by forum spam. Spend you resources pumping the junk out to inboxes ... I'd actually stay well clear of putting links on websites. But, a lot of the spammers are not very bright.

[paw broon]

Away from spamers for a moment and a wee bit off-topic, thanks Yoc for the link to Letters of Note - absolutely fascinating.  As I live 4 miles from Linlithgow Palace, birthplace of Mary Queen of Scots and as you mentioned her letter on LoN., you might want a look at the Linlithgow Palace website:-
http://www.marie-stuart.co.uk/Castles/Linlithgow.htm
And here's the Mary, Queen of Scots page:-
http://www.marie-stuart.co.uk/index.htm

Not a lot of comics but, historically, very important.  Hope some of you have a look and explore a bit more.