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Posting old Newspaper strips

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WiscPackRat:
I posted some comic books quite a while ago, and stopped because I got lazy and  found out doing that scanning was hard work! But I am feeling energetic again and have spare time, so I am thinking of posting material again.

Back when I was publishing the Menomonee Falls GAZETTE (for those of you wondering what that was, google it and look in the "ancient history" section...) I was approached once by a fellow who saw a local newspaper article about what Mike Tiefenbacher and I were doing. He said he had a collection of old newspaper Sunday sections and wondered if I would like to buy them. I said sure, and went to check them out. I find tied and wrapped bundles of Sunday sections from the local area that  were a total of 15 to 20 feet of papers. I bought the collection for some amount that seemed high at the time, but in retrospect was a steal. The Milwaukee SENTINEL was the local Hearst paper with lot of the famous King Features strips, and the opposing Milwaukee JOURNAL had field, NEA, and McClure syndicated strips, with a variety of others. The bundles were near complete runs of the papers from the mid '20s to the mid '40s as well as incomplete runs going back to 1918. I was able to see in their original glory runs of strips like LITTLE NEMO, THIMBLE THEATRE, PRINCE VALIANT, TARZAN, CAPTAIN EASY (with the best use of color I have ever seen in a strip), L'IL ABNER, FLASH GORDON, RED BARRY, Superman, TOONERVILLE FOLKS... and s, so many other strips. Stuff from the era when they were full pages of great art is so hard to believe unless you really see it. And many strips I knew were "ok" I found were really great back in there prime. I saw POPEYE, L'IL ABNER and BARNEY GOOGLE comics that were light-years better that the older, washed-out versions I grew up with. Part of these runs, like my comic books, have been going to sale on eBay to support me in my old age, but I still have so much left.

The reason I brought this up is to ask about the restrictions on what can be shared here at DCM. I saw a note that anything before 1923 is acceptable, but there are post '23 entries in the newspaper strip section of DCM. Also, the statement, "Anything published in the United States before 1923 is fair game." was made in the forum back in 2012. Did that mean anything over 89 years is alright? So now (in 2015) could we post anything that is from before 1925? In going through boxes, I can scan many great pages of comic strips and share stuff that I think would be enjoyed, but I don't want to do all the work and be told to not post it!I already scanned a handful of strips from the late 20's and early 30's before I noticed the "before 1923" information. Would it matter if a strip was NEA syndicated from 1928? King Features from 1931?  NY Tribune from 1928?

I do have material from before 1923, but that stuff is very delicate and will have to be carefully handled when I scan so I don't have the edges or the folds fall apart on me. I am working on some MUTT AND JEFF, HAWKSHAW THE DETECTIVE and CAPTAIN AND THE KIDS from 1921 right now. but I can only do a few a day. My scanner is only 8.5 by 11.5 capable, so I have to scan 1/6th of the Sunday page at a time and use Windows paint to splice the sections back together. Once I get some runs ready, I will try to recall exactly what I did to send in my postings. I hope to hear from you folks about this project, and if you will be looking forward to this material

JonTheScanner:
Unfortunately that 1922 date has not moved up. The simple rules are:

Anything published in 1922 or before is in public domain in the U.S. (Something created pre-1923 but unpublished is under copyright until 70 years after the death of the author but this needn't worry us about newspaper comic strips as they were published.)

Anything originally published after 1978 is still under copyright.

Anything published from 1923 to 1978 inclusive might be copyright or in the public domain. Things published during that period must have had their copyright renewed to still be copyrighted.  Unfortunately that can be difficult to determine -- and particularly so for newspaper comic strips.  Many syndicates didn't bother to renew. Many syndicates have folded with the rights to their strips possibly sold to other syndicates. Some syndicates "published" weekly "books" of all their strips and copyrighted them in that form so checking renewal is difficult.

We know some strips like Gasoline Alley were not renewed.  Out of copyright, Gasoline Alley strips are being reprinted by Drawn and Quarterly. They must call the books Walt and Skeezix because Gasoline Alley is still a trademark. That probably means that other Chicago Tribune strips were also not renewed, but to be safe someone would have to search.

Similarly many post-1922 Out Our Way and Our Boarding House strips have been reprinted without copyright so it's likely that other NEA strips from the 30s were not renewed. The Skippy and King Aroo strips are reprinted by IDW without an original copyright date so I'd guess those too are PD. Other McClure strips are probably safe (except for things like Superman to which they did not hold the original copyright.  I suspect DC might not have renewed them either, but I'd not like to fight Warner/DC.) King Features seems to have been pretty good about renewals.

In any case your pre-1923 strips are safe here. And later more questionable ones are likely safe but DCM might be reluctant to host. There are other venues for sharing those though. If you're interested PM me.

John C:
Two minor additions to Jon's comments.

First, there's a slim chance that anything published up until March of 1989 is in the public domain, if it didn't have a copyright notice and if there was no effort made to fix the missing notice (like publishing a new edition) within...I think it was up to a couple of years, by that point.  But anything published since 1978 has a Life+70 term, making things even weirder.

Second, what makes comic strips so hated around here is that they're "contributions to periodicals," rather than periodicals, themselves.  Periodicals are helpfully ordered by title in the books, but contributions are lumped in with books and stuff, and are ordered by copyright owner.  Who owns the copyright to a particular strip?  Maybe the artist, the originating newspaper, the syndicate, an agent, or an outside trademark holder.  Or someone else.  Plus, every strip can is independent, meaning hundreds of entries if they're there.

Yoc:
There are other options outside of DCM that I'm sure would be interested or perhaps have already scanned some of what you have.  I recommend you contact Jon here with a PM (click this image under his avatar - http://digitalcomicmuseum.com/forum/Themes/default/images//im_off.gifand he can pass along some more detailed suggestions.)

Congrats on your amazing collection!
-Yoc

WiscPackRat:
Thanks for the replies, buddies. I will very carefully try to scan a bunch of the pre-1923 pages and share them with you eventually.

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