Digital Comic Museum

General Category => Comic Related Discussion => Topic started by: ottawagrant on August 29, 2012, 06:07:42 AM

Title: Charlie Chan Sunday Newspaper Strips 1939-1941
Post by: ottawagrant on August 29, 2012, 06:07:42 AM

Might not be the right area for this but- I have a collection of Charlie Chan Sunday Newspaper strips from 1939 to 1941. Can I upload this to the "unsorted" area for someone to take a look at it? They look like they're from paper, but I need someone else to look to be sure. Thanks everybody & hope they are OK.

Title: Re: Charlie Chan Sunday Newspaper Strips 1939-1941
Post by: Yoc on August 29, 2012, 11:35:23 AM

Grant,
you can upload a single strip here in a reply under 'additional options' at the lower left.

We ask uploaders to please check the PD status using JohnC's tutorial on the topic here:
http://digitalcomicmuseum.com/forum/index.php/topic,2452.0.html

Charlie Chan would likely be still under copyright if I had to guess.
-Yoc

Title: Re: Charlie Chan Sunday Newspaper Strips 1939-1941
Post by: ottawagrant on August 30, 2012, 05:33:02 AM

Here's a Sample, there are 148 files (divided into 3 years) 1939 to 1941. I thought they might be OK because of Charlie Chan comics on the site. If you'd like them all, let me know.

Title: Re: Charlie Chan Sunday Newspaper Strips 1939-1941
Post by: Yoc on August 30, 2012, 08:37:21 AM

If these originate from a newspaper syndicate then their status is far harder to determine OG.
I can barely see a McNaught (?) Synicate Inc. on the bottom of the second last panel.  I'm not an expert or collector of newspaper strips. 
Hopefully someone more knowledgeable will see this.

For now please hold off uploading them.

Title: Re: Charlie Chan Sunday Newspaper Strips 1939-1941
Post by: John C on August 30, 2012, 03:41:58 PM

Actually, strips themselves are a pretty serious pain.  Comic books are periodicals, so we can look for issues by year and title.  Comics strips are "contributions to periodicals" (every single installment, by the way), so they're looked up by year and...copyright holder.  Creator?  Artist?  Home newspaper?  Syndicate?  Some homeless dude standing on the streetcorner ranting about the nigh-ness of the end of the world?  Maybe.

And if there's no copyright statement on the script, it's in a bunch of periodicals.  Are any of the newspapers still under copyright?  I don't think anybody has given much thought to whether the paper's copyright would extend to a contribution like that, but I wouldn't bet against it.

Plus, while McNaught isn't around anymore (they folded in the '80s), they handled a lot of high profile properties, like Dear Abby, Dale Carnegie, and Heathcliff, making copyrights likely something they handled well.  That's not definitive, obviously, but the effort involved in the research combined with a probable result makes most strips a low-priority search for us.

Title: Re: Charlie Chan Sunday Newspaper Strips 1939-1941
Post by: Yoc on August 30, 2012, 04:15:16 PM

Thanks John!
That was such a good answer I'm going to paste it over into the FAQ section.

Title: Re: Charlie Chan Sunday Newspaper Strips 1939-1941
Post by: ottawagrant on August 31, 2012, 07:38:46 AM

Thanks everyone- I think I'll just put those back on the hard drive & forget about it. Sorry I didn't have something the site could use.

Title: Re: Charlie Chan Sunday Newspaper Strips 1939-1941
Post by: John C on August 31, 2012, 10:01:22 AM

Never a problem (heh--especially when we don't have to do any work!), and the thought is always certainly appreciated.

Title: Re: helping DCM
Post by: Yoc on August 31, 2012, 10:18:42 AM

Grant is a financial donor to DCM which is always needed and welcome.  So no worries OG, you've been a big help to us already.
:)