Some possibly unsurprising news about Tintin as the comic enters public domain in 2025
Polygon seems to be gushing over the news of E.C. Segar's Popeye entering into public domain in 2025, along with George Remy's Tintin, all for the sake of horror movies starring the former. But this puff piece does have some eyebrow raising details about the latter I'm not sure I was clearly aware of before:
As for Popeye, what the writer says next is pretty tasteless:
Tintin, the seminal hero of the pulp genre of boy adventurers, enters the United States public domain in 2025, though in a way that probably wouldn’t please his creator Hergé very much. Not necessarily because the cartoonist would be angry at other folks being able to legally make Tintin stories — but because the Tintin story entering the public domain is among his least favorite ones.If this is factual, it could definitely explain why the lenient approach to South American communism in the last official story Remy produced, Tintin and the Picaros, in the mid-70s. It may not have been intended to be the last Tintin adventure in actuality, but if we looked upon it that way, Remy sure did something very insulting to the intellect towards the end of his career. Which would only raise the question as to why should we even care what becomes of Tintin going forward, except maybe that it wouldn't be good at all if leftists took advantage of the new public domain status for the sake of producing mega-marxist propaganda through a modern lens? So, maybe it would do some good if a decent writer developed a tale presenting Tintin in a more positive view, and even gave him a girlfriend for a change. That could actually be doing some good.
On Jan. 1, 2025, works first published in 1929 (and sound recordings from 1924) will enter into the public domain in the United States, and that includes a good portion of Tintin in the Land of the Soviets, a work of explicit and broad anti-Soviet/Marxist propaganda that Hergé was so embarrassed by that he refused to allow it to be reprinted for 40 years.
As for Popeye, what the writer says next is pretty tasteless:
What would this writer like to see in the public domain in 2025? Maybe our universal agreement that, in the pursuit of something to do with newly public domain art, low-budget horror is low-hanging fruit. (Of course we are getting Popeye the Slayer Man in 2025.)Well if that's signaling support for something that's actually hurtful to Segar's famous strip, that's very sad, but unsurprising coming from such an otherwise insufferably leftist news site. Since we're on the topic, Axios says 3 horror thrillers are in preparation, and if so, that's 3 times the bad news. The article does note, however, something interesting about Buck Rogers:
Fun fact: The character Buck Rogers "first appeared in 1929 and is public domain in 2025, but technically the futuristic space hero has already been copyright-free for decades, despite claims that he was still copyrighted," Jenkins writes.I vaguely recall seeing the semi-successful TV show starring Arkansas native Gil Gerard from 1979-81, one of the first TV series the late comics writer Martin Pasko worked on back in the day (he also worked afterwards on Simon & Simon). The concept of a pilot who wound up in suspended animation in an era several years ahead, and woke up Rip Van Winkle style a few centuries later, does have potential for fun adventure, but what if Buck ends up following Popeye and company into becoming victimized by horror filmmakers to boot? Then all that potential will have gone to waste in the worst ways. Therefore, I hope there's sensible creators out there who'll take the challenge of developing new stories starring Buck Rogers and Wilma Deering written in good taste for a change. Responsibility is what we need now from anybody who cares about classic pop culture.
"This is because the copyright registration for the Buck Rogers comic strip was not renewed, so that its copyright expired after 28 years. Also, the original version of the character was actually introduced in a novella as 'Anthony Rogers' in 1928; that character has long been public domain as well."
Labels: animation, comic strips, Europe and Asia, history, msm propaganda
