| Posted: 11 December 2024 at 7:04pm | IP Logged | 5
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Eric Jansen: "...Captain (Shazam) Marvel is already in the public domain. So are Plastic Man and Archie Andrews..."
Much more complicated than that. Currently, no, those characters are NOT in the public domain. Some if the earliest comic books stories featuring them are no longer protected by copyright. Not the same thing. The characters themselves are still protected by both copyright and trademark, and as far as copyright protection, will be for a number of years still to come. It's weird, but think of it as how the Max Fleisher Superman cartoons are public domain, but Superman as a character is not (yet).
And as for DC deciding after decades to stop calling the original Captain Marvel by his actual name, even inside the comic book itself, they brought that on themselves, ironically through their battle with Fawcett Comics over copyright infringement.
DC/National Comics doggedly went after Fawcett claiming copyright infringement of Fawcett's Captain Marvel character and that of Superman. Of course, most superheroes were derivative of Superman, but DV seemed to go after Fawcett the hardest because, frankly, for a time. Captain Marvel outsold Superman. Interestingly, as I recall, Captain Marvel actually flew before Superman (who leaped very high, not flew, until his cartoons).
By the mid-1950s, with the comics market in a slump, Fawcett no longer saw it profitable to keep publishing Captain Marvel, anyway, and ceased publishing the line of titles. Trademarks are not copyrights, though people confuse this all the time. So, Fawcett retained its copyright, but you have to use a trademark or risk losing it. Since they no longer published a title "Captain Marvel", they lost the trademark.
By the mid-1960s, with the trademark now expired on Captain Marvel, Myron Fass's M.F. Publications grabbed it, along with other names for which the trademark lapsed (you can't copyright a name, only trademark it), and put out a short-lived "Captain Marvel" character of its own. The company didn't last long, and Marvel swooped in and trademarked "Captain Marvel," which it has kept up to this very day.
In the 1970s, DC originally licensed, not outright owned, the Fawcett version of Captain Marvel. But, due to their own legal actions against Fawcettyears earlier, ironically (perhaps deservedly), DC could not call the new title "Captain Marvel," though the character could be called that in the comic itself. So, they took a word most associated with the character, the magic word he used to transform from Billy Batson into the superhero, and the nsme of the wizard that granted him his powers, "Shazam" and made that the trademarked title.
Many of kids and adults since the 1970s confused the title with the character, especially with the Saturday morning live action program being prominent, and thought the character's name was actually "Shazam." After decades, DC apparently realized Marvel was never letting go of the trademark and officially renamed Captain Marvel as "Shazam".
It's a convoluted mess, but technically DC can still call Captain Marvel "Captain Marvel," but they can't have a title by that name due to trademark law. They just got tired if having to dance around the legal intricacies.
One last thing about copyright law on entertainment media that is similar, but not comic book related: The Beverly Hillbillies first couple of seasons fell into public domain for some reason (I haven't looked deep into why). So, you can find those seasons in various cheap home video compilations. However, the music used in those episodes, including the theme song, is still copyright protected, which means the companies releasing those episodes on home video have to replace that audio. And later seasons are still copyright protected.
Ah, the complexities of copyrights.
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