r/publicdomain

SOURCE: File:Doorbell Chud - Full Original Unedited Ring Doorbell Encounter Without Commentary.webm - Wikimedia Commons

Dracula, Frankenstein, and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde are the films, all from 1931. Three calendar months from today, all three enter the American public domain.

Feel free to use, this Sunday strip and all 1932 strips didn’t have their copyrights renewed from what I heard so this would be a good meme photo to sell on t shirts I guess?

It's about four American girls that go to France to nurse the British soldiers in 1914. It's a coming to age story as they leave their homes for the first time to help with the war effort when the U.S. wasn't in the war yet. They deal with spies, confidents, and romance as they learn to live in this new life they joined. (Not all of the scenes go together so I might be a little off)

Animator - Harlion

Mrs. Thornton Voice Actress - Jessica H.

(If you want to support me you can here at my kofi - https://ko-fi.com/seanwarner)

Spy Smasher is one of the Fawcett Comics heroes whose Golden Age incarnation is available for public-domain reuse, and several publishers have taken advantage of that.

AC Comics has reprinted original Fawcett Spy Smasher stories in collections of Golden Age material.

Gwandanaland Comics and Retro Comic Reprints have also published large collections of the original public-domain material, including stories from Whiz Comics and Spy Smasher’s own Fawcett title.

Image Comics used Spy Smasher in a cameo in the first issue of its Next Issue Project, which revived obscure Golden Age characters by continuing public domain comic books with new issues.

A more ambitious modern reuse comes from Public Domain Super Heroes, which publishes new Spy Smasher stories. Its version keeps Alan Armstrong as a rogue anti-spy operative but gives him a grim and gritty modern history. The publisher says its version is based only on public-domain material.

DC still uses its own version of Spy Smasher purchased from Fawcett Publications, so public-domain publishers have to avoid copying its changes to the character.

Seems like every few weks somebody brings up King Kong, and the discussion degenerates into nearly endless arguments based on something somebody read on the Internet vs something else somebody read on the internet.

If you want to get the real story, the full text of *Universal v RKO* is available on the Internet Archive, here: https://archive.org/details/1981-01-05-universal-v.-rko-documents/1981-01-05%20Universal%20v.%20RKO%20Documents/mode/1 .

Includes backstory, transcripts, a witness being late for court because he needed to move his car, and most importantly, the rulings for all the claims and counter-claims relevent to the question.

The court is unambiguous: The novel and magazine serialization are public domain. The court explains in detail *why* this is so, and summarily dismisses arguments against it, even voiding a renewal certificate issued to Wallace's heir.

Further, the court specifically states--without any wiggle room--that Universal is entitled to make a film based on the book.

It's pretty much a comprehensive win for the public domain.

It's long, but worth reading.

I’m looking forward to Waterloo Bridge, the earliest film version of the more famous one from 1940. It was directed by James Whale, who also directed Frankenstein, and starred Mae Clarke, who played Elizabeth in Frankenstein and had a grapefruit smashed in her face by James Cagney in The Public Enemy (which are much more well known works also entering the public domain in 2027). The 1940 film is also a favorite of mine, so it’s interesting to see an earlier version entering. A young Bette Davis also has a small role here.

In short, its a comedy series about public domain cartoons living in the modern day, with a Simpsons-esque tone & humor style.

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The three witches in Tollmire, the dice roguelike I'm making, are cut

from this print: "Witches: five silhouetted figures", an aquatint by

Matthew Dubourg after silhouettes cut by Miss Barbara Anne Townshend,

published by Edward Orme in London on 1 September 1815. The Wellcome

Collection has a high-resolution scan.

What I like about it: she didn't draw those figures, she cut them out

of black paper. The plate comes from her own book, "The Art of Cutting

out Designs in Black Paper", and her advice in the introduction was to

"cut the general outline in a rough manner, and correct and finish

them afterwards". Which is exactly what I ended up doing with her

figures, 211 years later, with a mouse. In the game the witch changes

as the tolls get steeper — three of her five figures, one for each

third of a run.

The reeds and bulrushes at the edge of the bog come from Otto Wilhelm

Thomé's "Flora von Deutschland, Österreich und der Schweiz" (1885),

plates 44 and 65, drawn by Walter Müller. Cutting those out was the

hard part, because the plants run right off the edge of the plate.

Not everything is that old: the moon is NASA's photo of the 10 August

2014 supermoon, taken by Bill Ingalls.

About Townshend herself I found very little — Sue McKechnie's

silhouette reference calls her "an extremely able cutter, talented and

inventive", and the earliest trace of her is a scrapbook she gave her

god-daughter in 1805. If anyone knows more about her, or whether the

1815 edition of her book is digitised anywhere, I'd like to hear it.

1. The full plate, 1815 (Wellcome Collection).

2. Three of the five witches, cut out for the game. The bog witch gets older as the tolls rise.

3. Common reed, plate 63 in Thomé's Flora (1885), drawn by Walter Müller.

4. Recoloured for the Steam store art.

5. Nothing was redrawn. In the game. Moon: NASA/Bill Ingalls. Background photo: Michael Savidge, CC BY 4.0, cropped and toned.

Steam page: https://store.steampowered.com/app/5314250/Tollmire/?utm_source=reddit&utm_campaign=sources