VP291 === [00:00:00] Introduction and Personal Updates --- Mav: Hello, and welcome back to VoxPopcast, the weekly pseudo academic roundtable of pop culture analysis with drinking and swearing. My name is Christopher Maverick, but you can call me Mav, and I am once again here with my co host, Wayne Wise. Hey, Wayne, how's it going? Good, how are you, Mav? Oh, tired. I'm exhausted. It is, I don't know. It's a weird thing to complain about when, like, I, I basically have my dream job. Like it's, I worked real hard to get this job and, you know, and my job is to sit around and talk about pop culture and comics all day with students. And, you know, I did that and now I'm tired. Dave: And Alexander wept for there were no more world to conquer. Oh, right. Mav: Right, exactly. That's how I'm doing. How about you, Liam? I'm fine. That sounded very convincing. I hope you're fine. Yeah, I'm good. Guest Introduction and Previous Appearances --- Mav: Well, we should introduce the disembodied voice. Well, I'm a disembodied Dave: voice. Mav: I'd like to re welcome to the pod it's been a while since you were on this show. This is A. David Lewis. You've been on Several times before, but I think it's been, I think it's been like a couple of years since you were on VoxPop, hasn't it? I think it's been a year Dave: or two. I'm pretty sure I did one sometime during COVID, but not quote unquote post COVID. So it's nice to be back. Mav: Thank you. Post COVID. Yeah, you should come back. So Dave, you were perfect for this because you were one of the people who first brought it to my attention or actually [00:02:00] not brought it to my attention because it was an idea that we knew about, obviously. And then if people have read the blog, they'll understand where we're about to go. But if you haven't read the blog, we need to like sort of preface this conversation. Discussion on Public Domain Storytelling --- Mav: So we were talking about public domain storytelling. The impetus for this was comics originally. And when the story that broke happened, oh, I guess it's been about a month now, a month and change, it was early October, I believe, Dave wrote me and said, Hey, are you guys going to do a show about this? And, you know, we were talking about it. And the thing is, for the specifics of the original story, I wasn't sure if there was enough for a show. But I think the case brings to mind talking about a bunch of other stuff. So I guess we can talk a little about what happened and why it's an interesting topic. The Case of Bill Willingham and Fables --- Mav: This is about public domain and in particular, the story of Bill Willingham. Who is the author, and I'm going to use the word in quotes, creator of the comic book series Fables. And I guess over the course of many years, Fables wrapped up publication, I think, in like 2015. And even before it was done, there was a constant sort of back and forth sort of war over. Who owns the comic? Who owns publishing rights? Who owns the trademarks over the characters between Willingham and DC Comics? If you know anything about comics history, this is not remotely new. This is a problem. The Complexities of Copyright and Trademark --- Mav: It goes back, you know, to 1939 with Superman and probably before, but like the question of creator's rights versus the company ownership of IP. And Willingham got frustrated to the point that he, I guess, talked to his lawyers, like reading his statement. Definitely, he didn't come up with this by himself. He definitely talked to some lawyers. And he published an open letter wherein he said he [00:04:00] was releasing his entire creation, all of Fables, which is a series that ran for like a decade, into the public domain. Which is an interesting choice that it's not clear if he can legally do, but he says he can. He says, because I'm doing this, Anybody can now write stories in the Fables universe. And there's nothing DC can do to stop you because I own the trademark, or at least I did, but now I'm releasing it to the public domain. So now the people own the trademark. What makes it The Impact of Public Domain on Character Creation --- Dave: extra slippery, I think, for anyone that's not familiar with Fables, with the series, is that it's all based on public domain, grim fairy tale characters that he has revamped, that he has given a modern edge to and talked about them being exiled from their native fairy tale lands. I mean, it's a little like if people aren't familiar with it, take Shrek and take out the humor and add some sex appeal. Mav: Or the TV show Once Upon a Time. There are many of this is not new, and that's why it's fascinating because he says he's releasing it. By the way, obviously, this was big talk in the comic book world for literally 24 hours until or not even like 18 hours until the next morning when DC Comics could get their lawyers together to release a statement of basically the hell you say. Uh, you know, no, Fables is not in the public domain, we own the subject matter. Wayne: Slightly more legal terms than that, yes. Mav: Yes, slightly, but basically, they basically released a statement of bullshit, no it's not in the public domain, he does not have the rights to do this, and And they will argue this out forever, but that's where it stands as of a month ago. And I didn't think that was interesting enough. Like their fight is what it is and who knows how it's going to land. And like, there's been some people who are like, yay, Bill Willingham. You know, he's fighting for the little guy, which if you know his politics, he is not, he [00:06:00] is fighting for himself. But I do think he has an interesting case. But I agree with Dave. It is more interesting in that, like, I understand where the law allows either Willingham or D. C. to have a copyright on the concept of Bigby Wolf, a character who is clearly the Big Bad Wolf. But it feels ethically nebulous. Yeah. Is that Dave: fair? The Legalities and Ethics of Public Domain --- Dave: There's no legal expert, certainly. But I think one compounding problem here is I'm not sure an author can release things. To the public domain. That is to say, they can decide not to uphold their copyright if someone tries to reprint their material or do a riff on their material, but it's sort of, and Mav, we joked about this, that it's sort of Michael Scott from The Office. Just yelling out, I DECLARE BANKRUPTCY, without, without there being really any legal mechanism for it, short of 95 years of publication. And death. Mav: Like, I mean, 95 years of publication, if it belongs to DC, and if it belongs to him, he has to die. You know? Like, in order to start the clock. So, it's not clear that he can do that. Though, it is also weird in that you can publish something that is in the public domain if you creative commons it. So there is that, you know, there are ways you can, you can certainly, it's how open source software works, right? If I write software that is in the creative commons, I write it for the public domain. Then it is as such, and you can open source something afterwards, but the nebulous part where I'm fuzzy on it, at least legally, and this is where the courts are going to argue, is he is at least claiming that he knows he doesn't own the copyright outright. That belongs to the publisher. [00:08:00] He, he says he understands that. But he's claiming that he owns the trademark to the characters, not the copyright. But trademarks and copyrights are different. And Creative Commons is about copyright. Like he's using, well, this is different because I own the trademark. So because I'm only in the trademark, now I'm going to do this more copyright kind of thing. And I don't know how any of that works. And I don't think you can unring Dave: that bell if you don't originally produce it. Again, like you said, with the Creative Commons license saying it's open to all, if it's originally copywritten or copyrighted written, um, I'm not sure you can then undo that Mav: prematurely. I believe you can because that's how software works often. People often open source their software after the fact. I don't, but again, none of us are lawyers and do not trust us. Dave: No, do not mistake Mav: us for lawyers. But again, That's not even like, this would be an interesting fight if it were Willingham had created just some random superhero for DC comics, but he didn't. We are literally arguing about, or he is arguing about the concept for characters that started in the public domain and then they created a copyrightable version of them, right? Like. Like, so the main characters of Fables, there's many characters, but the main characters are literally the Big Bad Wolf and Snow White, right? Is that fair? Like, there's also Cinderella. I'd say they're the biggest two. Yeah, they're the focus pretty much from beginning to end. And, you know, both of those characters have existed in the public domain. For a couple of centuries now, for literally a couple hundred years. So, you know, he has a version of Snow White that inherits from the classic storyline of And the Seven Dwarves and also the much less known but still classic story of Anne Rose Red, her sister.[00:10:00] So that's something. And he has a version of the Big Bad Wolf that inherits from Three Little Pigs and from Goldilocks and, you know, other wolf based stories. Red Riding Hood. Red Riding Hood. I said Goldilocks. I meant Red Riding Hood. Yes. So he's got a version of those characters. But, like, I remember watching The Charmings, which was a sitcom that I loved as a kid. The Potential of Public Domain in Different Mediums --- Mav: Yes, I saw that. It lasted for like two minutes, you know. And then we had Once Upon a Time, which was what was popular. There have been lots of grown up versions of fairy tales. There's, I mean, Disney has made their entire career over using public domain characters to make mega blockbusters in their cartoon series, you know, like The Little Mermaid, Snow White, whatever, right? And Disney runs into this all the time. And Disney... Owns the copyright on the Snow White that appears with Dopey and Doc and Bashful and, you know, the one that has the most classic version of what Snow White is, and they own the copyright on the most classic version of what we think of as Gemini Cricket and Pinocchio. But those are not the original characters. They very recently, Winnie the Pooh entered the public domain, and hence the film that came out earlier this year of Blood and Honey, which, you know, everyone loved, everyone. I love the Blood and Honey horror movie, Dave: yes, it tanked Mav: phenomenally because it's a film that exists purely to do something with the public domain characters. So, you know, you always had the right to, like, he can't give us the right to do something with the Big Bad Wolf. You always had that right. Wayne: We could do something right now. Yes. You know, we could create our own version of that at this moment. And The Influence of Public Domain on Modern Comics --- Mav: what makes it interesting, his version is... Human ish looking, but like that's been done before, that's easy enough to do. The TV show Grimm did that literally all the time as well. Oh, that's right. Dave: Yeah, I forgot about Grimm. Mav: Mm hmm. So it's not enough to make it human. It's not enough to put it in modern times, because again, both Once Upon a Time and Grimm and the Charmings have all done that. So, so what is it that he's actually [00:12:00] releasing? I don't know. They're sort of, I mean, Dave: I didn't read fables from cover to cover, but I read enough of it to, the con, the conceit behind it, is that these fairy tale characters are in exile from their homeland, and I guess if you want to operate Bye! Bye. In that universe, that's the wrinkle that he added that they are not in their native homes anymore, but are somehow, and from what I vaguely remember, Geppetto was a bad guy and pursued them or something. Wayne: I actually, before all this broke, I actually reread that entire series the same time. And I, I, you know, for the most part, I, I'm a fan. I like the series a bit and he, he has some really interesting takes on characters. Yeah. And spoilers for something that I reread anything with that link. There's some story arcs I like better than others. And some characters I like better than. But he did interesting takes on them. He took a lot of the basic ideas, he stood them on their heads, making Big Bad Wolf, who is a villain in all the fables, making him one of the heroes, certainly. Yeah, there were a number of storylines where not the big names were characters like Little Boy Blue, who appears in One Nursery Rhyme, and Frog Prince, and Mufkin, who is one of the flying monkeys from the Wizard of Oz. And he does massive storylines with all three of them, making them the really sort of grandiose heroes. And I found that interesting, taking the lesser known characters, creating these kind of unexplored little things, something that goes with them. I found that fascinating. So, yeah, I guess I'm just talking about the series rather than the copyright stuff. But they're all cool. Because he certainly, his The Challenges of Navigating Copyright Laws --- Wayne: version of Little Boy Blue is not really based on the poem. Other than the nursery rhyme, other than the name. That's the only connection there is whatsoever. So if you and I wanted to do a story about that Dave: version of Little Boy Blue, Mav: I'm sure DC would come knocking. Well, would they? [00:14:00] So here's the question I'm asking. Because all he's I mean, all he's really doing is he's giving people his explicit permission to do fanfic, which. You don't Wayne: need explicit Dave: permission. Oh, Mav: I mean, you sort of do, right? Fanfic is nebulously illegal, but like the industry, particularly the geekier industries, understand where their bread is buttered and they know not to like, like they know to look the other way. Technically speaking, most things on archive of our own are violations of copyright and trademark. They are intellectual property violations. That you could be sued for, but DC, Marvel, Disney, all these companies know that, Hey, people are doing this out of love. And the people who are writing these stories are literally our biggest fans. So maybe we won't sue them. Maybe we will just, yeah, let's leave it alone. Right. And keep making money. Yeah. So, you know, so like he's doing that. He's also, I think he's arguing that, Hey, you can make a story about Bigby Wolf and you can film it and you can release it in theaters and you can make your billions and billions of dollars and you don't owe DC any money. And DC would say, again, the hell you don't, right? So like anybody who would be insane to. Actually put money into trying to test this legally, I guess. Yeah, I guess he's giving Dave: everyone just enough rope to hang themselves with. Like, please go right ahead. Be my guest, because he's not going to pursue any legal actions. My guest, Mav: be my guest. Yeah, I mean, and I don't know, man, it's just like, like I. First off, I don't necessarily want to, and I think this is the difference between someone who has aspirations of being a writer and someone, I mean, a professional writer and someone who's just into fanfic. The Role of Fan Fiction in Public Domain --- Mav: They have ideas for grown up, fractured fairy tales. I don't want to tell them in Willingham's world. I, like, [00:16:00] why would I want to be, why would I want to be tied down to his mythology? It's he has an interesting mythology, but I could also just do what I want to do. Right. Like, and not be tied to stuff that he wrote. So the only Dave: benefit that you would gain is the what? Notoriety or the five minutes of notice that, look, someone is actually moving on the Fable's property. Like you would be a provocateur. Mav: So, so I got to be first then, because no one cares about the second guy who doesn't. So Wayne: if we, before moving this conversation into a longer, bigger topic than just Willingham, talk about just nature of public domain, to probably give a definition of that and what we're talking about. We know what it is because we live in this world, but Dave: you Wayne: know, for our listeners who might Mav: not be as well versed. And again, not lawyers, and this is not limited to comic book stuff. In the simplest version, public domain stories are stories wherein the copyright has worn out because of copyright law has changed a couple times over the years, but stories where no living person in any longer owns the copyright. And so you can do whatever you want. There is no person on earth who can stop me from writing my own Snow White story. There is no person on earth who can anymore. Stop me from writing a Winnie the Pooh story, so long as I don't use Tigger, who is owned by the estate for another year, I think, or two years. I can't remember if it's one year or two years before Tigger, because Tigger doesn't appear in the first book, so Tigger is not in the public domain, but Eeyore and Pooh, so Tigger is not in Blood and Honey. Uh, Eeyore's in there, Pooh's in there, Piglet's in there, because they're all in the first book. Tigger doesn't show up to and Christopher Robin's in there. Tigger shows up later, so therefore he's not public domain yet. He will be in the next release, which is, like, he'll and I'm sure they'll make a sequel, because [00:18:00] it costs them The sequel, right? Yeah, and it costs them 5 to make these movies. So that will he'll show up, and that is a thing that you can do. In the geek world, Alan Moore loves this concept. Alan Moore's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is based on public domain characters. Alan Quartermain, Mina Harkness from Dracula, who else is in that? The Invisible Man, Captain Nemo. Jekyll and Hyde. Yeah, yeah, so these are characters that are in League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. He also has his Lost Girls series as Alice from Alice in Wonderland, Dorothy Gale from Wizard of Oz. And Wendy from Peter Pan. So he's done this, and of course, I can make my own Peter Pan. Lots of people have made Peter Pan movies. The Use of Public Domain Characters in Personal Works --- Mav: The version everyone knows might be the Disney version, but there have been lots of attempts to do new versions of this franchise. I can do Pinocchio, I can do... So nursery rhymes are in the public domain. There are early 20th century things late, you know, all the late 19th century and early, you know, things are in public domain, but throughout the 20th century, we changed the copyright laws a few times. So where copyright used to last, I'm not going to go into the specifics of the laws, but it used to last a couple of decades. Now it's like a hundred years. So, so like, it's not, so Wayne: I think like Sherlock Holmes is public Mav: domain. Most of it, not all of it, all the rest of the stories, but yeah, there's a, so those things can happen and it also varies by country. So something, sometimes you'll have something that will go into public domain in Britain, but not yet in America, or maybe it's the other way around. I can't remember which one's longer. I think, I think America's is a slightly longer than the UK is. And there used to be a thing where you would Dave: have to renew the spirit. Mav: 95 years for things that are corporately owned. 95 years after the death of the author for things that are owned by individuals. [00:20:00] So it's weird, right? Like, there's a lot, there's lots of weirdnesses to this. And, you know, for the most part. Things that are recent, you know, you can't write your own Harry Potter story. She just owns that. You can't write your, I mean, you can do a fanfic, but like, technically it's illegal. And if, and if she wanted to sue you for damages, she could. Interestingly enough, you cannot do, for instance, in the world of superheroes, you can't do your own Superman, but you can do a Superman like character. You can't do your own Mickey Mouse until next year, when Steamboat Willie falls into the public domain. Dave: Last week tonight with John Oliver has already started playing with that. Mav: They're using parody law in order to keep themselves like, but he's specifically said that, I mean, he's going out of his way to like irritate Disney cause he wants to take advantage of it. And he, and parody law is allowing him to get away with it, even though. Technically, Steamboat Willie won't be in the public domain for another, it's November 3rd as we record this, so for, you know, a month and 27 days, that's when it goes into the public domain. You can make a Dave: Steamboat Willie advent calendar. You can start ticking down. Mav: But like, even those, right? Like, when Steamboat Willie goes into the public domain, You will be able to use Mickey Mouse as he appeared in Steamboat Willie, but not the later versions of Mickey. Now, like, he didn't have the white gloves yet. So there are particulars about the way he was drawn are later additions that you will not be able to use. And Disney will have Dave: some sort be wearing the Mav: wizard hat. Yeah, yeah. But you can make him a wizard. Based on a different wizard based on the original appearance, it's going to be crazy. And I'm really looking forward to seeing because Disney is litigious. And, you know, they but they will do things. They will protect [00:22:00] themselves if they feel like you are damaging their property. But. You know, they do still have trademark on Mickey Mouse, but they don't, they won't have copyright on the original appearance of Mickey Mouse anymore, which will be interesting because Disney made their fortune basically adapt. The Impact of Copyright Laws on Academic Publishing --- Mav: They didn't make their fortune from Mickey Mouse. They made their fortune originally from Snow White and then adapting lots of public domain characters. So, you know, I sort of appreciate the I appreciate the irony. Yeah. The weirdness of companies like Disney or Warner Brothers, which Warner Brothers for people who don't know. Owns DC, and therefore they control, ultimately control the ownership of fables through, you know, a conglomerate of corporations. So, but like, ugh, you know, they clearly, like, I don't know how you ever solve this, right? Because they've also got characters in, in the Sandman universe that are based on fairy tale characters. I don't know. Dave: Not only that, they have characters from, like, Nordic Mav: mythology. Also, all public domain. Wayne: Yeah, yeah, Marvel and DC have both huge characters. Oh sure, Mav: yeah, there's Hercules and Thor in both universes that are different, like, Thor and Hercules of the DC universe are different than the characters that appear in the Marvel universe, and... You can Dave: tell them apart because one of them has Avengers ID and the other doesn't. Mav: And, I mean, then you have like characters like... Eric Larson, who does Savage Dragon for Image Comics, he's also used those characters, and he is very much also doing parody and making fun of their appearances in the Marvel and DC world, but he is doing something that is legally distinct in his own, so, Dave: you know. I think, if you ever read the series Cerberus, by Dave Salem. Yes, there's an interesting case. I mean, he is in self a weird guy. Yes. Interesting how he would parodize all sorts of other [00:24:00] characters from other companies. And yet he got into his own legal mix. I want to stay with McFarlane and Todd McFarlane when He was doing work for hire for him, so he got like, it became like an Ouroboros, like, eating its own tail. Mav: You know, it is going to be very weird. I wanna, I don't know, I don't know how the Willingham case ends, but the ramifications of it are huge. Not because I feel like anybody, and maybe there are people who want to make a fables movie. Without going to DC, but like, I can't imagine anybody who has the money to actually build a, you know, a theatrical release film is going to risk that money on, like, Disney is not trying to do this. Right. And frankly, Dave: What about something like, like a podcast of Fable's podcast or a Fable's stage play or a Fable's operetta? I mean, I'm just thinking. If they wanted to take the actual material and transpose it into another medium, that they can't do. Mav: Because that's a violation of, that's a violation of Warner Brothers publishing. Like, they can't just take the stories published by Warner, by You know, DC, which is owned by Warner, and then do, can't just like make fables, the VoxPopcast audiobook and just like, you know, record everything that they've done and then sell it. That's clearly illegal. What I'm allowed to do is write the continuing stories of Bigby Wolf, at least according to Willingham. I'm allowed, I'm allowed to write my own stories and then DC can't stop me. But if I were going to do that and I really believed in my story, I just wouldn't do Big B. Wolf. I would make my own original like, which I could have done anyway. I'm sure there are tables, you know. Dave: I'm certain you would, but I can picture that person that is hungry enough to want to just launch off the coattails of this thing. And whether they're doing [00:26:00] it as a video game or as a podcast or as, I don't know, pantomime. As Mime Feeder, I can see someone out there saying the buzz, just the momentary buzz of me capitalizing on this is the boost The Potential Future of Public Domain --- Mav: I need. And you're willing to risk the fury of David Zaslav for Dave: it. I'm not, certainly, I've stayed pretty safe in whatever public domain works I've played with, but yeah, I can picture some of Mav: that. So we should, the reason Dave's here is like, you have written, I don't know what else to call it, public domain extension comics before. Dave: Yeah, yeah, it's fair to call it that. I've mined things from the public domain that I have brought back into print, I've tried to. resurrect after a fashion, uh, but for various reasons, not always for the same goal. I mean, sometimes it was because it hasn't been done in comics yet. Other times it's been because, uh, I wanted the legacy of the thing not lost to the public domain. In fact, NPR recently did a thing where they took an extremely obscure Public domain superhero and made it the mascot of one of their podcasts. So it can be that the character's name was Microface, and I'd never heard of him before. But when I did it with Kismet, Man of Fate, it was because I didn't want this character just lost to, you know, the sands of time. I wanted there to be something new on the market, if only to remind people. of the character who was the first Muslim superhero in comics in 1944. Mav: I guess in Wayne: comics, let's talk a little bit about, once again, that copyright thing. There's stuff in the public domain in terms of superheroes or characters from the 40s simply because the companies that own them haven't existed for 70 years. Characters have not, yeah, [00:28:00] characters have not been published, so, so that gets past the however many years copyright is. Mav: Right. Which at the time was like 20 and then you had to renew it and then the companies were out of business by the time the renewal came up. So like the 95 years thing is relatively new. That's like relatively, yeah, from the seventies. So, so like these companies from like 1941 who just did a, they did a five issue run and then they went out of business. There's just nobody there. There's nobody to, I mean, if, Wayne: if you just Google, you know, public domain superheroes, there's a huge list of them that any of us could do our versions of. And a lot of modern companies have a dynamite. Did Black Terror and Kama and the original Daredevil. And that, that was a case where he'd used the Daredevil Murdoch Marvel comics version of it, but they couldn't call him that because of the Marvel version. So it was published as the death, death defying devil, but those cop, those characters, when I can do a Black Terror comic, as Mav: long as we did Manamite's version. And there've been several companies that have done, so the Daredevil character that you're referring to. Who, if you've ever seen him, you know, he has like a red and I think it's supposed to be red and black, might be blue. There's always the, the question in comics of whether or not, like the bluish color is supposed to be black or not, but he is a split, he is a split bodied character that two tone character that I believe has appeared in Savage Dragon, I believe he's appeared in Astro City, maybe. He's been, he's been re rebooted by many, by many different comic book companies trying to like build on the legacy of this weird fan favorite character that just no one owns anymore. But then on top of that, like, FanForce has several characters that like different versions of like, they have the Blue Bulleteer, who is a version of Phantom Lady [00:30:00] that they could. You know, again, legally distinct enough for us to copyright, but it is just based on the original version of Phantom Lady, which is in the public domain. But most of Phantom Lady isn't. Most of Phantom Lady is currently owned by DC Comics. But because of this weird thing where certain things, companies would, you know, people would go out of business and no one was minding the store. You know, there are characters like that just sort of weirdly exist in. Dave: I'll tell you, I'll tell you a funny anecdote when I was first doing research on Kismet, because I was even unaware of him. I didn't grow up reading Kismet or anything. This is like, how many issues Mav: are there in the original series? Dave: Like four, just four. And he was, yeah, there were four issues of Bomber 1944. And he was one of a stable of heroes that they did adventures for. This was Gilberton. comics, and Gilbertin only survived or is, you know, remembered mostly for being the publisher of Classics Illustrated. It started as an imprint of the Elliott Publishing Company, then later became Gilbertin. And so we still have the Classics Illustrated. So I had to track down this whole thing. I became fascinated with it on an, on an academic level. But then when I started thinking about it creatively, like, ooh, what could I do with this character? This would be fun. Is there, are there more things to say with this character? I actually went to the current publishers of Classics Illustrated and basically asked for their blessing. said, I would like to do this. I think anyone has the right to, to do this. How would you feel about this? Mav: And they basically said, I don't want to have a fight. Dave: Yeah. I basically said, are you going to sue me if I do this? And they said, we're not going to sue you, but. It would be lovely if you paid us for it. And I said, wait a minute, hold on. You don't [00:32:00] have the right to this character. They didn't renew the copyright on any of the other titles except for Classics Illustrated. And so they let everything else lapse. And Wayne: so I said, wait a minute. So they can't charge you for something they don't own, right? You can't charge Dave: me for something you don't own. This is basically just me being, like, a generous soul. And I was not in any position to offer up just free money to them just so that we had happy feelings between us. And so I said, gosh, I'm sorry, I'm happy to credit the legacy of this and what you're doing in publishing now, but yeah, I'm not gonna pay for nothing. The Influence of Public Domain on Academic Criticism --- Dave: I'm not gonna pay for something that's free. Mm Mav: hmm. Hey, Wayne, you wrote, uh, you wrote a couple of books about King Arthur, right? Yeah, well, one very specifically. Dave: Well, it'd be lovely if you paid for it. Wayne: I'll be right back with my checkbook. Dave: Hold on. The King Arthur story. I mean, it's like payment. It suddenly needs to be from Wayne. A hundred years later. I was similarly careful, and I want to say... a little more reverential when I decided to work on an adaptation of Kahlil Gibran's The Prophet, which just turned a hundred years. It's a hundred year anniversary, 1923 to 2023. Knowing that Kahlil Gibran is a relatively well known Poet, philosopher, illustrator, painter, I really didn't want to run afoul of anyone, because I don't think anyone but the Classics Illustrated people were, even knew who Kismet was, whereas the Prophet is, like, an adored piece of work translated. Into dozens upon dozens of languages worldwide. So I had to tread much more carefully in, in putting that work together. But again, it's well within anyone's right to, especially as I [00:34:00] shifted media from Free verse poem to comic book adaptation, graphic adaptation with Graphic Monday. Maybe the shift in media made it a bit less precarious. I wasn't trying to republish a poem as it was without... It was absolutely Mav: transformative in, in, in your... Yes, it Dave: was. Yes, we were definitely transforming it. Justin Renteria, the illustrator, and I were definitely trying to... Do write by the original poem, not butcher it, not do anything violent to it, but at the same time, make it a new product. Do Mav: you really think that Classics Illustrated even knew that they owned Kismet? No. You said that, but you said no one else would have been aware of it. They have been aware of it if you hadn't said Dave: anything. Probably not. They probably knew somewhere in the recesses that Bomber Comics was something that they did. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. At some point, but they couldn't Mav: have named Dave: the characters that showed up. This wasn't even a titled character. This was one as part of an anthology. So, yeah, I don't think if I hadn't raised, raised it to them in good faith, you know, in like. Hi there, I want us to be friends. Yeah, I don't think they ever would have known otherwise. Mav: So as opposed to, again, the Prophet, I don't think is, you know, like, like, is there an estate that even could have sued you or tried to? The Role of Parody and Homage in Public Domain --- Mav: Like, they're clearly out of copyright. Like, there's, so there's no, because that book's from He said 1923, right? And yeah, that's right. He's been dead since the thirties. So like, yeah, Dave: he's been dead a long time and there is no family estate to speak of. Unlike, you know, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's family or Frank Baum's family that are trying to hold on to their respective properties. But I didn't know that he was, you know, [00:36:00] kind of a cherished figure. In Lebanon, in Paris, in New York, so I didn't want to invite, um, I Mav: said, we're not talking about just the legal, you're trying to show reverence to the fan base, to the community surrounding the work. You're trying to, yeah, to the legacy, keep it alive. Yeah. And to Yeah. Dave: That's the idea. And I mean, part of the whole reason was I wanted to celebrate the original poem. I wanted to do something. For the hundredth anniversary, not just be a profiteer, you know, not just, you know, ride the coattails here, but profiteer. I see what Wayne: you did there. Dave: Thank you. But actually have a reason for people to rediscover the original if it never crossed their path As I talk with. Some librarians, and I talked with some educators, they see this as a really great way into a first step towards the original poem, rather than starting with the original poem, show a visualization of it, show scenes that involve the original verse, and that might work out great. Ignite a well deserved interest in the original free verse that might not otherwise get picked up by the average reader. So yeah, it was very important that we, you know, did no violence, that we took a sort of comic book, Hippocratic oath, Justin and I, and the publisher, Graphic Mundi, who's been wonderful in all this, um, that, you know, first do no harm, that whatever We visualized or imagined wasn't something far away from what Gibran might have thought or wished for himself. He was both a writer and an illustrator himself, a painter and a charcoal artist. So I like to think [00:38:00] that if comics had been, you know, the comics as we know them today, had been a thing at the time. He would have given his own blessing to it. That would be my hope. I'll never get proof on that one way or the other, but I liked that as a guiding principle. Say you communed Mav: with the spirit, we'll buy it. Sure, yes. Dave: Gibran spoke to me. He came to me in a vision one night. I did actually do like a little mini pilgrimage. I live in the Boston area and Gibran did live here for a while as a child, as an immigrant. And so I went to the memorial for him and just, you know, sat around, took pictures, but just tried to just soak in anything I could. I have no quantifiable way of saying whether that made it to the final. Product or not, but it made me feel good to do and not feel like pirating something unduly. It's cool. You want to make sure we have it? So yeah, that's all I have to say about that. Mav: So one of the things we're talking about is, you know, we said we don't know that Willingham has the ability to stop anybody any way from doing He certainly doesn't have an ability to stop you from just writing a Snow White story. Anybody can do that. Or a Big Bad Wolf story. It's more about the connection to his world. But the weird thing is going to be, you know, we talked about this a little bit earlier, a lot of times people will do fan fiction because of a love of the property, right? So like, what I was getting at when I said, do I want to play in his world or do I want to write my own fairy tale story? My own... Modern incarnation of a fairy tale, like I don't want to stay in Willingham's world any more than I want to stay in, I don't know, Angela Carter's or Anne Rice did a version of Sleeping Beauty. I don't want to play with her version. I want to do my own, right? I don't want to do Disney's either. So, but then there certainly is the reason the fan fiction [00:40:00] world exists. The reason AO3 exists is because people have a love of the property, right? So sometimes you do just want to and I mean, I get this like I, you know, certainly I probably have a Superman story in my head or a Batman story or a Spider Man story, you know, so like, sure, I could write one of those. The Potential of Fan Fiction as a Response to Copyright --- Mav: And then the, you know, the copyright police would come if I tried to publish it, if I tried to make any money on it, so you end up with things like the Fifty Shades of Grey world, so for those who don't know, Fifty Shades of Grey started its reality as fanfic for Twilight, but then the more she worked on it, and the more And she got, she's like, well, maybe I could just write for real. And then, so she kept changing it, and it became more about BDSM and less about vampires. And then she changed all the names, and then eventually she just had her own little world, which now has people doing fanfic of their own, right? So, there's, I don't know, I mean, that's where I'm wondering, like, What is like there? I think I don't, we've done shows on Fanfic before. I don't want to disparage Fanfic. I think it's a art form. I think it's an important art form that gives people a connection with the material. I, I, I, I actually encourage it. I wish people did more of it. And I think, you know, Wayne: I grew up, you up with stories of my, my heroes and the internet allowed fan to spread. Right. You know, like when I was 10, I would write something and show it to my friend who read comics. So it's always been there. I certainly wasn't a threat to DC when I wrote Mav: my Batman. Right. Because, like, two people read it. Yeah, if that. Wayne: And, uh, but the, but the internet, you know, she loved it, by the way. But the internet allowed suddenly. My boy. He'll write a book someday. Um, but yeah, you know, the internet suddenly allowed millions of eyes to be early self practice. I'm still talking about fanfic. Um, but there is, there's that whole, and you know, in copyright law is [00:42:00] a certain level of, yeah, they look the other way, but if you're putting fanfic up on your blog and not making any money off of it, it's really. It's not really an issue for the company, copyright law. It boils down to, can someone mistake this for original? Does this compromise our trademark, our, our copyright, our ability to sell this product? And if I write a Batman story and put it up on my blog, everybody knows it's not Marvel. I mean, John Burnett in writing and drawing an ongoing X Men series and putting it up on his blog for years now. Yeah. Marvel Dave: does Mav: not suit him. Well, and he's. Certainly far above the notice of, like, if I did it, they wouldn't know and they wouldn't care. Right. In turn, they know, and it's literally just, like, I, essentially, it's at a world where it's just like, look, if it just, if it makes him happy and it, Makes the fans happy and no one has to deal with it. Like, as long as he doesn't make too much money, as long as he doesn't make a big stink of it, they're just letting it go because it's easier dealing with it. It's easier to do than anything else. So he's clearly in conflict. Oh yeah, Wayne: and what's the comic strip, that JL8, the comic artist by the name of E. L. Stewart, and it's, the premise of it is, it's the Justice League as eight year olds, and it's wonderful, it's so well drawn, but he just started doing this on his webpage, and it was originally called Little League, And Little League Baseball, cinema, cease and desist order. And it's marvelous, but it's still not officially, as far as I know, it's still not officially licensed by DC. They haven't put books out. The fact that they haven't just hired him to do a book is remarkable to me because it's better than a lot of what DC. Mav: Yes. It's brilliant. It's really, it's so Wayne: good. And he's still, you know, I, he's book, I, you know, I see him every week. Still coming out. Mav: So he's skirting the. Yeah, probably, Wayne: but it's not even, I don't necessarily see it as parody. I suppose Mav: it's a loving homage is what it is. Wayne: Yes. Oh my God. Yes, it's [00:44:00] absolutely. And you know, DC has done versions of Clark, Bruce and Diana when they were in middle school. I'd say the fact that they just haven't hired him to do this legitimate professional level is prime. Dave: Isn't the longest piece of English fiction. or English literature, currently a fan fiction piece. Do I remember? I'm pulling that somewhere out of the back of my head, but it's some like Smash Brothers workup. Yeah. Someone's got to check me on this, but I mean, the reason I bring it up is that copyright was originally proposed to protect the creator, not so that A corporation or a company could have a lockdown on something. Right. So that I don't create Superman one week and you start writing Superman stories the next week. And I'm just wondering if fanfic is the, you know, natural response to Copyright being largely taken over by publishers and corporations. If it's the freedom to create that copyright originally supported and endorsed. Mav: There's a few things. So, so I'm seeing the subspace emissaries world conquest is a fan fake loosely based on super smash brothers, and it is over. 3, 500, 000 words as of the post that I see from seven years ago, but I also just found a forum post from earlier this year, from March, talking about Loud House revamped in fanfiction. net by JamesDean5842, boasting a staggering 16 million words. That's Dave: astonishing. I mean, that's, that's... I mean, Mav: like, you deserve notoriety if you've written 16. Like, for anybody who's tried to do ever a, you know, like just a, I don't even know, like, like a NaNoWriMo or something like a to write a novel or something, or if you've [00:46:00] ever written a dissertation or if you've ever written anything of any substance. Like I have I teach classes where I have students who are terrified about the idea of writing a paper that's five pages long. You know, so that's like, 1200 words, like roughly right. It, it is 1300 ish. You know, somewhere in there. This is 16 million words. 16. I'm looking at it now. It is currently 16,777,215 words spread across 2,253 chapters. Bravo, sir. . Yeah. Dave: And Mav: yeah, and it, it is, I don't even know what it's based on, I believe. Probably everything, you know, you know, at this point, because like, why wouldn't it be? I don't know that anybody's really I mean, how would you even read this? Like, yeah, like it would take a lifetime to get through this. So I'm impressed by the ability to create it because even reading it would just take forever. So basically Dave: posing fan fiction as like. The sibling to public domain, like they both operate at opposite ends of this incredibly complicated and frankly artificial law. A law that was put in place not to protect corporations. to protect creators and either you work on something under copyright or outside of copyright or in violation of copyright, which fan fiction technically is, but it's not, it's not enforced. Wayne: It's, uh, and you're, and there is that difference between corporations taking advantage and just, you know, corporations should learn very early. If you, we publish your work, we own it, we own the copyright and they just, they didn't use your story. And everybody who worked in comics back then, or pretty much any other publishing thing, you know, Steve and Schuster weren't thinking about copyright and what this meant when they did it. They were just happy to make a Dave: sale. But the people, [00:48:00] Wayne: yeah, and, and, but the people running the magazine would see much farther ahead, understanding that if we own this, we can milk it for the rest of our natural Mav: lives. And they milk it more greater than they could have ever possibly dreamed. But that's part of, you know, yeah. That's part of the tragedy of it, right? Like, like, Siegel and Schuster were two, I mean, Wayne and I, we just did, and in fact, go back a couple episodes, you'll listen to us talking at the, the Superman conference in Cleveland. But one of the things, if you're a comic scholar, you know, it's not, like, they weren't screwed at the time in that they were two starving kids from Cleveland. who had been trying to get this story published for years. So basically, it was either take this money or take no money. It wasn't like they had an option of or do it yourself. So like they got something, but they they were Wayne: relatively well paid. Right. To a lot of people in Mav: Depression era America. Yes. But compared to what it would ultimately become. Right. Like, you know, a better, a fairer deal would have been. Literally 1 percent of all Superman sales ever and their, you know, their children wouldn't be working today, right? Like, like, like there's no, or their grandchildren, you know, like there's no good way of doing this that doesn't screw them other than like, sort of not having capitalism, which I'm all for, you know, but like, that's not the, the world we're living Dave: in. That's a little bit bigger than I think comics or even the publishing industry has to tackle. A total takedown of capitalism. Mav: You know, but if I can do it by copying fables, I guess go for it. Or rather, you should. Because I, I'm not, I don't You know, I'm a poor teacher. I can't afford to be sued. Conclusion and Final Thoughts --- Dave: Same here, man. Same here. Yeah, I don't have, I don't have it like Mav: that. You know, like I [00:50:00] live in a world where in, you know, Dave, you'll know this as well, right? I live in a world of academic publishing where Fair use laws exist specifically for academic criticism. Like it's written into the law very clearly. And yet I live in a world where we publish books and people are like, I don't know, do we want to put this, you know, you got, we've got this book about Spider Man, but do we really want to put his picture in there and, and, and risk having to deal with Marvel? Dave: And then the risk that he even appears on the cover, or the word Spider Man appears anywhere in the title. Yeah, it's a crazy dance that we do when we're trying to cover a subject that we have every right to cover and analyze. Even promote, even if it's a positive analysis and a worthwhile one. Literally Mav: our job, so, so currently I've talked about this on the show, I believe. Currently I'm working on a book on Batman, so it's not Marvel vs DC, but I'm working on an edited collection on Batman and Batman characters. And there's a very real question of, you know, how do we get approval to publish artwork? characters in this book about bat characters, literally, mostly lovingly, right? Like there's no, and by the way, I have no delusions. This is an academic, it's an academic text, right? You know, if it sold 5, 000 copies, I would. You know, cry and be like, Oh my God, Dave: it's so amazing. It's not going to put other, it doesn't jeopardize or risk the skills of any Batman titles being put out by DC, Mav: right? Right. Nope. Nobody's, nobody's going, well, we could see the next Robert Pattinson movie, but Mav's got this book of academic criticism, Dave: which one do you want to do? I don't know. Mav: Wouldn't it Dave: be amazing if your book kicked off a Bat Renaissance, if, like, [00:52:00] the main Batman properties in TV and film and print all got some bump because of an academic book? Mav: It is possible that I will outsell the... Domestic gross of the Flash. Dave: Oh, harsh. Mav: It's not true. I paid money to see that movie in theater, so I feel like I, I feel like I've bought the right to make one joke about it. It's about what they made. Oh, man, I did so poorly. So anyway, we've resolved nothing because we're now we're just. We've Dave: resolved nothing. Mav: It's I find it fascinating. I did want to talk a little bit about, like, the Fables case, just because it came up, and, I mean, it came up a month ago in our world, and it obviously wasn't important, like, literally when we were booking shows, it's like, do we want to talk about this? Yeah, okay, but, but I, but when? Because we'd rather kind of, you know, we really want to bump our, our, our killer show on. The Superman conference? No. You know, we just had other things that we had to like, keep like, sort of shoving inside. So it's like, it's a month ago, and I'm betting most listeners haven't even heard of the case because it was really big. It was really big and literally in the world of comic book criticism, academic comic book criticism. And even for us, This was a 24 hour news cycle. And then the story was done. I want to say Dave: 36 hours. Mav: Cause we had to have time for the, cause it was like the time that Willingham made his announcement. People talked about it for a day and then DC made their counter announcement. And then, you know, by the next morning we were done with it. We're just like, okay, I haven't heard any updates. I literally, so yeah, 36 hours, not quite. You're releasing the podcast so Dave: that when something. Huge comes over this, you can point right back to this episode. Yeah, we can revisit this, I Mav: guess. I mean, I don't know. I do think that the concept is important. I [00:54:00] not necessarily for doing fables or, you know, and God forbid anybody try to do their own Superman or their own. But like, I do think, for instance, Dave, what you've done is an interesting use of public domain law. And a good use of public domain law, like I, like, I would love it, it would be awesome to me if, if we did live in a world where people were routinely making Superman content that was published, you know, high quality Superman content that was published, and like, everybody was just cool with it, because honestly, I love JLE. I have no confusion whatsoever. I have an IQ over 10, you know, and I can understand that this little cartoon that I'm, that I read on the web is not in the same universe as, you know, there's no marketplace confusion. Like the only thing it's really doing is copyright law is just making PC money by. If anybody else wants to do anything, as I said, the Wayne: only confusion with JL8 is the, this isn't an officially licensed product, really? Mav: Why not? What's wrong with you? Right. Right. And it's sort of I mean, it's it is a weird way people attack things. And this is a different show. But, you know, we talked a little bit about, like, my definitely, and to a lesser extent, I'd say Wayne, but I think you're going to agree, my distaste for canon and like how I, you know, canon is, the idea of canon, canon is what I'm thinking about right now about this character. So, as far as I'm concerned, JL8 is just as much the real Superman as anything that's happened in Superman the movie. Or Smallville or the comic book ever, right? Some of those things more so. I don't care for, I don't care for the Superman portrayal in the Zack Snyder movies. I know some people do. I prefer the JL8 version to the Zack Snyder version. And so, like, is there marketplace confusion? No, I know that one's blessed by DC, one's not. But I also choose to just not care and I, like, and I don't, it doesn't confuse me any more than the fact that, [00:56:00] like, when I've watched my nephew, my eight year old nephew, talk about Superman and tell me a Superman story, I understand that his version is not being published by DC Comics and I'm fine. Like, I can work that out. I, you know, I, uh, it doesn't bother me. So therefore I do wish people were a little more relaxed about it because I would love to see more interesting content. And I just like people complain like, Oh, I need to know which one, you know, what's the real Star Wars continuity. What's the real, what's canon, what's not. But I don't think they really care. I think it's just part of the game is to track it. Because we somehow got Dave: through this whole podcast without saying the word multiverse. Right. Cause Mav: I don't care. Right. Right. I mean, I mean, now you might tell me a multiverse story. Like I liked the recent Spider Man movie. I loved everything everywhere all at once. Right? Like these are interesting things that you can do. If you're complaining about marketplace confusion with Marvel or DC, both of whom publish completely separate comic book universes. from film universes, and frankly, also multiple film universes for, for some of them and multiple comic universes. Like if Marvel can publish the Ultimate line and the 616 line and expect its fans to keep it straight, then they shouldn't really be worried about whether or not fans can understand something that's on archive of our own. And so they don't. I don't think they're worried. I don't Dave: think they're worried about fans understanding. I think they're worried about fans preferring. One makes a version that doesn't belong to them, that is superior in some way, or touches on something, or, frankly, one thing we haven't talked about, gets misused. You create a pornographic version, or you create a hate speech. version of Superman, then that actually is what's going to make DC Comics sweat. And Mav: that's They can't. Axel Braun does it. Um, porn parodies of Superman, um, that he's been doing, [00:58:00] um, are very clearly and very specifically protected by parody law. They cannot touch them. And by the way, fucking brilliant. Like I've watched, yes. I mean, so, I mean, are they good? No, they're not terribly interesting. What he does is he's done, he's done a bunch of Marvel ones and DC ones. And he is clearly a massive comic book geek. So he, like most of the movies are, here are some of my favorite key scenes from the comics and I'm reshooting them. I'm, I'm producing them for film. And the parody element is, and then they fucked. Like, like, Dave: I mean, it's seriously Mav: like, like, I don't know, pick one. So the Batman one, the Batman comic girl, one of the one of them, there's like either Batman or Batman triple triple X as. A scene that is literally the killing joke, and it's a very well done version of the Joker doing the, you know, the shooting of Barbara Gordon. It is very well shot for a fan film, but then there's sex. It doesn't make any sense. It's, you know, is it rapey? Is it sex? It doesn't matter. There's sex in it so that it's a parody, so that he can get away. With doing this, like, like they're. Dave: There's so little sex in superhero, overt, direct sex in superhero comics themselves. Hey, I just want to note people that came to this podcast because I promoted it to talk about the Prophet probably should cut it off here. As we get into our discussion of superhero porn, maybe it's time to pause the Mav: podcast. A little different than the, well, a little different, but we can save that for another episode, but yes, just saying. And Wayne: the history of that, the Tijuana Bible, we'll go back to that. So you're Mav: thinking of that as well. And I talk about, again, all stuff from my dissertation, which is why I actually... Did watch the entire Axelbronn line, because I Dave: talk about it in a job interview. Mav: Sure, [01:00:00] yeah, my whole job. But yes, like it's weird, right? And there's no point in my head. The point that I'm making is there's no point in my head where I go, Wait a minute, did that happen in the real comics or was that an Axelbronn? No, I know which ones are which. And it's fine. You know, it doesn't like there's not really that marketplace confusion. So, that's, so, the morality behind the law, I think, isn't really in jest. Like, I don't think, to go back to Profit, I don't think that you are being confused with the original work. Like, you are very clearly making it obvious that, like, this is a transformation, it is an adaptation of this thing. And... And we Dave: shout that on the cover, and in the afterword, and in the... Promotional material. We're super above board in that regard. Mav: Right. So, and again, no one's suing you there because everyone's been dead for a hundred years. I get it. Right. But for 95 years, he's been dead. But the story is a hundred years old. So no one's going to sue you. But like, conceptually, if you were to do that about something, it's a shame that you can't do that about, you know, some recent book or poem that is also beloved, but happened to come out in 2018 or something. You know, that's my thoughts. That's a fair thought. Anyway, David, thank you for joining us. This was fun. Thanks for coming back. Thank you. I was going to ask you what you want to promote. I was going to talk to you. No, I've already Dave: promoted my brains out. I got nothing else to promote. Don't read the Mav: profit. Yeah, it is linked in the show notes. If you want to buy the book, that would be awesome. I mean, linked in the show notes. I will, I'll even link it with a little Amazon affiliate code. So. For every copy of Profit you, you buy, if you click on our link, I think, you know, we'll make like a nickel or something. I don't know. Profit sharing is all in Wayne: favor of that Spotify Mav: money there. Yeah. There you go. Wayne, what about you? Okay. Stop asking. But then I have no little ending bit. It's [01:02:00] like, no, I need to ask just so, just so that you say. You got nothing. Anyway, one day, eventually, Wayne: we'll once again Mav: have some. So as always, you can follow me on Twitter or Instagram or Facebook or Blue Sky or Threads or Mastodon. I remember they have, anyway, basically all the places. Always at Chris Maverick. You can follow the show on Twitter or Facebook or BlueSky currently at VoxPopcast. You can follow the show's blog at www. VoxPopcast. com, where we post about whatever we're going to be talking about next week. And you can leave us comments on this or any other episode. You can suggest topics. You can say anything that comes to mind. Sometimes we pick guests based on things that people say. Sometimes the topic suggestions, like David today, you know, become an episode. That's how we figure those out. If you enjoy the show, and we certainly hope you do, then please subscribe to us on iTunes or Spotify or Pandora or wherever the hell you get podcasts from. And do us a favor, leave us a five star review. If you leave us a five star review, especially on iTunes, Apple Podcasts, that Goosey algorithm makes us more popular and really helps us out. I would like to thank Maximilian of Thoughtform Music for our epic theme song, building ever so more epically and playing us out. I'd once again like to thank David for joining us. I'd like to thank you for listening, and we'll see you next time. Bye. Bye.