DC Comics - 2024

[Cliff Hanger]

Okay yeah, that's a totally valid complaint even though I don't share it

 

[dragonzombie]

Hal Jordan's new ring explained tomorrow.

And ties to New Millennium and Thomas Kalmaku.

Spoiler

His new ring is tied to the green. Like Swamp Thing. And there will be more Earth "Green" Lanterns. 

The old regular emotional spectrum willpower Green Lanterns are crooked.

[Cliff Hanger]

Slowly working my way thru Triangle Superman, and while it has its ups and downs it feels like a perfect response to "Superman is boring because he's too kind" weirdos both within and without the Snyder Cult. 

[odessasteps]

1 hour ago, Cliff Hanger said:

Slowly working my way thru Triangle Superman, and while it has its ups and downs it feels like a perfect response to "Superman is boring because he's too kind" weirdos both within and without the Snyder Cult. 

That also shows you can have a workable rotation of creators telling different stories without impinging on each other constantly on multiple (>2) books. I guess Denny probably did it with the Bat books too, but I don’t know if it was as well as Carlin did it. 

[Brian Fowler]

5 hours ago, Cliff Hanger said:

Slowly working my way thru Triangle Superman, and while it has its ups and downs it feels like a perfect response to "Superman is boring because he's too kind" weirdos both within and without the Snyder Cult. 

That's the era I fell in love with Superman. The "Clark is the real person, Superman the disguise. Lois knows the secret and they're in love" will always be what I think of Superman as being. (Lord help me, Dean Cain played the closest version of how I envision Superman in any live action version.)

I'm sure some of it holds up terribly, but I really think 90's DC gets a bad wrap and gets included with the EDGY AND XTREME 90's movement that was mostly Marvel and Image.

I especially love The Flash and Supergirl from that era (the PAD Supergirl book is probably my favorite long run on a title ever.)

[odessasteps]

There are lots of hidden and no so hidden gems in 90s DC. I'm sure most of us can name a lot of them: Starman, Chase, Chronos, Major Bummer, Primal Force, and so on. 

[The Unholy Dragon]

On 3/21/2024 at 12:39 AM, Cliff Hanger said:

Slowly working my way thru Triangle Superman, and while it has its ups and downs it feels like a perfect response to "Superman is boring because he's too kind" weirdos both within and without the Snyder Cult. 

Good timing. 

They just announced they're going to be doing an omnibus reprint series for it. 

Between that and the Byrne HCs, we just need "In Exile" reprinted and as long as they stick with it, solid odds we can get most of 90s Superman reprinted in some way, shape, or form.

It's a real underrated era, one of my faves as a kid, and I'm glad to finally get a chance to add it to my trade shelves more thoroughly.

[J.H.]

The triangle era of the Superman books were great imo because there was such a huge focus on the supporting cast. Perry, Jimmy, Lous, Ron Troupe, Cat Grant and hell even Bibbo always had stuff going on

James

[The Unholy Dragon]

In general I feel like the soap opera aspect of superhero comics has been the biggest loss of the post-Authority era of storytelling. Every book used to have a wide cast of characters who you cared about and who had their own arcs and stuff going on in bigger and smaller ways. It meant they could do a lot of smaller standalones where the superhero stuff took a bit of a backseat to the character stuff but it didn't feel like filler. 

Now everything has to be the highest stakes stuff and most of those characters have become cardboard cutout versions of themselves. Like yeah, no wonder Jimmy Olsen is struggling to stay relevant when he's being reset every run into the "Aw Shucks" Silver Age sidekick "but now with a new Modern Twist!"

Ironically, this is something the Arrowverse did way better than any comics in this era. Say what you will about the corniness or how some characters got completely thrown out to be something else, it's the only thing in the last ten years to really capture the vibe of 80s/90s superhero stuff.

[dragonzombie]

Jim Lee knows of thebGolden Age characters and version's hitting the public domain in the next decade. They will just continue on publishing their versions and derivatives they still own.

 

[The Natural]

My LCS of ten years closed today. Gutted. Great having one 15 minutes away from where I live. Will have to look into getting Ultimate Spider-Man delivered or go through to the one which is a lot further. Fuck.

[The Unholy Dragon]

On 3/29/2024 at 4:17 PM, Kang said:

Jim Lee knows of thebGolden Age characters and version's hitting the public domain in the next decade. They will just continue on publishing their versions and derivatives they still own.

 

People are making a big deal of it, but it's largely pretty moot given it's not just characters, but traits don't unlock until the equivalent anniversary year. So for the first few years of Superman in Public Domain, for example, no one can write him flying. And it'll be decades still before anyone else can use Braniac or whatever. While the general concept of the characters will be able to start turning up, it'll take a while before they start really feeling like the contemporary versions. 

That said, I'm genuinely jazzed by the idea of Captain America being retconned into the JSA in about ten years. 

[twiztor]

the only thing i don't look forward to is seeing all the murderous Batmans that will pop up once he enters PD. I can already see people defending it "BaTmAn KiLlEd In HiS eArLy ApPeArAnCeS" but all that really tells me is that these people never read those stories. While bad guys do die, it is more due to Batman being callous about their fate, rather than him gunning them down or something. 

Past that, i very much look forward to all these early characters being open to the public. Rarely mentioned is the heroes from Marvel Comics #1: Human Torch (the android Jim Hammond, not Johnny Storm), Namor the Sub-Mariner, the Angel (not the X-Man), and Ka-Zar (Ka-Zar predates Marvel #1, so he will be fair game a couple years prior). 

[tbarrie]

On 3/31/2024 at 12:38 AM, The Unholy Dragon said:

People are making a big deal of it, but it's largely pretty moot given it's not just characters, but traits don't unlock until the equivalent anniversary year. So for the first few years of Superman in Public Domain, for example, no one can write him flying. And it'll be decades still before anyone else can use Braniac or whatever. While the general concept of the characters will be able to start turning up, it'll take a while before they start really feeling like the contemporary versions. 

I don't know, other companies and (especially) independent artists being able to legally fork the Superman mythos seems like a pretty big deal to me.

And aren't we all kind of just guessing what will and won't be allowed when? I don't think there's a lot of precedent established regarding characters who've been under copyright, published, and slowly evolving for almost a century before becoming public domain. The inevitable Mickey Mouse lawsuits will probably establish some things by the time Supes goes public, but until judges start making rulings it's all (possibly educated) guesswork and speculation.

To engage in some of that speculation - I'm unconvinced you wouldn't be able to have Superman fly for the first few years. I mean, if I wrote a Sherlock Holmes story where Sherlock could fly for some reason, would I be able to claim copyright infringement on anybody else who wrote about a flying Sherlock? I doubt it. Adding a simple power - one that humans have fantasized about for millennia at least - to a public domain character doesn't strike me as creative enough to count. I would think you'd need to copy other elements of my story before I'd have a case. Similarly, if you were to give Supes the full suite of powers DC eventually gave him in your story, you're almost certainly over the line, but just flying? That seems iffy to me.

[blitzkrieg]

1 hour ago, tbarrie said:

And aren't we all kind of just guessing what will and won't be allowed when? I don't think there's a lot of precedent established regarding characters who've been under copyright, published, and slowly evolving for almost a century before becoming public domain.

The Sir Arthur Conan Doyle estate files lawsuits if you use a Sherlock Holmes that is nice because they say it infringes on stories that are currently not in the public domain. 

[odessasteps]

It's funny people that do Holmes audio on YT are slowly adding each new story to their channel as soon it hits PD. 

[Brian Fowler]

1 hour ago, blitzkrieg said:

The Sir Arthur Conan Doyle estate files lawsuits if you use a Sherlock Holmes that is nice because they say it infringes on stories that are currently not in the public domain. 

Indeed I think most of the case law we have regarding the rolling copyright expiration of characters comes from Holmes cases.

[tbarrie]

Interesting. I thought works owned by individuals rather than corporate entities entered public domain a certain number of years after the author's death rather than a fixed number of years after creation, so all of the Holmes canon would have entered at once. And the number of Holmes films, TV shows, and other adaptations that come out backed up that belief. Do they all make deals with the Doyle estate? Or are they limited in which stories they can reference? Or some of each?

I'll have to look into the Holmes precedents. Thanks for the pointer, Blitz and Brtian.

[twiztor]

14 hours ago, tbarrie said:

I thought works owned by individuals rather than corporate entities entered public domain a certain number of years after the author's death rather than a fixed number of years after creation, so all of the Holmes canon would have entered at once. And the number of Holmes films, TV shows, and other adaptations that come out backed up that belief. Do they all make deals with the Doyle estate? Or are they limited in which stories they can reference? Or some of each?

I'll have to look into the Holmes precedents. Thanks for the pointer, Blitz and Brtian.

the short answer is "yes". all of those things have happened, at some point or another, with the Holmes situation. Also complicating matters is that Doyle was British, and copyright terms/concepts are different on the two sides of the pond. Every Doyle Sherlock Holmes story has now entered the public domain, as of January 1 2023. But man oh man, did the ACD estate fight tooth and nail to hold on to every possible concept they could make money off. They even sued/C&D'd multiple situations that had already been established as PD. crazy stuff.

Here's a page that covers the difference in US vs. UK copyright: https://publicdomainimagelibrary.com/copyright-rules/#:~:text=US works published 1928-1963,years since the author died.

23 hours ago, tbarrie said:

I don't know, other companies and (especially) independent artists being able to legally fork the Superman mythos seems like a pretty big deal to me.

And aren't we all kind of just guessing what will and won't be allowed when? I don't think there's a lot of precedent established regarding characters who've been under copyright, published, and slowly evolving for almost a century before becoming public domain.

i agree that it is a big deal for Superman, et. all, to enter PD. 

but there's a lot of precedent established as for what is usable and what isn't. What we don't know is how litigious Time Warner Discovery will be in enforcing the copyrights that haven't entered the PD. I imagine the answer is "very".

[The Unholy Dragon]

Where it gets weird is that it's going to be the first case where characters have really been continually published with new works on a large scale by the copyright holder through the entire duration of their existence in the way they have. And unlike Mickey Mouse, who's fairly loose in terms of characterization, there are a LOT of very specific derivative traits that won't be clear until much, much later. Also there will be cases where stuff unlocks in different countries at different times but the US is usually, but not always, last so it tends to be the one seen as the all clear.

But also, trademark law still applies. You might see something like we already get with Thor where "Superman" becomes "DC's Superman" legally but all the same tenets apply, where every use will need to have a ready argument for how a use is both excluding any protected elements to the character (not using anything added by DC from 1939-present, add a year each year) and also not infringing upon any of their trademarks (which is to say, using the character in a way designed to have him be mistaken for DC's version).

 

It's going to be VERY sticky and I think there's going to be a lot of really ugly lawsuit smackdowns in the first few years as people realize the gap between how they think it works and how it actually works.

What will probably be the first real preview is the Shadow's earliest stuff going PD next year. Especially given that the initial year of Shadow radio stuff has VERY few of the bigger elements that people would consider recognizable and Conde Nast are exceptionally aggressive with the IP.

[odessasteps]

If you think WB will be ligitious, The Mouse is there to say hold my beer

[Brian Fowler]

33 minutes ago, odessasteps said:

If you think WB will be ligitious, The Mouse is there to say hold my beer

Which might make Cap one of the biggest test cases in a few years.

Like... Would having Steve Rogers in a modern setting infringe still standing copyright flat out?

[The Unholy Dragon]

19 hours ago, odessasteps said:

If you think WB will be ligitious, The Mouse is there to say hold my beer

It's less that I think WBD will be more litigious than the Mouse and more that I think the DC characters that hit PD first have more of their recognizable elements locked at first which will make them more open to it. 

But someone is gonna do circle shield Cap too early and it'll be a whole thing, yeah.

[Eivion]

Been catching up to the last year or two of Detective Comics I've had sitting on my shelf. The Tamaki run ended on a bit of a whimper, nut it was always a bit forgettable if I'm being honest. Not terrible but little noteworthy either. Ram V's Orgham story is a noticeable improvement though I wish Detective would be more one-off and min-arcs focused on various characters opposed to one big story.

Edited April 5 by Eivion

[dragonzombie]

They changed their mind again, now multiple multiverses again. DC is using the snowflake from WildStorm this time around to contain multiple more multiverses. I'm surprised they're still using Ellis Ideas.