COMIX.INDIA MAGAZINE

Attached is a newspaper clipping from Feb22, 2010, showing a legal notice issued by Hearst Holdings, the parent company of 'King Features Syndicate' to warn Indians to desist from using 'Popeye' as a character.

Comics fans should know Hearst. William Randolph Hearst (the inspiration behind 'Citizen Kane') was responsible for the publishing of many early comic strips, and was very influential in popularizing the medium. King Features Syndicate is the world's largest distributor of comic strips. It is American. They practically own many many many old and new comic strips. This company is single-handedly responsible for creating all the 'Phantom' and 'Mandrake' fans in India, because they are the ones who distribute them. King Features is so powerful that you cannot become a successful comic strip author if you are not distributed by them.

Wonder why Indian newspapers still feature obscure American comic strips? Because King Features has deals with all Indian newspapers. What sort of deals I have no idea though. The fact remains that Indian newspapers are reluctant to remove those obscure strips that no one reads and replace them with Indian ones.

still beats my understanding-- how can you 'own' a cartoon character?

What's hard to understand? Cartoons are Intellectual Property; and just like anything else of any value, is owner by the creator or a company that's bought them out.

Or did you mean something else altogether?

My understanding of a 'character' is a bit different. Its the same as text. When Lewis Carroll creates Alice, the character 'Alice' is not separate from the book 'Alice in Wonderland'. You can't licence the 'Alice' character by itself. I see comics in the same light. The entire page that's drawn is one unit. How can you separate a part of the image, ie. one character, and own it separately. Legally, one can actually go to any extent-- one can even own Popeye's smoking pipe separately and trademark it, why not? It is possible, but quite an absurd proposition, as one can see.

When Joe Shuster and Jerry Siegel, two wide-eyed comics and SF fans, created Superman and went to DC Comics, they had no idea that DC would 'by default' copyright the Superman character separately, and forever. Their story is the real sad tale of American comics, and the strange lengths that American mega corporations go to over-regulate the industry.
Just a month ago, I read in an Indian newspaper (The Hindu) that Walt Disney had sued a nursery school in America because they had painted Mickey and other characters on the playground walls.

Read the book 'Men of Tomorrow: Geeks, Gangsters, and the Birth of the Comic Book'. It won the Eisner award and is the best history written on superhero comics. It also comes down harshly on the American comic book system.

Why can't you license the character of Alice? Whoever owns the rights to Alice In Wonderland, can individually license out the characters of Alice, Chesire Cat and all the others to anyone they choose.

That's how comic book characters and cartoon strips appear in print and tv ads. For instance, all those ads in the Archie comics, where the gang was searching for treasure, and they find some soft drink or fruit juice brand, happened because the ad agency licensed the characters from the creators or holding company.

Uniquely created characters and places are all, commercially speaking, a gold mine, and Ithink it's rather naive to think that they're one-and-the-same as the story they appear in.

Of course you can copyright anything in the world, but my point is that enforcing regulation can be bad for the system, as has been proved by the effect that over-regulation had for american comics. On the other hand, a relaxed system, like how they do in japan, where if the publishers wanted, could have told the 500000 people creating self-published comics with characters owned by the creator, to stop creating them. Legally, Japanese publishers can sue all of them, but the point is, they don't, and it has only helped the publishers because business has grown through fan fiction, and fan art. Lawrence Lessig, the writer well known for working on modern copyright law and one of the creators of 'Creative Commons' http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Lessig actually studied the self-published comics scene in Japan as a case study before coming up with Creative Commons.

Over-regulation and abuse of copyright is bad for the system. Thats all the point is. Otherwise the whole world's production is anyway copyrighted.

Copyright is for me like an anti-terror law-- It is very easy to abuse the law and create a police state through it.

I mean, Popeye! Can one believe that some stupid Indian company using the Popeye character can seriously eat into the profits of the gigantic media conglomerate called Hearst Holdings? C'mon!

I feel everything needs to have some regulations atleast, if only to respect the wishes of the creator. Speaking from a personal point, if I create a story or a comic, I would be right royally pissed off if I found someone using it for anything other than personal use. Even for non-profit usage, I'd want the concerned people to contact me first, and get permission. After all, ideas don't appear out of thin air. And even if they do, it would take a lot of work on the creator's part to polish it and make it presentable.

Regarding a small Indian company eating away at profits, I don't think money is anywhere in the picture. As far as I know, by law, you're required to fight each and every instance of copyright infringement once you know of it, no matter how big or small. If not, you'll lose claim to it. As in, you can't be selective about whom you pursue legally and whom you let off.

See, my point is the same-- everything's cool AS LONG AS creator owns copyright. The moment a company owns it, like DC Comics buying Superman, then all the issues start.

So, I feel one must distinguish between the two-- company ownership, and creator (or in case of deceased, his/her kin) ownership.

Creator ownership= OK. Problem solved right there.

Company ownership= all kinds of legal battles if the character/story gets successful, as we know from the crazy legal battles right from the beginning of American comic strips. The Superman creators got NOTHING (well... peanuts at the end of their lives...), lets remember that.