Public Domain Superhero Stories

[homor]

so I've recently stumbled upon a Website categorizing a vast amount of Public domain characters, what does that mean? it means these characters have no copyright, so you can use them for whatever purposes you wish.

Public Domain Superhero Wiki

the story behind most of these guys is that in the 1960's comic companies were failing left and right due to new censorship laws and the market gearing itself towards science fiction rather than magic.

so yeah, you can put any of these guys into one of your stories and it isn't really considered Fan Fiction.

also, not all of the characters listed on the Site are Superheroes, there are a lot of other Public Domain characters like Sherlock Holmes, Zorro, and even Hitler.

we need to have some kind of Contest where the theme being stories revolving around these guys, what do you think Newgrounds?

[Frenzy]

So any superhero? Iron Man, Spiderman, etc.? Cool idea.

[megakill]

A writting contest would be a good idea.

there could be seperate sections for best poem, best script and best story.

i dont think it should be a requierment that its based around certain characters though, thats a bit limiting, and i think a lot of writers would find that to be a bit of a restriction.

but yeah, im in support of a competition, id definently get involved with the potery side.

[homor]

At 1/26/10 07:37 PM, Frenzy wrote: So any superhero? Iron Man, Spiderman, etc.? Cool idea.

no, just the ones who have fallen into the Public Domain.

or just Public Domain Characters in general.

[aviewaskewed]

At 1/26/10 07:37 PM, Frenzy wrote: So any superhero? Iron Man, Spiderman, etc.? Cool idea.

Those are not public domain. Any super hero character currently published by a major company is NOT public domain. It would only be characters from defunct publishers who were not bought up via bankruptcy (as DC has absorbed the characters of many different publishers over the years), or have not been published in so long they'd meet the public domain standards.

I think it's a neat idea but somebody would have to be truly willing to do the research to be sure a character actually DOES meet the criteria of being "public domain"

[homor]

At 1/26/10 07:42 PM, aviewaskewed wrote: I think it's a neat idea but somebody would have to be truly willing to do the research to be sure a character actually DOES meet the criteria of being "public domain"

which is why the Public Domain Superhero Wiki exists in the first place.

[aviewaskewed]

At 1/26/10 07:46 PM, homor wrote: which is why the Public Domain Superhero Wiki exists in the first place.

Didn't look like it had a hell of a lot of entries, but then again almost every super person worth a crap or in existence is being published somewhere already or somebody's estate is looking to claim them.

[homor]

At 1/26/10 08:19 PM, aviewaskewed wrote: Didn't look like it had a hell of a lot of entries,

it actually has about 775 entires.

sure that's nothing compared to Wikipedia's millions and millions but i think that's a rather good amount.