The Los Angeles Times wrote about more creations of the past century that’re now becoming public domain, like the Blondie comic strip, and animated cartoons like Betty Boop. Along the way, they also note:
Those characters have been part of America’s cultural heritage almost since their first appearance — the Blondie comic strip still runs daily in The Times, and Betty Boop’s image is widely and popularly merchandised.
Why the long wait? Blame commercial interests, including the Walt Disney Co., which agitated for the long term chiefly to maintain control of Mickey Mouse for as long as possible. (Mickey entered the public domain in 2024, which was 95 years after his first appearance in the 1928 short “Steamboat Willie.”)
Considering how bad Disney’s output became in the past decade, it’s quite welcome now that their leading mascots have entered public domain. I’m sure similar problems also affected the Blondie comic strip over time. But perhaps more interesting is what they have to say about Betty Boop:
That brings us to the case of Betty Boop, which may occupy the copyright bar for years to come.
The argument for Betty’s entry into the public domain stems from her initial appearance in a short titled “Dizzy Dishes,” by the brilliant animator Max Fleischer and his brother Dave.
The Fleischers and Disney were contemporaries, but the resemblance ends there. Their animation techniques were utterly different, as was their character.
“Broadly speaking, there was an innocence in Disney’s view of the world, while Fleischer projected an underlying kinkiness,” Charles Silver, the film curator at the Museum of Modern Art, wrote in 2011. “Although the films were shown to all audiences, one can’t escape the feeling that Disney saw his audience as children while Fleischer’s target was more knowing adults, attuned to Betty Boop’s seductiveness.”
Fleischer Studios went out of business in 1946. By then it had sold the rights to its cartoons and the Betty Boop character. A new Fleischer Studios was formed in the 1970s by Fleischer descendants, including Max’s grandson Mark Fleischer, and set about repurchasing the rights that had been sold.
Whether it reacquired the rights to Betty Boop is up for discussion. (The controversy doesn’t involve Fleischer’s trademark rights in Betty Boop, which are separate from copyrights and bars anyone from using the character in a way that suggests they represent Fleischer.)
According to a federal appeals court ruling in 2011, the answer is no. Having navigated its way through the three or four copyright transfers that followed the original rights sale, the appeals court concluded that the original Fleischer studios sold the rights to Betty Boop and the related cartoons to Paramount in 1941 but couldn’t verify that the rights to the character had been sold in an unbroken chain placing them with the new studio.
The “chain of title” was broken, the appellate judges found — but they didn’t say who ended up with Betty Boop. The Fleischers maintain that they own the Betty Boop rights through “several different chains of title, which we believe are all valid,” Mark Fleischer says.
What about the Betty Boop of “Dizzy Dishes,” which is indisputably entering the public domain in 2026? Mark Fleischer told me the Betty Boop-like character in that short may be in the public domain but “is not the Betty Boop we know today.”
In a “fact check” posted on its website, Fleischer Studios states bluntly that the idea that Betty Boop is entering the public domain is “actually not true.” Yet the character in “Dizzy Dishes” certainly looks and sounds a lot like the Betty Boop we know today. She’s a flapper with a short skirt and spit-curled coif, the facial structure of Betty Boop, speaks with the high-pitched voice of Betty Boop and utters the catchphrase “boop-boop-ba-doop” (which was identified with a popular singer of the period). But she also has a few canine characteristics that soon disappeared — chiefly flapping dog ears, which morphed into hoop earrings by 1932.
It’s hard not to see the strong resemblance between the 1930 version and later incarnations; indeed, on a Fleischer Studios web page tracking the evolution of Betty Boop in illustrations, the very first entry is the “Dizzy Dishes” character.
Fleischer says his company hasn’t sued purported copyright infringers since the appellate case, though it has “contacted one or two” to explain its position “and we’ll see how they respond.” But he says he wouldn’t be surprised to see that some people will accept the assumption that Betty Boop enters the public domain next year without delving into the legal technicalities.
Jenkins maintains that the copyright protection given to post-1930 depictions of Betty doesn’t extend to “‘merely trivial’ or stereotypical modifications of Boop 1.0, such as replacing the dog ears with human ones, [or] dressing her in standard attire for a cabaret performer or homemaker.” Whether that’s the case might have to await further court rulings, if purported infringers appear.
Well that’s certainly interesting to learn. The heirs of the Fleischers want to retain a copyright on the character, and when it comes to anything produced long after the 1930s/40s, arguably, they do. If they respect the creations enough and don’t approve of modern PC, then I could probably sympathise with their wishes. But otherwise, it’s to be hoped they don’t think copyright issues are a grand emergency compared to other serious issues in modernity.
NPR also wrote about the coming public domain releases, and if Betty Boop is destined for the path, there’s regrettably bad but perhaps unshocking news as to what awaits, not unlike the embarrassment that accompanied Winnie the Pooh’s entrance to public domain:
As a matter of fact, a Betty Boop horror movie is already in the works, following a string of 2025 scary movies starring villainous versions of the freshly non-copyrighted Peter Pan, Bambi and Popeye. Also, a Minnie Mouse slasher is due for release in 2026.
Not all adaptations have to be dark: Think West Side Story drawn from Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet, Percival Everett’s reimagining of Huckleberry Finn in the 2024 book James and, of course, the Wizard of Oz-inspired Wicked movies.
Well, if that’s the case, then if the Fleischer heirs really care about their classic creation, are they going to speak out against this obsession with turning every famous cartoon/children’s creation into a sick horror thriller? If they don’t, what’s the point of telling the LA Times where they stand? Also note how NPR reports all this without any objectivity or questions as to whether this is fair to the original creators and animators. That’s why they’re such an outmoded news source today.
NBC news also had a report, now that 2026 is in, and these creations have definitively entered public domain status. And another item that’s mentioned in these reports is Nancy Drew, the last book creation overseen by Edward Stratemeyer before he passed on:
The teen sleuth Nancy Drew, whose first four books came in 1930, starting with “The Secret of the Old Clock.” They were written by Mildred Benson under the pen name Carolyn Keene.
The famous girl detective premiered 3 years after the Hardy Boys, and now, it looks like all products of the Stratemeyer Syndicate, save for the Dana Girls, which came in 1936 after its founder passed on, are now pretty much in public domain. ND saw its own share of comics adaptations in past years, and it includes a 2018 miniseries by Dynamite Entertainment, “Palace of Wisdom”, written by none other than Kelly Thompson, one of the woke writers who destroyed the real Ms. Marvel, Carol Danvers, and with ND, Thompson’s story relied on artwork like in the following panel by Jenn St. Onge, which looks very mediocre and uninspired. This doesn’t suit Stratameyer’s production at all, and that’s why, if ND is now in public domain, I hope somebody with more respect will develop a better comic adaptation of ND, if comics adaptations matter. As Parade says:
As Nancy Drew’s earliest adventures join classics like Betty Boop and The Maltese Falcon in the public domain, the character who taught millions to trust their instincts and solve their own mysteries is finally free, just as Benson always intended her to be.
On which note, I’m also aware that ND’s recurring boyfriend Ned Nickerson might take a year or so longer to enter public domain, since he was introduced in the 7th story. But, if anybody thinks for now that a non-monogamous characterization for ND is worthwhile, then let’s hope they go ahead and develop some comics adaptations with an entertaining story in mind that’s better than what Dynamite had to offer. After all, merit matters first and foremost.
Originally published here
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