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LOS ANGELES (AP) \u2014 Betty Boop<\/a> and \u201cBlondie\u201d<\/a> are joining Mickey Mouse<\/a> and Winnie the Pooh<\/a> in the public domain.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The first appearances of the classic cartoon and comic characters are among the pieces of intellectual property whose 95-year U.S. copyright maximum has been reached, putting them in the public domain on Jan. 1. That means creators can use and repurpose them without permission or payment.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The 2026 batch of newly public artistic creations doesn\u2019t quite have the sparkle of the recent first entries into the public domain of Mickey<\/a> or Winnie<\/a>. But ever since 2019 \u2014 the end of a 20-year IP drought brought on by congressional copyright extensions \u2014 every annual crop has been a bounty for advocates of more work belonging to the public.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a big year,\u201d said Jennifer Jenkins, law professor and director of Duke\u2019s Center for the Study of the Public Domain<\/a>, for whom New Year\u2019s Day is celebrated as Public Domain Day<\/a>. \u201cIt\u2019s just the sheer familiarity of all this culture.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Jenkins said that, collectively, this year\u2019s work shows \u201cthe fragility that was between the two wars and the depths of the Great Depression.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Here\u2019s a closer look at what will enter the public domain on Thursday, based on the research of Jenkins and her center.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Betty Boop began as a dog. Seriously.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n When she first appears in the 1930 short \u201cDizzy Dishes,\u201d one of four of her cartoons entering the public domain, she\u2019s already totally recognizable as the Jazz Age flapper later memorialized in countless tattoos, T-shirts and bumper stickers. She has her baby face, short hair with groomed curls, flashy eyelashes and miniature mouth. But she\u2019s also got dangling poodle ears and a tiny black nose. Those would soon morph into dangling earrings and a tiny white nose.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n She started as essentially the Minnie Mouse to a popular anthropomorphic dog named Bimbo, whom she would eventually outshine \u2014 and push aside. She\u2019s got a supporting role in \u201cDizzy Dishes,\u201d performing a slinky song-and-dance in a tiny black dress. She\u2019s not named, but sings \u201cboop boop, a doop.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Jenkins suggests this canine Betty Boop could be rich for exploitation in new works, and has a free idea: \u201cShe was bitten by a radioactive dog, that\u2019s why she had this weird backstory,\u201d she said with a laugh. \u201cThis movie needs to be made.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The character was designed and owned by Fleischer Studios, and the shorts were released by Paramount Pictures. She was based at least in part on singer Helen Kane, known as the \u201cBoop-Oop-a-Doop Girl,\u201d thanks to a hit 1929 song. Kane would lose a lawsuit over Betty Boop\u2019s character and use of the phrase. During the proceedings the defense alleged Black singer Esther Lee Jones used similar phrases first.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Artists are now free to use this earliest Boop in films and similar work. But making merch won\u2019t be free. In an important distinction often raised by Disney over Mickey Mouse, a character\u2019s trademark is distinct from the copyright of works that feature them. The Fleischer Productions trademark of Betty Boop remains intact.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Boops and doops were apparently in the air in 1930. Blondie Boopadoop was, like Betty, a young flapper, and the central character of Chic Young\u2019s newspaper comic strip that debuted in 1930. It inspired a film series and radio show, and is still running today in papers that still have comics.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The strip followed her carefree breeze through life with her boyfriend, Dagwood Bumstead. The two would marry (and she would change her name) in 1933, and the strip would become the sandwich-heavy domestic comedy familiar to later readers. Though the strip was meant to be based on a woman\u2019s life, Dagwood would in many ways become its breakout star \u2014 a proto- Adam Driver<\/a>, if you will, as the breakout actor from \u201cGirls.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Nine new Mickey Mouse cartoons also are becoming public domain, two years after \u201cSteamboat Willie\u201d made the first version of him public property. He\u2019s joined this year by his dog Pluto, who, in 1930, was known as Rover. (He would get his long-term moniker the following year.)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The books entering the public domain this year open the door to three iconic detectives from the 20th century:<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2014 The teen sleuth Nancy Drew, whose first four books came in 1930, starting with \u201cThe Secret of the Old Clock.\u201d They were written by Mildred Benson under the pen name Carolyn Keene.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2014 The middle-aged(-ish) sleuth Sam Spade, who debuted via the full-book version of Dashiell Hammett\u2019s \u201cThe Maltese Falcon.\u201d (It had been serialized in a magazine the previous year.)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2014 The elderly sleuth Miss Marple, who solves her first mystery in Agatha Christie\u2019s \u201cMurder at the Vicarage.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\nCartoons and comics bring the boop-a-doop<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n
Books bring big detective debuts<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n