I know I shouldn’t back crowdfunding campaigns just because they touch on two of my favorite things (Franco-Belgian comics and the public domain), but this is going to be hard to resist.

As someone who once owned Tintin au pays des Soviets (but also sold it more out of distaste of the art than the politics) and who is currently rereading a less-but-still-problematic classic Belgian bande dessinée, I really appreciated these reflections. I hadn’t realized that Tintin was about to enter the public domain, and that’s exciting! I’m more optimistic that Tintin can be reclaimed from its fascist, racist roots than Werd is.

I’ve passed this up a couple of times at the library, but an article at BoingBoing got me to give it a try. It’s a fun, meta take on the comics industry through comics themselves, even if it feels melodramatic at times.

This was good! Not perfect: there were some rough edges, it’s hard to take some scenes seriously if you’ve watched The Good Place, and there’s a bad case of the Force working as the plot needs it to. Despite all that, though, I love the franchise leaning into a “actually, the Jedi kind of suck” story, and there were some interesting fight scenes and compelling story elements. Happy to see Star Wars experimenting like this… though, of course, it should be moving into the public domain so that everyone (not just Disney) can do that experimentation.

My department has a copyright class on the books that’s never been taught—even when I offered to take it on after being hired. I understand why that offer wasn’t taken up, but I can’t help but think about all I could do in that class with Mickey Mouse this semester.

Happy Public Domain day!

As promised, I’m reading this in honor of Bill Willingham’s badass public domain antics earlier this week. I think the concept of his series is fun, but I’m not sure if I think it’s as great as its reputation. The idea of fairy tale characters living in the real world is full of potential, but the story seems pretty superficial. Will probably keep reading, though.

Such a cool thing to do. I haven’t read Fables in ages, but may revisit it out of respect for Willingham.

Turns out a great way to get distracted from a Disney+ show you’re enjoying is to think “this franchise should be in the public domain by now.”