{"id":1078157,"date":"2026-01-23T03:21:02","date_gmt":"2026-01-23T03:21:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.polygon.com\/?p=502293"},"modified":"2026-01-23T03:21:02","modified_gmt":"2026-01-23T03:21:02","slug":"popeye-tintin-enter-the-public-domain-in-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arcader.org\/news\/popeye-tintin-enter-the-public-domain-in-2025\/","title":{"rendered":"Popeye, Tintin enter the public domain in 2025"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Tintin, the seminal hero of the pulp genre of boy adventurers, enters the United States public domain in 2025, though in a way that probably wouldn\u2019t please his creator Herg\u00e9 very much. Not necessarily because the cartoonist would be angry at other folks being able to legally make Tintin stories \u2014 but because the Tintin story entering the public domain is among his least favorite ones. <\/p>\n

On Jan. 1, 2025, works first published in 1929 (and sound recordings from 1924) will enter into the public domain in the United States, and that includes a good portion of Tintin in the Land of the Soviets<\/em>, a work of explicit and broad anti-Soviet\/Marxist propaganda that Herg\u00e9 was so embarrassed by that he refused to allow it to be reprinted for 40 years. <\/p>\n

But Tintin and his little dog Snowy aren\u2019t the only comic strip characters whose earliest adventures will no longer be covered under copyright. Popeye (you know, the sailor man?) also appeared in E.C. Segar\u2019s Thimble Theater<\/em> for the first time in 1929. Though, at that point, Thimble Theater<\/em> had already been running in the New York Journal for a decade \u2014 Popeye was merely a one-arc guest character in the adventures of Ham Gravy (boyfriend to Olive Oyl) and Castor Oyl (brother to\u2026 yeah, you get it). The nautical hombre hadn\u2019t even developed his trademark spinach-powered super strength, and Olive Oyl wouldn\u2019t break up with Ham Gravy to date him until 1930. <\/p>\n

Other 2025 entries to the wild world of public domain art include many films from the bleeding edge of the Silent Era and the Talkie revolution<\/a>, including Alfred Hitchcock\u2019s first sound film, Blackmail<\/em>, and the first feature-length Marx Brothers movie, The Cocoanuts<\/em><\/a>. Numerous Disney animated shorts also enter the field, like \u201cThe Skeleton Dance,\u201d whose dancing skeletons (what else?) have gained new life in celebratory Halloween gifs.<\/p>\n

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