Thursday is Thirst Day

Get it? It's a play on words. Let's see what the Internets have to offer today.

Picture above from Abhay Khosla's Bram Stoker's Dracula, of which you can now also read chapter two and chapter three. It's a strange coincidence that he started a new comic just as soon as I finally got around to reading his last one. Could it be that he is secretly monitoring my reading habits? Probably, yes.

Speaking of reading comics online on these here Internets, yesterday I also finally read Inio Asano's Nijigahara Holograph, a fairly awesome manga about... about a lot of stuff, really. I don't know how to describe it. Wait, I do: It's 292 pages long.

My erstwhile SUPERBLOG!! partner Uncle Sammy very rarely clicks on links because he is an enemy of the Internets, but he'll click on this one: Conservapedia! Yes, it's Wikipedia for rightwing nutjobs. Beyond bizarre.

Superboy says ‘Know Your Country!’ Kids hate Scandinavian Sigrid because she eats kottbuller! (It's köttbullar, idiots!)

YouTube: Cartoon All-Stars To The Rescue Part One - animated drug prevention television special introduced by George Bush Sr. (There's some further info on Wikipedia but sadly not on Conservapedia.)

Just sad: I love you, failed viral marketing campaign for Beth Cooper!

Michael Jackson Public Domain Countdown (also): Only 70 years and 141 days to go! Obviously copyright laws are completely sane and don't need to be reformed at all.

Jacko Mess

If you are like me, the first thing you thought when you heard that Michael Jackson had died was, "So who owns the rights to the Beatles songs now?" As of yet there appears to be no clear answer. The Cleveland Leader (my go-to newspaper in matters of Jackson) says that:

Michael Jackson arranged to give Paul McCartney the rights to the Beatles back catalog through his will according to reports published earlier this year. The pair who scored hits together in the mid-1980's with Say, Say, Say and The Girl Is Mine had been feuding for years after Jackson won the rights to the Beatles back catalog

On the other hand, that could be bullshit, and:

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Jackson's debt was around $500 million when he died this morning. A large part of this debt was a $200 million loan secured against his biggest asset - a 50% interest in the publishing rights to his own music and 251 compositions by the world's biggest ever pop group, The Beatles.

Some pundits are speculating that this could lead to all Beatles songs - famously withheld from Spotify - being made available for download via The Pirate Bay.

First Appearance of Snopp-Pie the Sailor!

Taking advantage of recent legal developments, here is a new and wonderful comic strip I like to call Snopp-Pie the Sailor! In this first installment, we are introduced to our principal players. If you click on the strip very carefully, you will make it a little bit bigger.

Snopp-Pie and all related characters and elements are trademarks of and © SUPERBLOG!! Bloggy Features, Inc.

Now We Can Truly Fuck Popeye Up

Alright! It's a new year* and it couldn't have started better - Popeye just entered the public domain!:

Elzie Segar, the Illinois artist who created Popeye, his love interest Olive Oyl and nemesis Bluto, died aged 43 in 1938 and an EU law that protects the rights of authors for 70 years after their death is about to end.
The copyright expiry means that, from Thursday, anyone can print and sell Popeye posters, T-shirts and even create new comic strips, without the need for authorisation or to make royalty payments, the Times reports.

Free Popeye money, bitch! But the trademark is still active so we can't sell stuff using the name "Popeye" or his likeness. So let's call him Snopp-Pie instead! If we can't be fren's we'll be emenies!

*2009