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.
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
