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Christmas tree, make a t-shirt and then follow that shirt around the world.

0:31

As it gets made, we were taxis land owners.

0:33

She was our pet toxic acid, a hundred barrels of poodle.

0:36

Yes we did.

0:38

Oh

0:38

my

0:43

gosh. This is planet money studios from NPR Planet

1:01

money buys a superhero issue.

1:03

Number two, it starts as do all Great

1:07

sequels with a highly edited recap.

1:13

It's full of money. Check, let them know that we want to buy a superhero doorman, Doorman.

1:17

I'm

1:24

confident. In my note, there's a loophole, a loophole, but to find that loophole, the planet money team would need a guide.

1:36

Someone who had traveled to another dimension, found their own superhero and lived to tell about someone who was having an abnormally Loud

1:49

microphone problem.

1:52

Does it still sound too loud? You know what, if you just went back a little bit from your microphone, should I avoid it?

1:57

Should I pointed away from me?

1:58

Is that helpful? Oh wait, what kind of microphone do you have?

2:02

This is Jean Luhan yang, a comic book artist who had worked for Marvel and DC.

2:07

He was about to explain to our planet money hosts, how he found himself longing for a character outside the grasp of the giant companies, a superhero to call his own.

2:22

This is sounding better. That's good.

2:23

Okay,

2:23

Jean,

2:23

I,

2:23

I

2:23

have

2:23

a

2:23

copy

2:23

of

2:23

this

2:23

comic

2:23

book

2:23

of

2:23

yours,

2:23

of

2:23

this

2:23

1940

2:23

superhero

2:23

that

2:23

you

2:31

found. It's, it's amazing, but why don't you start by just telling Robert and me how you found this superhero in the first place.

2:38

So years ago, a friend of mine forwarded me this post from a website called Pappy's golden age blogs, where they highlight these really obscure characters from the golden age of comics.

2:53

And this one particular post was about the green turtle who on the is not An

3:00

awesome character. He's like a Batman rip off.

3:02

So he lives in a turtle cave.

3:04

You know, he flies a turtle plane.

3:07

He wears a turtle themed costume.

3:10

He's just not an awesome character.

3:12

And worse than Batman, he doesn't wear a shirt like he fights crime shirtless, right?

3:17

He just, he looks really, really goofy.

3:20

I feel like most people would have just dismissed the shirtless Crusader, but there is something else.

3:25

There is this rumor about the green turf, The

3:28

green turtle was created by an artist named Chu hing.

3:31

And the story goes that you hang wanted to draw the green turtle as a Chinese American superhero.

3:37

It would have been groundbreaking.

3:38

This was the 1940s, virtually every superhero was white, But

3:43

this was the 1940s.

3:44

The comic book company said no.

3:47

So chew him. I mean, he, he just, he reacts away comic book.

3:52

Artists would react when they hit like a road bump.

3:55

He just gets super passive aggressive.

3:57

So he draws these early green turtle comics so that you never, you almost never see his face.

4:04

There's like a shadow over his face, or there's a piece of furniture blocking his face.

4:08

Something is getting in the way of you looking at his face.

4:11

And the rumor is that chewing did this so that both he and his reader could imagine this character as a Chinese-American, as he originally intended, Jean, I

4:23

became obsessed with the green turtle.

4:25

The character had only appeared in five issues of blazing comics back in 1944, not long enough to get a proper backstory or resolution and Jean thought to himself, I could revive this character.

4:38

I could fill out that story.

4:40

I could make it clear once.

4:42

And for all that, this was a Chinese American superhero.

4:46

The question of course was who even owns this character in the first place.

4:50

More importantly, who's going to show up to Sue me.

4:52

Jean starts to talk to lawyers, searches old copyright records from the library of Congress, All

4:58

the stuff that like comic book artists are not good at.

5:01

We're not going to money. We're not going to legal stuff.

5:03

Like most of the time I'm thinking about, you know, what is the next like genetic mutated monster that Lex Luther is going to launch it?

5:10

Superman? What she learned was that the green turtle lived in a strange dimension of the legal universe.

5:16

The copyright had lapsed, no one owned the green turtle anymore, which meant that Jean had as much right as anyone else to redraw him because the green turtle had entered into the public domain.

5:30

Hello, and welcome to planet money.

5:32

I'm Kenny Malone and I'm Robert Smith.

5:34

Our quest for a planet money superhero continues.

5:37

We had the front door man slammed in our face man.

5:41

But Jean Lewin yang has found a loophole we can squeeze through today on the show we traveled through the cracks in time and space and copyright law to find a character like the green turtle that even the Marvel empire has left behind.

5:56

And what we find is a lost superhero.

5:58

That feels like it was made just for us for planet money.

6:02

From

6:02

80

6:02

years

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ago,

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This message comes from NPR sponsor.

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W why don't we start by, by just, just checking out this weird afterlife of intellectual property known as the public domain, the public domain.

7:12

We've talked about this strange land on planet money before, about how entire books can fall into the public domain or songs.

7:21

Hey, I guess we're allowed to play that song now.

7:28

This is where creative works go. When their copyright expires and just like books and songs, it can happen to character.

7:35

Look, Robert it's Jay Gatsby, talking to lady Macbeth, Dan, And

7:41

then there's who gene was looking for.

7:42

The green turtle. What's up? Hey guys, gene says hi.

7:45

Once he you in a comic, Nice

7:51

To pluck an old vintage character, like the green turtle from the public domain solves quite a few problems for our superhero quest.

7:57

Despite all of you, our listeners tweeting all week at Marvel to hashtag open the door.

8:03

Man, we have not heard back from Marvel and we never will.

8:07

We have to move on Ketty. We gotta move on.

8:11

Many of you suggested that, that we could move on by maybe drawing our own.

8:15

How should we say, Oh, mush to the door, man, sliding door, man, pet door man, Or

8:23

the very well-dressed Christian Dior man.

8:26

But, but it's just, it's just not the same to make up a new superhero.

8:30

Superheroes are our modern Greek or Roman gods like featured in these stories about right and wrong.

8:37

They'd get passed down to us from before we were born.

8:40

It's the patina and the provenance of a superhero that make it feel real.

8:44

So we're not just going to draw one, make one up.

8:48

Okay. But if old ventured superheroes are like gold, how many green turtles could really be out there?

8:54

Superheroes that fell into the public domain?

8:56

We reckon only one person has the answer.

9:00

My name is Jennifer Jenkins, and I am a clinical professor of law at Duke law school.

9:05

And I am also the director of the center for the study of the public domain, which just rolls off the tongue.

9:12

It doesn't, but I'm sure you own the trademark to it, which is great.

9:17

You know, who else would want, You know what we, we didn't, we thought that might be a little bit strange.

9:21

If we're the public domain center who were going to claim rights to the trademark, Jennifer

9:25

Jenkins practices, what she preaches and she is preaching how our superhero quest is exactly why our country has the public domain.

9:35

Every great work of art will eventually end up in the public domain.

9:38

And although we called the show loophole, and we've talked about a loophole, it's not really a loophole.

9:44

This is not an accident. The copyright system was designed this way to stimulate creativity.

9:50

How does it do that? Well, during the copyright term, it gives you exclusive rights.

9:54

It gives you control that, incentivize you to create things and put them out there.

9:58

But after the term ends, it ensures that all that creative, raw material is available for future creators.

10:05

And that stimulates creativity as well.

10:07

And hopefully it will be stimulating your creativity.

10:10

And Jennifer says that with this superhero project, we kind of lucked out because of this magical moment in superhero history, the 1940s In

10:18

the 1940s, there were two critical things happening in the world of comic books.

10:22

Number one, there was a superhero explosion known as the golden age of comics.

10:27

We talked about this in episode one hundreds, thousands of superheroes were being created.

10:32

And most of them did not take off like Superman or Batman, Which

10:37

helps us because of reason. Number two, the forties was part of this special era and copyright history.

10:42

The lifespan of a normal copyright at that time was relatively short, at least compared to today, it was just 28 years.

10:50

And then whoever owned the copyright that they took out in the 1940s had to actively file the paperwork to renew it in the 1970s.

10:58

And, you know, with all the, the disco and the hot tubs and the cocaine, some small companies understandably spaced out on the need to renew their superheroes Or

11:09

more likely in the 1970s, like these weird old golden age superheroes.

11:15

We're not exactly doing gangbusters.

11:16

So unless you had seen success like Marvel or DC, there may not have been a great business reason to spend money renewing some failed character from your olden days.

11:29

The commercial lifespan of most creative works, sadly is not that long.

11:34

So know the brilliant song that you've been working on.

11:37

The great thing that I've been writing, it's never going to sell anyway, but even if it does, it might not be selling after 28 years after 28 years, 85% of works were not renewed suggesting that the copyright owners did not find it worthwhile.

11:54

What this means is that the green turtle isn't that rare after all, there are plenty of golden age superheroes whose copyrights weren't renewed after 28 years and are now in the public domain.

12:05

These superheroes are fair game, ready for anyone to pull them out of obscurity.

12:10

And this is exactly what we need to do to get a real authentic vintage planet money superhero.

12:16

We need to go dumpster diving through the annals of comic books.

12:22

And Jennifer says, we don't even have to look that hard.

12:25

All of these fans of these old comic books and these old superheroes have actually done the legwork of exhuming finding, taking up characters and saying, here's our favorite list of public domain comic book characters.

12:38

I would probably start there And

12:41

to help us. Jennifer sent us some of the lists.

12:43

These fans had pulled together. So This

12:45

is one of the websites you sent me, Jennifer. I just want to say there are 3,368 characters collected on this website that Jennifer sent.

12:53

I'm not vouching for this. It's just the first thing that came up on Google enough.

12:58

Now all we have to do is narrow it down just a bit from 3,368 choices.

13:05

It's a, it's a lot, but look, Jean

13:09

Luhan yang was able to do this.

13:11

I remember going to sleep thinking about the green turtle, wanting to fill out his origin story and succeed.

13:17

Like he wrote the green turtle, a brand new origin story.

13:21

And in this new version, there was no question.

13:23

This was a Chinese American superhero.

13:26

Also no question. The green turtle is still shirtless, very hunky muscles.

13:31

That's right. And in 2014, he was able to legally publish this new story in a graphic novel called the shadow hero drawn by sunny Lou.

13:41

I did the writing and Sonny and amazing artists did all of the illustrations.

13:45

It's very good. The illustrations are very good.

13:47

She's so good. Right? It gives me hope, Robert, that the planet money superhero is out there somewhere.

13:54

Just waiting to be discovered like the green turtle and gene.

13:58

He gave us some advice on finding the perfect superhero for us in a list of thousands.

14:05

I think it's kind of like falling in love, right?

14:07

Like how do you know when you fall in love? I do think you don't go for the cool.

14:10

I really do think that cool gets in the way of that heart connection that you might have with one of these characters.

14:17

I really think it's that, that combination of, of goofiness and idealism, you want a goofy expression of an ideal.

14:26

That's good. I mean, that's, that is succinct and boiled down.

14:29

I mean like that's great. That's a thing we can go hunting for right now Or

14:32

go hunting.

14:33

After the break, This

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15:21

All right, I'm going to pull up this list of 3000 characters allegedly in the public domain.

15:27

All right. It's somewhere in here is our planet money superhero in alphabetical order.

15:34

Okay.

15:36

ACE of blades.

15:37

I don't like it.

15:39

I got air.

15:41

Boy.

15:43

Everybody sounds like a brand of mattress.

15:45

Okay. Arson, fiend, Arson.

15:52

Fiend.

15:54

Okay. Oh man.

15:57

Yeah. Okay. This is, this is going to take forever.

16:00

Largo. The lawless.

16:02

No blooper man. No captain 3d.

16:05

I thought we were all 3d horned hood electric.

16:07

Next breast male.

16:11

Sense of bad. Love a man.

16:14

Ooh. Futura. No, no lava taco man.

16:19

No menthol. What are we doing?

16:24

No Kangaroo, man. No like, no, right?

16:28

No, no way.

16:33

This is like going through Tinder for superheroes.

16:35

It's like swipe laughed.

16:37

Laughed, laughed, weird costume.

16:40

Terrible super powers.

16:42

Shirtless laughed.

16:45

Laughed. So,

16:47

okay. Let's just keep going. Let me try it. Let me throw this one past you.

16:49

This one, Robert.

16:51

I have high hopes for, let me just, I'm just going to share him with you on my screen.

16:56

All right, Lee, there's a guy looks like he has sort of a hood and two little things over his eyes and like something on his face.

17:03

It, it, it, it's sort of, he's gotten like a weird evil executioner vibe.

17:09

He's he looks a little scary.

17:11

I will give you that. He's a good guy though.

17:13

He's not an executioner. The mask he's wearing is his super power.

17:18

And just listen to what this thing does, Robert.

17:21

Okay. Number one, those weird things on his eyes.

17:24

Those are photoelectric eyes.

17:26

He can see through things.

17:28

Okay. The little bumps on his ears that you see.

17:31

They're super hearing. He can like hear things from far away.

17:34

All right. Right, right. Okay.

17:35

And then the thing over, most of his face mouth nose, that is a giant microphone.

17:42

Oh, the superpower is a giant microphone face mask.

17:48

So he's like voices Really loud.

17:51

He can make his voice really loud. He can like throw his voice, like a ventriloquist.

17:55

He can disguise his voice. He can make himself sound like other people.

17:57

He can like generate like surround sound and like freak out criminals and like insane chaos can ensue.

18:03

It's Got the power of audio processing.

18:06

Yeah. Mean his face. Yes, he is.

18:09

He is Functionally.

18:10

I like a little one man.

18:12

Broadcaster like that is his super power.

18:15

It's unique. It's unique.

18:16

It's unique. Right? It's unique.

18:18

And, and here, I want you to open this other link.

18:21

Okay. He's not in very many comic book appearances, but the ones he's in are all online, you know, public domain and all.

18:26

And I just want you to take a look at this panel here and we can get a sense of how his like supersonic hearing works.

18:34

Okay. In this panel, he's, he's in an alleyway.

18:37

He's looking for a bad guy and there's the sound of footsteps way off in the distance.

18:41

And

18:41

then

18:41

he

18:41

says,

18:45

My micro hearing brings the sound of running feet.

18:48

It is Eddie torpedo.

18:49

They're two years ahead.

18:55

This is very useful. I, I, myself have spent much of my career recording footsteps and then boosting up the volume level in the mix.

19:02

That's Robert who among us later in the comic though, we finally get to see the big gun or rather I should say the big microphone on his face.

19:10

Yeah. We get to see what his face Mike can do.

19:12

This is game Gun, toting goons.

19:14

And we, we hear our hero, say all through it, Real

19:17

fear into these punks.

19:19

Then he Uses his face microphone to broadcast the sound of a police whistle.

19:24

But, but it's not just a loud whistle.

19:27

He can make it like surround sound.

19:29

So these bad guys now think they're surrounded by Hawks, The

19:35

goons, losing whistles.

19:37

He has a whole school, Chaos

19:40

ensues, our hero prevails.

19:43

And

19:43

Robert,

19:43

I

19:43

love

19:47

him. I love him so much.

19:50

He listens.

19:51

He then edits audio.

19:53

He confuses people with his microphone.

19:56

He is a podcast or he's literally a podcast superhero from 1943 Is

20:05

the planet money superhero.

20:06

We can like re-imagine his backstory.

20:10

We can update the creepy mask.

20:12

We can give him cool audio powers.

20:16

The new comic book. We can do a t-shirt or you know, action figures, a USB microphone face mask.

20:23

So you can podcast with his map.

20:26

The possibilities are endless.

20:29

Now all we have to do is introduce him to the world.

20:33

Amplified of course, maybe a little bit of reverb, little compression on there.

20:38

And he steps out in front of the planet money audience.

20:41

And he says, I

20:43

am Mike Rove face That's

20:49

micro hyphened Face. His face is totally normal sized.

20:52

Just to be clear, but that, but that's his name? Micro face.

20:54

It's just a microphone on, on the face yet. The fuck you get it.

20:57

Yeah. Okay. I am Mike.

20:59

And

20:59

so

20:59

until

20:59

he

20:59

is

20:59

needed,

20:59

the

20:59

planet

20:59

money

20:59

superhero

20:59

waits

20:59

quietly,

20:59

wherever

20:59

there

20:59

is

20:59

evil,

20:59

he

20:59

hears

21:13

it. Whenever there is a call for justice, he amplifies it across all spectrums.

21:18

The microphone broadcasts a message of hope.

21:21

Never fear for micro face is here.

21:30

Next time on planet money buys a superhero.

21:32

We assemble a team, a team of the world's best comic book writers, artists.

21:38

Letterers the people that do the little letters in the bubbles, and we turn them loose on micro face.

21:43

I mean, I have experienced with some pretty, you know, no friends, but pretty dumb golden age.

21:51

That's next Friday. Same micro time.

21:54

Say micro place.

21:55

Just to be clear. It's a normal size time and place.

21:59

It's just a micro microphone microphones, right?

22:02

If you would like to support planet money, you could check out our planet money, animal spirits.

22:06

T-shirt it is back in the NPR store that is shop.npr.org/planet money.

22:13

And I will just say, maybe keep an eye on that shop over the next couple of weeks.

22:17

Just keep an eye.

22:18

Some coming.

22:20

You can catch us on all the social media, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, tick talk.

22:25

We're at planet money. If you want more strange tales from that other dimension known as the public domain, Jennifer Jenkins has co-written two comic books tales from the public domain.

22:34

They are both of course free online.

22:37

This episode was produced by James Snead with help from Maria Paz, Gutierrez engineering help from Gilly moon.

22:43

The show was edited by Liza Jaeger, right?

22:46

Urstadt edits the whole shell planet money, Alex Goldmark.

22:49

He is our supervising producer.

22:50

I'm micro face.

22:52

No, I'm like, wait a minute.

22:54

We're all micro phase because this is NPR.

22:57

Thanks for listening.

22:59

Listen, I think we have a catch phrase.

23:13

His catchphrase is thanks for listening.

23:14

His second catch phrase is support your local NPR station.

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The mere science fiction writers of the 20th century.

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Octavia Butler imagined worlds that were radically different and strikingly similar to the one we live in today for our black history month special series, the cautionary tales and the reasons for hope that Octavia Butler left us.

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This message comes from NPR sponsor Comcast since 2011, Comcast has connected more than 4 million students from low income families to the message comes from NPR sponsor, Comcast. Since twenty eleven, Comcast has connected more than four million students from low income families to the internet. Now they're launching more than 1000 wifi connected lift zones across the Now, they're launching more than one thousand WiFi connected lift zones across the country. More at more at comcast dot com slash education. Christmas Christmas tree, make a t-shirt and then follow that shirt around the tree here. Make a t shirt and then file that shirt around the world as it gets made. We were taxi's last owners. She was our pet toxic acid. A hundred barrels of crude oil. Three? Yes. We 2. One, we added gas. Whoa. Whoa. Oh my gosh. This is Planet Money Studios from NPR. Planet money buys a superhero. Issue number two. It starts as do all great sequels with a highly edited recap. Suitcase full of money, check, let them know that we wanna buy a superhero. Yep. Door man. Door man. Open the door, man. I'm confident in my know. There's A loophole. A loophole? But to find that loophole, the planet money team would need a guide. Someone who had traveled to another dimension found their own superhero and lived to tell about it. Someone who was having an abnormally loud microphone problem. Yeah. Does it sound does it still sound too loud? You know, what if you just it went back a little bit from your microphone. Should I point it should I point it away from me? Is that helpful? Oh, wait. What kind of microphone do you have? This is Jean Luen Yang, a comic book artist who had worked for Marvel and DC. He was about to explain to our planet money hosts. How he found himself longing for a character outside the grasp of the giant companies, a superhero. To call his own. This is this is sounding better. It's good. Okay. Gene, I I have a copy of this comic book of yours. Of this nineteen forty superhero that you found, it's it's amazing, but Why don't you start by just telling Robert and me how you found this superhero in the first place? So years ago, a friend of mine forwarded me this this post from a website called Pappies Golden Age blogs in -- Mhmm. -- where they highlight these really your characters from the golden age of cotton. Mhmm. And this one particular post was about the green turtle. Who on the surface is not an awesome character. He's like a Batman rip off. So he lives in a turtle cave. You know, he flies a turtle plane He wears a a turtle themed costume. He's just not an awesome character. And and worse than Batman, he doesn't wear a shirt. Like, he fights crime shirtless. Right? He just he looks really, really goofy. I feel like most people would have just dismissed the shirtless crusader, but there is something else There is this rumor about the green turtle. The green turtle was created by an artist named Chu green turtle was created by an artist named 2 King, and the story goes the Choo King wanted to draw the green turtle as a Chinese American superhero. It would have been groundbreaking. This was the nineteen forties. Virtually every superhero was white. But this was the nineteen forties. The comic book company said no way. So Chew Hing, I mean, he he just he reacts away Comic book artists would react when they hit like a a road bump. He just gets super passive aggressive. So he draws these early green turtle comics so that you never you almost never see his face. There's like a shadow over his face or there's a piece of fur blocking his face. Something is getting in the way of you looking at his face. And the rumor is that Chuhing did this so that both he and his reader could imagine this character as a Chinese american, as he originally intended. Gene became obsessed with the green turtle. The character had only appeared in five issues of blazing comics back in nineteen forty four. Not long enough to get proper backstory or resolution And Gene thought to himself, I could revive this character. I could fill out that story. I could make it clear once and for all that this was a Chinese american superhero. The question of course was who even owns this character in the first The question of course was who even owns his character in first place? More importantly, Who's gonna show up to sue me? Gene starts to talk to lawyers, searches old copyright records from library of congress. It's all the stuff that, like, Comic book artists are not good at. We're not getting money. We're not getting legal stuff. Like, most of the time, I'm thinking about, you know, what is the next, like, genetic mutated monster that Lexus is gonna launch at Superman. But what gene learned was that the green turtle lived in a strange dimension of the legal universe. The copyright had lapsed. No one owned the green turtle anymore, which meant that Gene had as much right as anyone else to redraw him. Because the green turtle had entered into the public domain. Hello, and welcome to Planet Money. I'm Kenny Malone, and I'm Robert Smith. A quest for a planet money superhero continues. We had the front door, man, slammed in our face. Man, but Jean Lou and Yang has found a loophole we can squeeze through. Today on the show, we travel through the cracks in time and space and copyright law to find a character like the green turtle. That even the Marvel Empire has left behind. And what we find is a lost superhero that feels like it was made just for us for planet money. From eighty years ago. This message comes from NPR message comes from NPR sponsor. Microsoft teams, Microsoft teams is helping priority bicycles, reinvent the way they Microsoft Teams. Microsoft Teams is helping priority bicycles reinvent the way they work. When the pandemic hit, the bike shop had to close their New York city When the pandemic hit, the bike shop had to close their New York City showroom. They found a way to reopen by doing virtual visits on teams. Now the team can meet with two or three times the number of customers and they could Now the team can meet with two or three times the number of customers than they could before. And people from all over the world can visit their and people from all over the world can visit their showroom. Learn more about their story and others at Learn more about their story and others at Microsoft dot com slash teams. In recent mass shootings, people have been targeted for who they are, who they worship. But on June twenty eight, twenty eighteen, people were targeted for the jobs they do at a newspaper, listened to the new series from NPR's embedded about the survivors at the capital Gazette. W why don't we start by, by just, just checking out this weird afterlife of intellectual property known as the public domain, the public don't we start? By just just checking out this weird afterlife. Of intellectual property known as the public domain. The public domain. We've talked about this strange land on planet money before, about how entire books can fall into the public domain or talked about this strange land on planet money before about how entire books can fall into the public domain. Or songs. Hey, I guess we're allowed to play that song I guess we're allowed to play that song now. This is where creative works go when their copyright expires. And just like books and songs, it can happen to characters too. Look Robert, it's Jay Gatsby's be. We're talking to Lady McBeth. Oh, damn spots. And then there's who gene was looking there, there's who Gene was looking for. The green turtle. What's up? Hey, guys. Gene says, hi. Once he's in a comic Nice. To pluck an old vintage character like the green turtle from the public domain, solves quite a few problems for our superior quest. Despite all of you, our listeners tweeting all week at Marvel to hashtag open the door man, we have not heard back from Marvel, and we never will. We have to move on, Kenny. We gotta move on. Many of you suggested that that we could move on by maybe drawing our own. How should we say homage to the doorman? Sliding door man -- Sure. pet doorman, perhaps, or the very well dressed Christian dior man. But but it's just it's just not the same to make up a new superhero. Superheroes are our modern Greek or Roman gods, like featured in these stories about right and wrong, they'd get passed down to us from before we were born, it it's the patina and the providence of a superhero that make it feel real. So we're not just gonna draw one, make one up. Okay. But if old vintage superheroes are like gold, how many green turtles could really be out there? Superheroes that fell into the public domain. We reckon only one person has the answer. My name is Jennifer Jenkins. And I am a clinical professor of law at Duke Law School. And I am also the director of the center for the study of the public domain, which just rolls off the tongue. It doesn't, but I'm sure you own the trademark to it, which is great. You know, who else would want to You know what? We we didn't we thought that might be a little bit strange. If we're the public domain center, we're gonna claim rights to the trademark. Jennifer Jenkins practices what she preaches. And she is preaching how our superhero quest is exactly why our country has the public domain. Every great work of art will eventually end up in the public domain. And although we called this show loophole and we've talked about a loophole, it's not really a loophole. This is not an accident. The copyright system was designed this way 2 stimulate creativity. How does it do that? Well, during the copyright term, it gives you exclusive rights. It gives you control. That incentivizes you to create things and put them out there. But after the term ends, it ensures that all that creative raw material is available for future creators and that stimulates creativity as well, and hopefully it'll be stimulating your creativity. And Jennifer says that with this superhero project, we kinda lucked out. Because of this magical moment in superhero history, the nineteen forties. In the nineteen forties, there were two critical things happening in the world of comic books. Number one, There was a superhero explosion known as the Golden Age of Comics. We talked about this in episode one. Hundreds. Thousands of superheroes were being created, and most of them did not take off like Superman or Batman, which helps us because of reason number two. The forties was part of this special era in copyright history. The lifespan of a normal copyright at that time was relatively short. At least compared to today, it was just twenty eight years. And then whoever owned the copyright that they took out in the nineteen forties had to actively file the paperwork to renew it in the nineteen seventies. And you know, with all the the disco and the hot tubs and the cocaine, some small companies understandably spaced out on the need to renew their superheroes. Or more likely, in the nineteen seventies, like these weird old golden age superheroes. We're not exactly doing not exactly doing gangbusters. So unless you had seen success like Marvel or DC, there may not have been a great business reason to spend money renewing some failed character from your olden days. Guess what? The commercial lifespan of most creative works, sadly is not that commercial lifespan of most creative works suddenly is not that long. So, you know, the brilliant song that you've been working on, the great thing that I've been writing, It's never gonna sell anyway. But even if it does, it might not be selling after twenty eight years. After twenty eight years, eighty five percent of works were not renewed, suggesting that the copyright owners did not find it worthwhile. What this means is that the green turtle isn't that rare after all. There are plenty of golden age superheroes whose copyrights weren't renewed after twenty eight years and are now in the public domain. These superheroes are fair game ready for anyone to pull them out of obscurity. And this is exactly what we need to do to get a real authentic vintage planet money superhero. We need to go dumpster diving through the annals of comic book history. And Jennifer says we don't even have to look that hard. All of these fans of these old comic books and these old superheroes have actually done the legwork of exhuming, finding, digging up characters and saying, hey, here's our favorite list of public domain comic book characters. I would probably start there. And to help us Jennifer sent us some of lifts these fans had pulled together. So this This is one of the websites you sent me, one of the websites you sent me Jennifer. I just wanna say, there are three thousand three hundred and sixty eight characters collected on this website that Jennifer sent. I'm not matching for this. It's just the first thing that came up on Google. Fair enough. Now all we have to do is narrow it down just a bit from three thousand three hundred and sixty eight choices. It's a it's a lot, but look, Jean Louis and Yang was able to do this. I remember going to sleep thinking about the green turtle wanting to fill out his origin story. And succeed. Like, he wrote the green turtle a brand new origin story. And in this new version, there was no question. This was a Chinese american superhero. Also, no question. The green turtle is still shirtless. Very hunky muscles. That's that's right. And in two thousand and fourteen, he was able to legally published this new story in a graphic novel called The Shadow Hero, drawn by Sunny Lou. I did the writing, and Sunny, an amazing artist did all of the illustrations very good. The illustrations are very good. She's so good. Right? It gives me hope, Robert, that the planet money superhero is out there somewhere just waiting to be discovered like the green turtle. And Jean, he gave us some advice on finding the perfect superhero. For us in a list of thousands. Yeah. I think it's kinda like falling in love. Right? Like, how do you know when you're falling in love? I I do think you don't go for cool I I really do think that cool gets in the way of that hard connection that you might have with one of these characters. I I really think it's that that combination of of goofiness and idealism. You want a goofy expression of an ideal. That's good. I mean, that's that is succinct and boiled that. I mean, like, that's great. That's a thing we can go hunting for right now. Or go hunting for after the break. This message comes from NPR sponsor, TD message comes from NPR sponsor TD Ameritrade. Everything's Everything's customizable these days. Your trading platform can be too. With Thinkors swim. You can Customize screeners, charting and stock you can customize screeners, charting, and stock forecasts. So the market is always tailored to so the market is always tailored to you. You can get started at t d americrate dot com slash think or swim. This message comes from NPR sponsor NetSuite by Oracle. Business today moves faster than ever. It's time to hit the gas and accelerate with NetSuite. Let NetSuite show you how they'll benefit your business with a free product tour at Let NetSuite show you how they'll benefit your business with a free product tour at netsuite dot com slash money. Alright. I'm gonna pull up this list of three thousand characters allegedly in the public domain. Alright. It's somewhere in here is our planet money superhero. In alphabetical order. Oh, okay. Ace of blades I don't like it. I got I got air boy. Air Everybody sounds like a brand of sounds like a brand of mattress. Okay? Arson fiend. Arsen floored. Okay. Oh, man. Yeah. Okay. This is this is gonna take forever. Blargo, the lawless. No. Blooper man. No. Captain 3DI thought we're all three d. Corned hood. Electric wreck. Even died. Throw into the man. Breastment. They all sound so bad. Lava man. Oh, futuro. No. Futuro. No. Lava man. Right. Go man? No. Men Thor. What are we doing? Kid, eternity. No. Kangaroo, man? No. Like, no. Right? No. No way. This is like going through Tinder for superheroes. It's like swipe left, laughed, laughed, weird costume, terrible superpowers, shirtless, laughed, laughed. So Okay. Let's just keep going. Let me let me throw this one past you. This one, Robert, I have high hopes for. Let me just I'm just gonna share him with you on my screen. Alright. There's a guy. It looks like he has sort of a hood and two little -- Yes. -- things over his eyes and, like -- Yeah. -- something on his face It it it sort of he's gotten like a weird evil executioner vibe. He he looks a little scary. I will give you that He's a good guy though. He's not an executioner. The the mask he is wearing is his superpower. And just listen to what this thing does, Robert. Okay. Number one, those weird things on his eyes, those are photoelectric eyes. He can see through things. Yeah. Okay. The little bumps on his ears that you see there, super hearing. He can, like, hear things from far away. Alright? Right. Right? Okay. And then the thing over most of his face. Malth knows. That is a giant microphone. Oh. The superpower is a giant microphone face mask. So he's like, voice is really loud. He can make his voice really can make his voice really loud. He can like throw his voice like avantrielaquist. He can disguise his voice. He can make himself sound like other people. He can, like, generate, like, surround sound and, like, freak out criminals and, like, chaos can ensue. He's got the power of audio processing. Yeah. Mean his his face. Yes. He is he is functionally like a little one man broadcaster. Like, that is his superpower. It's unique. It's unique. It's unique. Right? It's unique. And and here, I want you to open this other link. Okay. He's not in very many comic book appearances, but the ones he's in are all online, you know, public domain and all. And I just want you to take a look at this panel here. And we can get a sense of how his, like, supersonic hearing works. Okay. In in this panel, he's he's in an alleyway. He's looking for a bad guy. And there's the the sound of footsteps way off in the distance. And then he says, My micro hearing brings the sound of running microhearing brings the sound of running feet. It is Eddy torpedo. There he is ahead. This is very is very useful. I I myself have spent much of my career recording footsteps and then boosting up the volume level in the mix. Who among That's Robert who among us later in the comic though, we finally get to see the big gun or rather I should say the big microphone on his Robert? Who among us? Later in the comic though, we finally get to see the big gun or rather I should say the big microphone. On his face. Yeah. We get to see what his face Mike can do. This is gang of gun toting goons, and we we hear our heroes say, I'll throw real fear into these punks. Then he uses his face microphone to broadcast the sound of a police whistle. But but it's not just a loud whistle. He can make it like surround down. So these bad guys now think they're surrounded by dogs. The goons lose it. Cut whistles. He has a whole school, a whole Court. Chaos ensues our hero preveils. And Robert, I love him. I love him so much. He listens. He then edits audio. He confuses people with his microphone. He is a podcaster. He's literally a podcast superhero. Yes. From nineteen forty three. This is the planet money superhero. We can, like, reimagine his backstory. We can update the creepy mask. We can give him cool audio powers. We can write a new comic book. We can do a t shirt or, you know, action figures. A USB microphone face mask so you can podcast with his mask. The possibilities are endless and now all we have to do is introduce him to the world. Amplified, of course, maybe a little bit of reverb, little compression on there, and he steps out front of the planet by the audience, and he says, I am micro face. That's micro hyphened micro hyphen face. His face is totally normal sized, just to be clear, but that but that's his name? Micro Microface. It's just a microphone. I'm on the face. Yeah. The face You get it. Yeah. Okay. I am my girlfriend. And so until he is needed, but a planet money superhero waits quietly. Wherever there is evil, he hears it. Whenever there is a call for justice, he amplifies it. Across all spectrums, the microphone broadcasts a mess of hope. Never fear. For microface is here. Next time on planet Money buys a superhero, we assemble a team, a team of the world's best comic book writers. Artists, letters, the people who do the little letters in the bubbles, and we turn them loose on microface. I mean, I have experienced with some pretty, you know, no no offense, but pretty dumb golden age girl. That's next Friday. Same micro time. Same micro place. Just to be clear, it's a normal sized time in place. Yeah. It's It's just a micro microphone microphones, a micro microphone. We use a microfilmm. If you would like to support planet money, you could check out our planet money animal spirits t shirt. It is back in the NPR store that is shop dot NPR dot 0RG slash planet money. And I will just say, maybe keep an eye on that shop over the next couple weeks. Keep an eye. Some common. You can catch us on all the social media, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, we are at planet planet. If you want more strange tales, from that other dimension known as the public domain. Jennifer Jenkins has co written two comic books, tales from the public domain. They are both, of course, free online. This episode was produced by James Sneeden with help from Maria Paz Gutierrez, Engineering help from Gilly Moon. The show was edited by Liza Jaeger. Bryant Erstat edits the whole show of Planet Money. Alex Goldmark is our supervising producer. I'm Micropace. No, I'm Micropace. Wait a minute. We're all Micropace because this is NPR. Thanks for listening. Listen. Listen. Listen. I think we have a catch phrase. His his catchphrase is thanks for listening. His second catchphrase is support your local NPR station. One of the premier science fiction writers of the twentieth century Octavia Butler imagined worlds that were radically different and strikingly similar to the one we live in today. For our Black History Month special series, the cautionary tales and the reasons for hope that Octavia Butler left us. Listen now to the through-line from listen now to the through line podcast from NPR. Support for NPR and the following message come from Casper, where it's never been easier to reset your wrist. Shop their president's day sale, and enjoy up to fifteen percent off your bedroom essentials at casper dot com. Exclusions may apply. Seek casper dot com slash promo for details and end date.