Who is the best public domain superhero? Hard mode: Don't say Black Terror

Who is the best public domain superhero? Hard mode: Don't say Black Terror.

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capeworldcomics.com/
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hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/zorro-lawsuit-parries-past-motion-dismiss-1009191
pdsh.wikia.com/wiki/Yellowjacket
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This guy is kind of popular around here.

has black terror been remade by somebody yet? it must have

Any got the fan comic that parodies the ending of Watchmen?

Black Lion

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Tim

If you were to create modern day "golden age" superheroes, who would they be, what would they be? Lots of them were explorers or pilots or adventurers or whatever. It might be neat fun to write "golden age" style stories set in the modern world - like a superhero who fights Somali pirates, or a Khurdish super-heroine who protects young women in the middle east, or a former PMC soldier in the Somalia/Ethiopia region who wages a one man war on... war.

christ, Tim is ice cold, fucking killing niggas with a steamroller.

I like how he's running over the guys that have already been shot.
Anyhoo, dumping the collection of public domain heroes because why not.

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Spurt Hammond.

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Beep beep move aside motherfuckers. Best public domain superhero coming through.

Leiji Matsumoto

If you feel like archive trawling there was a couple of threads a long time ago about making a unified Golden Age/public domain setting in the modern world. It was pretty grim due to translating the pre-war/WW2 zeitgeist to modern times giving it a surprisingly nice apocalyptic feel to it.

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Dynamite Entertainment reinvented him as a really piratical superhero who mutinies against the corrupt US government and gave him a sword and a big ghostly ship to go with his new image. He was pretty cool for a while

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That one's still disputed on account his not all his stuff might be public domain. Even though I think he really should be made public domain on account that Marvel's gonna keep a lock on the name "Captain Marvel" as a trademark and DC is likely going to just name their take on the character "Shazam" and make huge divergences to the character anyway

Was there ever any doubt?

That's not how public domain works. If the original appearance is public domain (it is) then the character itself is public domain. What is not public domain are concepts that originate in works that haven't become public domain yet.

You're absolutely free to use Captain Marvel as long as you only throw in elements from his PD adventures and things you yourself come up with.

Of course you couldn't refer to him as Captain Marvel or Billy Batson or Shazam in promotional material or in the title for your work because that's trademark violation, which DC and/or Marvel do actually have on their side, but you could use the character in your works.

Until DC hits you with legal action and you have to stop despite legally being allowed to do so because you don't have the resources of an enormous corporation who can tie you up with legal hassles for the rest of your life.

Interesting. Shitty, but interesting.

Neat

I love The Sword's suit

Aside from the actual logo I really like the Flame's classic cape and cowl look, and red and yellow evoke his elemental control well, so he's the best of this lot. The less said about Samson and David, the better.

As much as I love the Silver Streak for being basically the definitive PD speedster, I can't help but hate how his costume has no silver in it and his Aryan good looks and the SS on his chest make him seem like a Nazi superhero. None of the designs on this page are all that great.

I actually like Airman's look a lot here, but Radior wins for his really classic pulpy sci-fi vibe, he feels like something out of Flash Gordon. Rainbow Boy is just all kinds of a mess.

The Owl actually looks pretty damn legit, all they need to do is either remove the tiny beak nose or make it more of a lower-face shield. Strongman also looks pretty great. Cat and Kitten look more like actual bats than Batman does thanks to those fucky ears.

Beyond Sparkman maybe looking like some kind of extraterrestrial overlord reject from the Inhumans there's nothing salvagable here, costume design wise.

Ditto this one. The Claw is cool conceptually though so I guess his design kind of works.

Daredevil is one of the only Golden Age heroes whose design really holds up in modern times with only a few minor tweaks I think. He looks great here. I quite like Captain Battle and his "wholesome Big Boss" look that he's rocking.

If I had to pick then it'd either be Power Nelson for his kind of future retro vibes or Marvel Man and Vana for rocking the 1950s space look.

Raven is legit as hell, and the Unknown Soldier is one of the few military-themed designs in the golden age that I don't mind. The Sword and his magical gleaming chainmail armor look pretty sweet too. It just needs to be a little less form fitting.

Black Venus is banging and the Rocket heroes look great in that shiny hopeful optimistic future way that the Golden Age had.

This might actually be the best page in terms of designs. American Crusader is A1 already, American Eagle has the whole Patriot thing going on without looking fucking obnoxious and Skyman is like the coolest looking gadgeteer ever. Mr. Face is smooth as fuck and I'd love to see some stories about him. Even Marvelo is not too shabby, in that he conveys his magical roots well and looks proper golden agey.

We all know The Black Terror has a straight up baller design, and I really like the Arrow as well. Clean and simple, you don't need a complex outfit when you're rocking oldschool bow and arrow. I even like Amazing Man, he's got that flashy old pulp hero vibe going on too.

Target and the Targeteers have pretty legit costume designs, Black Owl only needs a minor tweak, and Unknown Soldier's costume is terrible.

Wasn't Amazing Man used by Marvel in Immortal Iron Fist?

I dare you to find a more intimidating superhero.

Yeah. He was Prince of Orphans in that one.

It's mainly cause his origin was used as inspiration for Iron Fist.

Peter Cannon, Thunderbolt also used Amazing-Man's origin as an influence as well as the Golden Age Daredevil's costume.

Well, I would say a modern golden age would be something like, pre-apocalyptic. If you remember the first mad max movie, which was set right when society was collapsing? Something like that. Terrorism, sectarian violence, corruption, graft. Where old heroes fought japanese soldiers and italian racketeers, modern heroes would fight Jihadists and CEO's

Very Watchmen-esque, now that I think about it. But while the Watchmen was fundamentally pessimistic, a proper golden age comic would be optimistic. Noble Dark.

Yeah, Bill Everett, Amazing Man's creator, worked for Marvel/Atlas.

Does The Shadow count?

Buddy cop duo miniseries called Hand-Eye Coordination. I want it.

He's not pd yet

Fero

>Yank and Doodle
Oh dear.

It was a more innocent time, user!

I run a superhero webcomic/webnovel website called Capeworld comics. capeworldcomics.com/

One of the things I've been doing is reinventing public domain superheros to populate the WW2 era of the little superhero universe I'm making. It's on hiatus now but I've been writing a story about the golden age Daredevil with cameos by Airboy and Thor.

You can find them all here: capeworldcomics.com/chapter/the-daredevil-text/

This Daredevil keeps the "white orphan raised by Australian aborignees" origin but adds a "man between two worlds" theme. His missionary parents were killed out in the bush by power armor wearing bandits (called Kellymen after Ned Kelly) and he was found raised by aboriginees. They believed that his dreaming was the dreaming of his parents, that he was born of the wastelands and had to be given back to the wastelands when he was of age. So when he was a teenager they left him out in the outback to die. Left between life and death the Rainbow Serpent who exists in all things liminal came to him and rebuilt him as his champion.

Now he paints himself as the Rainbow Serpent to honor his divine patron and fights against the Axis.

The Rainbow Serpent blessed him enhanced strength and speed and the ability to separate his body from his soul (which looks like him but with the colors reversed). While his classic boomerangs are still his go-to weapon he uses other aboriginal tools and weapons like bull roarers and spears.

What do you think thread?

>white orphan raised by aboriginees

Did they teach him to sniff gasoline?

I was wondering if they gave him sausage dick.

No need to go that far. I already have them kick him out into the outback to die a slow agonizing death just for their skyfather deity to pick him as his champion because he's both alive and dead, white and aboriginal, tribesman and outsider.

He hasn't been back since they kicked him out and he doesn't plan on ever going back.

What I've written isn't exactly a flattering depiction of aboriginals. If I was more than 370/14000 on the webcomiclist I'm sure some SJW somewhere would get made at me.

Some things are best never mentioned or alluded to.

yeah but it worked out for them cause he turned into a superhero m8 so whose laughing now

>Worked out for them

How? The white kid they tried to kill is now channeling their skyfather's divine power and he wants absolutely nothing to do with them now.

Does the Rainbow Serpent even into humans? I thought it was just kind of an eldritch horror that paid us no heed

Is there any good place, I could read this old public domain comics online?

I think the joke is that he's wearing spandex. I like the idea, keep it unapologetic.
Poetic license?

He does, especially when WW2 is the tipping point in the Capeworld timeline where things get crazy and the history stops becoming "just like our history but with superheros".

For instance China and Taiwan "switch places" because superheros prevent Mao from coming to power. This China remains a democracy while the communists gather at a splinter state officially called the People's Republic of China, the reverse of the "One China" policy we have in real life. People are functionally immortal because of super medical technology and don't die unless a super villain fries them with a death ray. The space program has put colonies in other galaxies and Earth is Star Trek esque space power. A big part of Capeworld to me is that the world changes with superhumans unlike in Marvel and DC where its "the world outside your window" but with superheros.

And WW2 was the kick off point. Gods are involved. The Japanese government in particular makes use of their kami and Amatarasu had a huge brawl with Pele when Japan tried to invade Hawaii (which resulted in Amatarasu fleeing to Japan to heal and the divine blood she spilt over Japan creating a lineage of "magical girls" but that's another story). Thor is an American agent. Odin is kept in chains under Berlin. The Marvel Family exists.

The Rainbow Serpent couldn't afford not to be involved.

Digital Comics Museum. You don't even have to register. Just click preview and you'll get a reader form of whatever comic you'll looking at. They got the Marvels, The Spirit, EC horror comics, Plastic Man, the works.

Interesting. I tried making my own universe of public domain heroes using dates that were given in various comics, and the result was an absolute shitsack of a world thanks to the accumulated evils perpetrated across the world in various different comics.

This is mostly thanks to 1940s comics portraying "the future" as stuff happening in the 70s and 80s and making their "future sci fi heroes" exist in that timeframe.

Are there similar images for villains?

Black Terror isn't anything special though

He's just a bog standard lowercase-s superman with a costume that's memorable because it's edgy.

Now THIS guy on the other hand... He ABSOLUTELY is something special.

Not really but kind of? There's a bunch of villains retained and reinvented for P:SP but no group shot of them with coloring by Alex Ross. Some sketches though.

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Did they decide whether Zorro was PD officially or not? Last I heard it was bouncing around in the courts because the Zorro estate holders were being utter cunts about the whole thing.

It's one of those complicated things like the legal status of Timely Human Torch and Namor.

Neat. Do you have anymore? Writing golden age characters isn't as hard as writing their badguys. I basically had to invent them whole cloth because 90 percent of them are kind of really lame. I got Dardevil fighting an SS cyborg named Shwarz Narr whose a mask and a cloak hiding lots of robotic spider legs with blades and weapons. He has his own zeppelin that he can plug himself into and control like a part of his body called the Vaterland II (after the German war blimp in HG Wells' The War in the Air, which was how WW1 went down in Capeworld history). He likes collecting things-like bodies, and watching the soldiers inside the Vaterland II sleep. If the Nazis weren't strapped for superhumans after driving them out of the country before the war started (they saw superhumans as a threat to state power and their scientists predicted superhumans would only increase in number, not power) they'd probably would kill Schwarz Narr. But they need him, so they put up with him.

>Shitsack of a world thanks to the accumulated evils perpetuated throughout the world

Like what? Sounds like an interesting setting. Superhumans and superscience introduced in WW2 leads to the costs of the war being much, much worse.

>future sci fi heroes

I'm not sure what I want to do with those. I think all the rocket men and space cadets just happen. 70's era Capeworld is basically Star Trek already.

Hydro's a great design.

It's too easy

He is. Bill Everett made him and Namor. Just something about the thin plastic over him and the riveted color says "this guy goes in teh water".

In Capeworld he's the first of an entire navy of Hydromen. They're living blobs of water and rely on their translite suits to help them maintain human shape. If they're outside the suits for too long they start to "forget" how to be human shaped. One Hydromen who stayed outside his suit too long now serves as the support battleship of the Hydromen Navy-an enormous Yamato sized battleship made entirely out of ice and hatred for the Japanese.

The Hydromen have a hard time adjusting to life after the war. Some of them go full mercenary. That's something I want to address in future stories, what happens to all these heroes after the war.

Fighting Yank
Any other answer just ain't patriotic.
I actually own both of the Dynamite Reboot trades for all these assholes. It's actually really cool shit.

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He looks remarkably like Captain Harlock, or vice-versa.

I think this guy is owned by Dynamite but he’s from Project Superpowers.

He reminds me of Lobo.

Vice versa. By well over three decades.

Papyrus?

Yeah, he's owned by Dynamite so he's not really a PD character. It's different from in which they redesigned a PD character which means they'd own the redesign.

So far the case is still ongoing.

hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/zorro-lawsuit-parries-past-motion-dismiss-1009191

But he SHOULD be public domain (or at least, partly) because his first story was published in 1919, before the copyrights were required and there were some subsequent stories published before the cutoff date.

On top of that the first film is also public domain, too. I don't know for certain if the other films listed in the PD wiki are, though. I'd have to check.

Okay, but Black Terror would be better if he was a huge black man with a surprisingly gentle and caring personality.

>Golden Lad
>Rainbow boy
Oi, look at this progressive heroes!

Jack is the best one here, he has the power of bees

Jack is Yellowjacket.

pdsh.wikia.com/wiki/Yellowjacket

Since the company that owned him eventually became Charlton, Morrison even used a version of him in Pax Americana though probably without the controling swarms of bees part.

There was also the Red Bee for the "guys who could control insects" team. Morrison talks about him in Supergods. He had a special sidekick bee in his belt named Michael-even though male bees don't have stingers.