Planet Money - We Buy A Superhero 2: Loophole

Episode Date: February 19, 2021

Marvel was not interested in selling us Doorman. But there is another way to jumpstart our superhero empire. | Find the full Planet Money Superhero series here.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Thank you. One. We have ignition. Oh, 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 him know that we want to buy a superhero.

Yep. Doorman. Doorman? 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 went back a little bit from your microphone? Should I point it away from me? Is that helpful? Oh wait, what kind of microphone do you have? Is that helpful? Oh, wait. What kind of microphone do you have? This is Gene 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 sounding better. That's good. superhero to call his own. This is sounding better. That's good. Okay, Gene, I have a copy of this comic book of yours, of this 1940s superhero that you found.

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 post from a website called Pappy's Golden Age Blogzine, where they highlight these really obscure characters from the golden age of comics. And this one particular post was about the Green Turtle, who on the surface is not an awesome character. He's like a Batman ripoff. So he lives in a turtle cave. You know, he flies a turtle plane. He wears a turtle themed costume.

He's just not an awesome character. 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 Hing. And the story goes that Chu Hing wanted to draw the green turtle as a Chinese-American superhero. It would have been groundbreaking. This was the 1940s. Virtually every superhero was white. But this was the 1940s. The comic book company said, no way. So Chu Hing, I mean, he just, he reacts the way a comic book artist would react when they hit like 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 furniture blocking his face. Something is getting

in the way of you looking at his face. And the rumor is that Chu Hing 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 1944, not long enough to get a proper backstory or a 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 place? More importantly, who's going to show up to sue me? Gene starts to talk to lawyers, searches old copyright records from the Library of Congress. It's all the stuff that comic book artists are not good at. We're not good at money. We're not good at legal stuff. like comic book artists are not good at. We're not good at money. We're not good at legal stuff. Like most of the time I'm thinking about, you know, what is the next like genetic mutated monster that Lex Luthor is going to 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. Our quest for a Planet Money superhero continues. We had the front door, man, slammed in our face, man. But Gene Luen 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 80 years ago. Why don't we start by 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 songs.

Hey, 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. Talking to Lady Macbeth. Out of damn spot. And there, there's who Gene was looking for.

The Green Turtle. What's up? Hey, guys. Gene says hi. Wants to see you 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 superhero quest.

Despite all of you, our listeners, tweeting all week at Marvel to hashtag open the doorman, 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 we could move on by maybe drawing our own. How should we say homage to the doorman? Sliding doorman. Sure.

Pet doorman, perhaps. Or the very well-dressed Christian Dior man. But 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 that get passed down to us from before we were born. It's the patina and the provenance of a superhero that make it feel real. So we're not just going to draw one, make one up.

OK, 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 that?

You know what? We didn't. We thought that might be a little bit strange if we're the Public Domain Center and we were going to go 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 to stimulate creativity.

How does it do that? Well, during the copyright term, it gives you exclusive rights. It gives you control that incentivize 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 will be stimulating your creativity. Jennifer says that with this superhero project, we kind of lucked out because of this magical moment in superhero history, the 1940s.

In the 1940s, 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 40s 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 28 years. 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. And, you know,

with all 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 1970s, like these weird old golden age superheroes were 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 long. So, you know, the brilliant song that you've been working on, 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. 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. 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. 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 the lists these fans had pulled together. So this 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. I'm not vouching 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 3,368 choices. just a bit from 3,368 choices. It's a lot. But look, Gene Luen 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 right. And in 2014, he was able to legally publish this new story in a graphic novel called The Shadow Hero, drawn by Sonny Liu. I did the writing, and Sonny, an amazing artist, did all of the illustrations. It's very good. The illustrations are very good.

He'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 Gene, he gave us some advice on finding the perfect superhero for us in a list of thousands. I think it's kind of like falling in love, right? Like, how do you know when you fall in love? I do think you don't go for the cool. I really do think that cool gets in the way of that heart connection that you might have

with one of these characters. I really think it's that combination of goofiness and idealism. You want a goofy expression of an ideal. That's good. I mean, that is succinct and boiled down. I mean, like, that's great. That's the thing we can go hunting for right now or go hunting for after the break. All right. I'm going to pull up this list of 3,000 characters allegedly in the public domain. All right, somewhere in here is our Planet Money superhero.

In alphabetical order. Okay. Ace of Blades. I don't like it. I got Airboy. Airboy sounds like a brand of mattress. Okay. Arson Fiend.

Arson Fiend? Okay. Oh, man. Yeah. Okay. This is going to take forever. Blargo the Lawless. No.

Blooper Man. No. Captain 3D. I thought we were all 3D. Horned Hood the Lawless. No. Blooper Man. No. Captain 3D. I thought we were all 3D. Horned Hood. Next. Express Man. They all sound so bad.

Lava Man. Ooh, Futura. No. Futura. No. Lava Man. Right. Croco Man.

No. Menthor. What are we doing? Kid Eternity. No. Kangaroo Man. No. Like, no, right? No. 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, left, left. Weird costume. Terrible superpowers. Shirtless. Left, left. So, shirtless, left, left.

So, okay, let's just keep going. Let me throw this one past you. This one, Robert, I have high hopes for. I'm just going to share him with you on my screen. All right. There's a guy. It looks like he has sort of a hood and two little things over his eyes, and like something on his face. It's sort of, he's got like a weird evil executioner vibe.

He looks a little scary, I will give you that. He's a good guy, though. He's not an executioner. 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. All right. Right? Right? Okay. And then the thing over most of his face, mouth, nose, that is a giant microphone.

Oh. The superpower is a giant microphone. Oh. The superpower is a giant microphone face mask. So he's like voices really loud? He can make his voice really loud. He can like throw his voice like a ventriloquist. 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. In his face. Yes. 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 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 this panel, he's in an alleyway. He's looking for a bad guy. Yes. And there's the sound of footsteps way off in the distance. And then he says. My micro hearing brings the sound of footsteps way off in the distance. And then he says... My micro hearing brings the sound of running feet. It is Eddie Torpedo. There he is ahead. This is very useful.

I myself have spent much of my career recording footsteps and then boosting up the volume level in the mix. Who among us, 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 mic can do. There's this gang of gun-toting goons, and we hear our hero say,

I'll throw real fear into these punks. Then he uses his face microphone to broadcast the sound of a police whistle. But it's not just a loud whistle. He can make it like surround sound so these bad guys now think they're surrounded by cops. The goons lose it. Cop whistles? There's a whole squad! Chaos ensues. Our hero prevails. 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 from 1943. This is the Planet Money superhero. We can 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 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, a little compression on there. And he steps out in front of the Planet Money audience and he says, I am Microface. That's micro hyphen face. His face is totally normal sized, just to be clear.

But that's his name, Microface. It's just a microphone on the face. You get it. Yeah. Okay. I am Microface. And so, until he is needed, the 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 message 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 experience with some pretty, you know, no offense, but pretty dumb golden age heroes. That's next Friday.

Same micro time, same micro place. Just to be clear, it's a normal size time and place. Yeah, it's just a microphone. I'm going to use a microphone. If you would like to support Planet Money, you can check out our Planet Money Animal Spirits t-shirt. It is back in the NPR store.

That is shop.npr.org slash planetmoney. And I will just say, maybe keep an eye on that shop over the next couple weeks. Just keep an eye. Something coming. You can catch us on all the social media, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok. We are 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. They are both,

of course, free online. This episode was produced by James Sneed with help from Maria Paz Gutierrez, engineering help from Gilly Moo.

The show was edited by Liza Yeager. Brian Erstad edits the whole show, Planet Money. Alex Goldmark is our supervising producer. I'm Microface. No, I'm Microface. Wait a minute, we're all Microface because this is NPR. Thanks for listening. Listening, listening, listening.

I think we have our catchphrase. His catchphrase is thanks for listening. His second catchphrase is support your local NPR station. One of the premier science fiction writers of the 20th 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 ThruLine podcast from NPR. And a special thanks to our funder, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, for helping to support this

podcast.