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featuring new versions of public domain Golden Age heroes Captain Midnight, Commander X, and the Blue Beetle, renamed Blue Scarab to avoid DC copywrite.
It’s a new year and that means new old works have entered the public domain. Now understand there’s a difference between copyrights, which under US law every 95 years older works enter public domain but that doesn’t mean the trademark, which only expires if the owner doesn’t update their trademark, is available. Last year, for example, Steamboat Willie entered public domain. That means the version of Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, and Pete featured in that short and that short alone entered public domain but Disney still owns the characters and you can’t use any other version of them and must make it clear it’s not a Disney product. Or something like that. Law is not my strong suit.
Sound recordings have a longer time period. While other works from 1930 are now free and clear, sound recordings in public domain only go back to 1925. This isn’t counting works that copyrights weren’t protected for. That’s how I do the Golden Age comics on Fridays, because when the company died the stories went into public domain, and in some cases even the characters if they didn’t get bought by someone else, like DC doing the acquisition game long before Disney.
Duke Law’s Center For Public Domain celebrates “Public Domain Day” every year and posted a list of everything now available for use by everyone with caveats and a better explanation of public domain, copyright law versus trademarks. How much of it will be turned into slasher movies by unimaginative childhood haters we’ll have to wait and see. The first link goes to their list, but if you want a more entertaining video with a guy who swears pretty often but not obnoxiously so, the following video by Steve Shives goes over everything available. Famous movies, another member of Mickey’s team and one of his contemporaries (both with asterisks…and both involving dogs), well known kids character (probably the first slasher addicts’ choices I unfortunately bet), well known music, a tale of war’s ugliness, and more are now free for use. Is something you like on this list?
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“No, I forgot to shave today!” “Wait until a few reboots.”
Batman #9 (Facsimile Edition)
DC Comics (February/March, 1942, reprint date August, 2025)
A Golden Age comic where the title character is the majority of the book? That’s been surprisingly rare, though there are still some bad comedy bits to ignore and a back-up not featuring the Dynamic Duo. That I expect. Also of interest is the credits. According to the Grand Comic Database and a list of credits printed in Alter Ego magazine #25, stories credited to Bob Kane alone were actually written by Bill Finger. That’s kind of strange to me because I thought Finger did the drawing uncredited, but Kane is credited as the artist.
Also credited on art in some of those stories with Kane is Jerry Robinson with George Roussos on backgrounds and lettering. Nobody ever remembers who did the colors in these comics, which is a shame. Fred Ray, the source of these credits, claims to have made the cover pencils with Robinson on inking. I don’t know. It’s all a mess to me, but that’s not new from the period. Let’s look at the stories.
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Chapter by Chapter features me reading one chapter of the selected book at the time and reviewing it as if I were reviewing an episode of a TV show or an issue of a comic. There will be spoilers if you haven’t read to the point I have, and if you’ve read further I ask that you don’t spoil anything further into the book. Think of it as read-along book club.
Christmas break is over and it’s time to get back to work. I just hope that as time goes on I don’t forget what was in the episode, since comparing it to the novelisation (that’s the British spelling and it’s a British book…in the US it’s a novelization) made years later and we’ve already seen has added moments is part of the point. It does seem strange to have these additions unless they were removed from the original episode or to pad out the book. There’s nothing about the changes in the novel and no explanations were at the TARDIS fandom wiki last time I looked at it.
Before the break, Vicki found Barbara while the Doctor and Ian were trying to find a way out. This is something that confuses me about the TARDIS beyond “we need the plot to happen a certain way”. A TARDIS doesn’t usually move like a regular ship. It CAN move in normal space (we see in the returned series that he once chased a car using it) but ordinarily it moves by dematerializing from one spot and rematerializing in another. It basically moves through the space/time vortex, the fifth and fourth dimensions respectively. In the first episode, Susan literally refers to space as the fifth dimension, so at least in the Whoniverse it kind of is. It’s never really clear if the TARDIS travels through space normally or not. How the ship moves is up for debate I guess.
My point is, even with the Doctor’s troubles piloting the ship, which he never admits too even in this incarnation, why can’t he just dematerialize out of the cave and rematerialize outside? Then they can go look for Barbara to make sure whatever it was they met didn’t kidnap, injure, or kill her? I know it’s because it helps find clues later to the villain’s plan, but we have seen the Doctor move the TARDIS short distances, even just turning it 30° around. Again, later version but this just seems like a waste of time trying to find a backdoor. Again, it’s so they can get clues to what’s really going on, which I won’t get into here for people just following the book. We also had an added scene of the TARDIS going through the rescue ship and ruining some dude’s chess game on the computer, so I really don’t follow what’s going on with how this thing gets from point A to point B. Anyway, enough of my own padding. Let’s get to the fifth chapter already.
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The Solution #8
Malibu Comics/Ultraverse (April, 1994)
“Payback” part 3
WRITER: James Hudnall
PENCILER: John Statema
INKERS: Dennis Jensen & Barbara Kaalberg
COLORING: Tim Duvar & Violent Hues
COVER ART: Kevin Maguire (artist) & Albert Calleros (colorist)
LETTERER: Tim Eldred
EDITOR: Hank Kanalz
BW Media Spotlight 
BW’s Daily Video> Doctor Who’s Regeneration Problem
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Posted by ShadowWing Tronix on January 5, 2026 in Television Spotlight and tagged commentary, Doctor Who, regeneration.
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