The Green Lama was one of those characters, like the Blue Beetle, who bounced between several companies in The Golden Age of Comics. With an origin similar to The Shadow's, he also appeared in a similar radio series. It was NOT similarly successful. Now in the public domain, The Green Lama has arisen in modern times once again from various publishers...just like old times.
2 comments:
The Green Lama isn't the public domain, he's still owned by the Crossen Estate.
Numerous publishers including AC, Dynamite, Moonstone, Dark Horse, Image, and others are publishing reprints and new stories of both the pulps and comics, competing with each other.
The Golden Age comics from both Prize and Spark are PD.
Argosy Communications, not the Crossen Estate, claims to own the Green Lama trademark, but the only actual tradmark filing is by Dynamite Entertainment.
The pulps do seem to be still under copyright, but the original pulps were copyrighted to the publisher, so unless there's a renewal at the 28-year point plus a transfer of rights (or an contract showing the reversion before or after the renewal), there might be a question about those, as well.
Seems like a bit of a legal mess, as are most copyrights of the period.
Publishers, by and large, didn't think there'd be much future use for the properties after the initial printings in the'30s and '40s.
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