Popeye and Tintin enter the public domain in 2025 along with novels from Faulkner and Hemingway

Popeye can punch without permission and Tintin will be able to roam freely starting in 2025. The two classic comic characters that first appeared in 1929 are among the intellectual properties that have become public domain in the United States on Jan. 1. That means they can be used and reused without permission or payment to the copyright holders.

This year’s crop of new public artistic creations lack the landmark vibes of last year’s entry into the Mickey Mouse into the public domain. But it includes a deep well of canonical works whose 95-year copyright maximum expires. And the public domain presence of the Disney icon is expanding.

“This is a trove! There are a dozen new Mickey cartoons – he speaks for the first time and wears the familiar white gloves,” said Jennifer Jenkins, director of Duke’s Center for the Study of the Public Domain. “There are masterpieces from Faulkner and Hemingway, the first sound films from Alfred Hitchcock, Cecil B. DeMille, and John Ford, and incredible music from Fats Waller, Cole Porter, and George Gershwin. Very exciting!”

Here’s a closer look at this year’s crop.

Comic book characters are plentiful

Popeye the Sailor, with his bulging forearms, mealy-mouthed speech, and propensity for fistfights, was created by EC Segar and made his first appearance in the newspaper “Thimble Theater” in 1929, speaking his first words, ” “I think I’m a cowboy?” when asked if he was a sailor. It was assumed that there was only one appearance, and the naked one would be called “Popeye.”

But like Mickey Mouse last year and Winnie the Pooh in 2022, only the earliest version will be free for reuse. The spinach that gives the sailor his super-strength isn’t there from the start, and is the kind of character element that can cause legal disputes. And the animated shorts featuring his unique mumbly voice didn’t start until 1933 and remain under copyright. As did director Robert Altman in the 1980 film, starring Robin Williams as Popeye and Shelley Duvall as his often quarrelsome lover Olive Oyl.

The film was initially well received. So is the director by Steven Spielberg “Adventures of Tintin” in 2011. But the comics about the boy reporter that inspired it, the creation of Belgian artist Hergé, were among the most popular in Europe for most of the 20th century.

The simply drawn teenager with dots for eyes and bangs like an ocean wave first appeared in a supplement of the Belgian newspaper Le Vingtième Siècle, and became a weekly feature.

The comic also first appeared in the US in 1929. Its signature bright colors — including Tintin has red hair – not seen until years later, and can, like Popeye’s spinach, become the subject of legal disputes.

And to most of the world, Tintin didn’t become public property until 70 years after his creator’s 1983 death.

The books show American lit at its height

The books that went public this year read like a syllabus for an American literature seminar.

“The Sound and the Fury,” probably by William Faulkner quintessential novel with its modernist stream-of-consciousness style, is a feeling after its publication despite being famously difficult for readers. It uses multiple non-linear narratives to tell the story of the destruction of a prominent family in the author’s native Mississippi, and helps deliver Faulkner’s Nobel Prize.

and by Ernest Hemingway “A Farewell to Arms” joins its predecessor “The Sun Rises Again” in the public domain. The partly autobiographical story of an Italian ambulance driver during World War I cemented Hemingway’s status in the American literary canon. It is often adapted for film, TV and radio, which can now be done without permission.

by John Steinbeck first novel, “A Cup of Gold,” from 1929, also enters the public domain.

British novelist Virginia Woolf’s “A Room of One’s Own,” an extended essay that would become a landmark of feminism from the modernist literary luminary, is also on the list. His novel “Mrs. Dalloway” is now in the US public domain.

Film stories in the making

While a host of truly great shows will become public over the coming decade, for now the early works of great numbers from the infrequent stars of the early sound era will have to suffice.

A decade before he moved to Hollywood and made films like “Psycho,” and “Vertigo,” Alfred Hitchcock made “Blackmail” in Britain. The film started as a silent but was switched to sound during production, resulting in two different versions, one of them in the UK – and Hitchcock’s – first sound film.

John Ford, whose later Westerns would place him among the most celebrated film directors, also made his first sound entry in 1929’s “The Black Watch,” an adventure epic that included the future Ford’s chief collaborator John Wayne as a young extra.

Cecil B. DeMille, already a Hollywood bigwig through the silents, made his first talkie in the melodrama “Dynamite.”

Groucho, Harpo and the rest of the Marx Brothers had their first starring roles in the 1929 film “The Cocoanuts,” a precursor to future classics like “Animal Crackers” and “Duck Soup.”

“The Broadway Melody,” the first sound film and the second film to win the Oscar for best picture – also known as “a unique production” at the time – will also be public, although it will always be in ranked the worst of the best picture winners.

And after “Steamboat Willie” made the first Mickey Mouse public, a dozen more of his animations would get the same status, including “The Karnival Kid,” in which he spoke for the first time.

The music is ringing in the 20s

Songs from the last year of the Roaring Twenties are about to become public property again.

Cole Porter’s compositions “What Is This Thing Called Love?” and “Tiptoe Through the Tulips” are among the highlights, as is the jazz classic “Ain’t Misbehavin’, written by Fats Waller and Harry Brooks.

“Singin’ in the Rain,” which would later be included in the 1952 Gene Kelly film, made its debut in the 1929 movie “The Hollywood Revue” and is now in the public domain.

Various laws regulate sound recordings, and the most recent ones in the public domain date back to 1924. They include a recording of “Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen” from future star and civil rights icon Marian Anderson, and “Rhapsody in Blue” by its composer, George Gershwin.