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Betty Boop and “Blondie” are coming soon Mickey Mouse and Winnie the Pooh in the public domain.
The debut of these classic cartoon and comic book characters is an intellectual property with a 95-year U.S. copyright term and entered the public domain on January 1. This means creators can use and repurpose them without permission or payment.
Newly revealed art creations from 2026 don’t shine as brightly as Mickey or Pooh that recently entered the public domain for the first time. But since 2019 — the end of a 20-year intellectual property drought brought about by congressional copyright extensions — each year’s crop has become a bounty for advocates of more works belonging to the public.
“It’s a big year,” said Jennifer Jenkins, a law professor and director of the Center for Public Domain Studies at Duke University, where New Year’s Day is celebrated as Public Domain Day. “It’s just the sheer familiarity with all these cultures.”
Overall, Jenkins said, this year’s works demonstrate “the fragility between the two wars and the worst of the Great Depression.”
Here’s a closer look at what will enter the public domain Thursday, based on research by Jenkins and her center.
Cartoons and comics bring joy
Betty Boop started out as a dog. Seriously.
When she first appeared in the 1930 short Dizzy Dishes (one of four comics in which she entered the public domain), she was already fully recognizable as a Jazz Age flapper, and would later be remembered on countless tattoos, T-shirts, and bumper stickers. She has a baby face, short hair, neat curls, shiny eyelashes and a tiny mouth. But she also had floppy poodle ears and a small black nose. They will soon turn into dangling earrings and little white noses.
She started out essentially as a Minnie Mouse version of a popular anthropomorphic dog named Bimbo, whom she eventually surpassed and was pushed aside. She had a supporting role in “Dizzy Dishes,” performing a slinky song and dance routine in a little black dress. Her name is not mentioned, but she sings “boop boop, a doop.”
Jenkins said the Betty Boop could be put to good use in the new production, and there was a liberating idea: “She was bitten by a radioactive dog, and that’s why she has this weird backstory,” she laughs. “This movie needs to be made.”
The character was designed and owned by Fleischer Studios and the short film was distributed by Paramount Pictures. She was based at least in part on singer Helen Kane, known as the “Boop-Oop-a-Doop Girl” for a 1929 hit song. Kane would lose a lawsuit over Betty Boop’s character and use of the phrase. During the proceedings, the defense claimed that black singer Esther Lee Jones first used a similar phrase.
Artists are now free to use this original Boop in films and similar works. But making merchandise isn’t free. One important distinction with Mickey Mouse that Disney often makes is that a character’s trademark is distinct from the copyright to works that feature the character. The Fleischer Productions trademark for Betty Boop remains intact.
In 1930, there was definitely Boops and dooops in the air. Blondie Boopadoop, like Betty, was a young flapper and the central character in Chic Young’s newspaper comic strip first launched in 1930. It inspired a series of films and radio programs and is still published in newspapers with cartoons to this day.
The comic strip follows her carefree life with her boyfriend, Dagwood Bumstead. The two married in 1933 (she also changed her name), and the strip would become the sandwich-based family comedy that readers would be familiar with. Even though the comic strip was based on one woman’s life, Dagwood was in many ways its breakout star—an archetype Adam Driveras a “breakout actor” if you willgirls“.
Two years ago, Steamboat Willie brought the first version of Mickey Mouse to the public, and nine new Mickey Mouse cartoons will become public property. This year his dog joined him PlutoIn 1930 he was known as Rover. (He would get his long-term nickname the following year.)
Books bring great detective to debut
Books entering the public domain this year open the door to three iconic detectives of the 20th century:
—Teenage detective Nancy Drew, whose first four books were published in 1930, starting with “The Secret of the Old Clock.” They were written by Mildred Benson under the pseudonym Carolyn Keene.
—Middle-aged detective Sam Spade, making his debut in the book-length version of Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon. (It had been serialized in a magazine the previous year.)
–Elderly detective Miss Marple solves her first mystery in Agatha Christie’s “Murder at the Vicarage.”
A year after his The Sound and the Fury was released, William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying also became public domain. This would help him win the Nobel Prize for Literature.
Children’s literature legends Dick and Jane have taught reading to generations for decades and become an important source of imitation, made public through the “Elson’s Basic Reader” textbook.
Films include Max, Marlene and Oscar winners
A year after their film debut Coconuts entered the public domain, the Marx Brothers’ beloved Animal Crackers joined the cast, just as they were entering the peak of their cinematic antics. In the film, Groucho, Harpo, Chico and Zeppo crash a social gathering on Long Island celebrating African explorers.
Other films that have entered the public domain include:
— The German film “The Blue Angel,” directed by Josef von Sternberg, incorporated Marlene Dietrich’s top-hatted image into cinematic lore.
— “The King of Jazz,” Bing Crosby’s screen debut.
— Two Best Picture Oscar winners: All Quiet on the Western Front in 1930 and Cimarron in 1931. The award was called “Outstanding Production” at the time, and the Academy Awards were out of sync with past years.
The next decade will bring a slew of Hollywood Golden Age films into the public domain. It’s no exaggeration to say that 2027 will be the year of the true monster, with Universal’s original 1931 Dracula and Frankenstein both scheduled to hit theaters.
Dreamy and nostalgic tunes ring out in the 1930s
As in past years, a selection of whistle-worthy songs from the Great American Songbook will be revealed:
— Four treasured classic songs by George Gershwin, with lyrics by his brother Ira: “Hug You,” “I’m Obsessed with You,” “But Not for Me,” and “I Got a Rhythm.”
— “Georgia in Me,” by Hoagy Carmichael and Stuart Gorrell.
——”Dream a Little Dream About Me” by Gus Kahn, Fabian Andre and Wilbur Schwandt.
Different laws govern the actual recording of songs, with new songs entering the public domain this week dating back to 1925. These include Rodgers and Hart’s “Manhattan” by the Knickerbockers, Marian Anderson’s “Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen” and Bessie Smith’s “The St. Louis Blues” with Louis Armstrong.