I came across a current Kickstarter campaign for a beautiful new 50 card set based on vintage pulp action/adventure magazines from the 1950s called Shark Pulp Trading Cards. These have a great retro feel to them including wax wrappers and even stickers, and is a welcome change from the 200th Star Wars set and similar wash, rinse, and repeat offerings from the big guys.

I'm not sure of the rules for posting an active KS link, so one of the mods may end up removing it (though I personally believe it's always in the best interest of the hobby to promote the independent publishers):

https://www.kickstarter.com/pr...trading-cards-series

Interesting. . .

But . . . it looks like someone has a magazine collection that they are scanning, printing the covers on trading cards and selling. . . Is that legal? Seems like there would be some licensing concerns in there.

It looks like fun, but yeah, you wonder how close to the edge (and on what side) of public domain it is.

quote:

Originally posted by webjon:
Interesting. . .

But . . . it looks like someone has a magazine collection that they are scanning, printing the covers on trading cards and selling. . . Is that legal? Seems like there would be some licensing concerns in there.

Hi Aeolus,

It's an idea that has been mined before but it also seems like the seam hasn't been exhausted. Years ago, the guys on "American Pickers" met a couple who knew Bruce Minney, an artist who had worked on many pulp magazine covers of the 50's-60's, and they bought some original art from them. Someone online later noted they they got the pieces cheap. There is interest in all kinds of original art but particularly that of pulp covers by people who revel in its vivid colors and lurid subject matter sometimes considered politically-incorrect by modern eyes.

Jess

quote:

Originally posted by aeolus14ummbra:
I came across a current Kickstarter campaign for a beautiful new 50 card set based on vintage pulp action/adventure magazines from the 1950s called Shark Pulp Trading Cards. These have a great retro feel to them including wax wrappers and even stickers, and is a welcome change from the 200th Star Wars set and similar wash, rinse, and repeat offerings from the big guys.

I'm not sure of the rules for posting an active KS link, so one of the mods may end up removing it (though I personally believe it's always in the best interest of the hobby to promote the independent publishers):

https://www.kickstarter.com/pr...trading-cards-series

You raise a valid point Jess, but at the same time who's to say what's 'legal' and what's not? I'm not an attorney, I'm a collector. And as a collector, if I like something I'll buy it; if I don't, then I won't.

In this instance since no one on this forum has any idea as to the true provenance of the underlying property, I see no reason for making such a big deal about it in the first place. Besides, it's not my place to pass moral/legal judgment on every product out there that I might be interested in.

Bottom line: I enjoy these types of retro cards, the art is great, and like I said in my initial post it's something different to collect. As such, I thought it was worth pointing this set out to other collectors who might otherwise not be aware of it. But as always, at least on this forum, no good deed ever goes unpunished.

Personally I won't support products that aren't either licensed, fair use or public domain, so personally I am interested in knowing if these are appropriately being produced or not.

No offense intended.

Hi there, I'm the creator of Shark Pulp. I'm also a filmmaker and collector based in Paris. This project was a lot of work as all the rights as been secured, it took 2 years to reach the right holders of some illustrations. But, as you may know, a lot of pulp covers were illustrated by artists that were not credited. Back in the days, a lot of them chose not to sign their work which makes the licensing impossible for some artworks. This will be an extremely limited run, each magazine cover will be scanned in 4K and will be digitally restored. Of course, each authentic wax pack will include a sticker card. We only believe in the highest quality printing.It will also feature amazing vintage ads. Each wax pack will be assembled and sent from France. Scanning, restoring, editing and designing the packaging can be a time-consuming process but, at the end, these cards will be gorgeous and it will be worth it. The future of Shark Pulp depends on you!

Aeolus,

Neither I nor Jon was objecting to your announcement of the the Kickstarter nor were we questioning your ethics. Our question about the legality, which came to us independently, is focused on the property - not the messenger. Magazine cover art since the 1930's might not be old enough to have passed into public domain but I'm not a copyright lawyer either. The possible issue came to me because one of my brothers is a graphic artist. He has designed logos for companies and created art for trade show banners, company t-shirts, stickers, etc. I have seen how long it takes him to create something original. He makes an effort to make sure he isn't infringing on someone else's work. It wouldn't be legal for someone else to make and sell posters, t-shirts, and stickers with his artwork on them without his permission. I tend to mind my own business but my ears perk up when I learn about someone reusing old art in a new product.

Who knows? There may be some rather straightforward process to find the entity that holds the rights to a certain set of images and a rather affordable path to reprinting what you want from that.

As you said, a valid question was raised.

Jess

Hey Jess,

A big problem with vintage magazine artwork like this is that its possible that the artist may have never owned the rights to his own work. Its from a different time and maybe different countries. A salaried staff artist might simply be working for the company and the art is owned by the company. Perhaps that's why some work is uncredited. Or the magazine could require the rights be turned over upon buying and publishing an image. The artist could also still own the original work without the publishing rights. Magazines like to reprint things without paying for them again. So do some gaming card manufacturers for that matter.

Also the origin of some of these covers may have been compromised from the start by the publisher. Once the magazine goes out of business any copyrights it held don't necessarily revert to the artist or anyone else. It depends on what happened to the business.

Anyway it looks like many of the people who put out these magazines and many of the artists may be long gone now. The magazines are certainly long gone and some may fall under different international licensing laws. There is no harm in asking the question for sure, but in the end a card collector who likes the product can only accept the assertion of the card maker in good faith, because its not something that is apparent and there could be many variables that we have no way of knowing about.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Raven,

Welcome to the forum. I didn't notice that you posted in the time I was composing my previous post and hope you're not offended by our question. We certainly support card manufacturers here but we are also sympathetic to artists so this kind of set can generate various questions especially when we first hear about it. Many of us are interested in the hows and whys of what goes into making a set because we hardly ever hear what's involved in detail.

Recently, I watched an episode of "American Pickers" in which the guys visited the son of an artist who specialized in production art for car companies but he did all kinds of stuff. He didn't sign everything he did and the only reason anyone would know who did it is because he kept a lot of it and his son has most of it now, having sold some pieces to the guys.

I'd have to rewatch the episode about the Bruce Minney art but I believe he didn't sign everything either and he didn't keep everything either. I think Minney gave the couple a few pieces or sold them cheaply.

I've wondered how you would research all that because I do research in another field...fossil sharks, in fact. I'm assuming there are knowledgeable collectors out there who have an idea who has what in terms of original art and the rights while also having no idea what happened with other pieces. I figured that the artists probably sold the rights to their work as part of their deal and the rights may have never been transferred to anyone after the magazine and/or its publisher went out of business. Raven's right about all those magazines having gone out of business decades ago - likely by the early 70's. My grandfather had some of those adventure issues from the 50's and 60's along with some Vampirella comics and I flipped through them and read some of them when I was around 10 years old (hair-raising stories from the Amazon, that's for sure) in the early 70's.

As a suggestion, you might consider keeping some of the wrappers unfolded as some kind of extra. Some collectors love unfolded wrappers.

Bonne chance,

Jess

quote:

Originally posted by Redwoodcreek:
Hi there, I'm the creator of Shark Pulp. I'm also a filmmaker and collector based in Paris. This project was a lot of work as all the rights as been secured, it took 2 years to reach the right holders of some illustrations. But, as you may know, a lot of pulp covers were illustrated by artists that were not credited. Back in the days, a lot of them chose not to sign their work which makes the licensing impossible for some artworks. This will be an extremely limited run, each magazine cover will be scanned in 4K and will be digitally restored. Of course, each authentic wax pack will include a sticker card. We only believe in the highest quality printing.It will also feature amazing vintage ads. Each wax pack will be assembled and sent from France. Scanning, restoring, editing and designing the packaging can be a time-consuming process but, at the end, these cards will be gorgeous and it will be worth it. The future of Shark Pulp depends on you!

Regardless if the artists were able to be contacted wouldn't the licensing need to come from whoever owns the rights to the magazines?

The artist *may* be able to license the rights to their image, but they could not give license the rights to the logos, etc from the magazines.

Also if 'licensing is impossible' because license holders cannot be identified does that make something public domain?

Those are interesting questions. If someone does the due diligence but doesn't find anybody, is that enough? If whoever had the rights died or if the company had the rights and it went out of business, the rights could have been transferred to heirs or creditors but they might not have been considered worth anything at the time with no one involved keeping track of it afterward.

I think public domain is tied to a date. Years ago, I heard it was something like 75 years after the filing for the copyright but that doesn't appear to be correct and Disney has pushed for an extension of whatever it is in the case of Mickey Mouse, a property the company is still actively using in merchandising.

quote:

Originally posted by webjon:
Regardless if the artists were able to be contacted wouldn't the licensing need to come from whoever owns the rights to the magazines?

The artist *may* be able to license the rights to their image, but they could not give license the rights to the logos, etc from the magazines.

Also if 'licensing is impossible' because license holders cannot be identified does that make something public domain?