Thinking today about a couple of futile assignments I had back in my earliest days at DC. One was to look up the copyright history (and renewals, if any) of the various Captain Marvel comics Fawcett had published. DC had a license from Fawcett’s successor, CBS, to do the new Shazam comics, but for whatever reason wanted to know this. Why on Earth they asked me to do it, a 16 year old kid with no particular background in copyright, remains am mystery. Obviously cheaper than having lawyers due it, but still.
This involved sitting in the reading room of the main NY Public Library (the one with the lions out front and Pooh in a class case), going through bound volumes of copyright registrations, copying them down, and then typing up the list afterwards. I guess there were a few hundred issues involved (I suppose my expertise consisted of being able to use the Overstreet Guide to figure out which ones?), many of which had never been renewed and so passed into the public domain. A few of the later ones were still in the time window when they could be renewed.
I delivered my report, and to my surprise, the remaining copyrights were never renewed. Was the judgement that fees (about $5 a comic as I recall) and paperwork weren’t worth it? Or maybe DC thought it was CBS’ problem, and CBS thought DC should do it? One of the many mysteries I never unravelled.
Another one was more tactile. If you look at the DC library of bound volumes, wherever they are stored today, a few have library type pockets pasted in. For one brief moment, someone thought that could be a system for keeping track of the books, and delegated me to begin the process. Without a full time librarian controlling access, it probably was an impractical idea from the beginning, and was swiftly abandoned.
Some kids had paper routes, I had odd jobs at DC…
