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Popeye and Tintin are now in the public domain

An image showing a Popeye comic strip
Popeye’s first appearance in E.C. Segar’s Thimble Theatre comic strip. | Image: King Features

It’s a new year, and that means more works are headed to the public domain. This year, thousands of copyrighted works created in 1929, including the earliest versions of Popeye and the Belgian comic book character Tintin, are now free to reuse and repurpose in the US.

Duke Law School’s Center for the Study of Public Domain has once again rounded up all the most iconic works that have been freed from the bounds of copyright, which also includes sound recordings from 1924. As pointed out by Duke Law School, 1929 was a particularly pivotal year for film, as it was the first with sound.

These are just some of the works entering the public domain this year (you can view the full catalog here):

  • The Skeleton Dance from Disney’s Silly Symphonies short film series
  • Alfred Hitchcock’s first sound film Blackmail
  • Nacio Herb Brown’s Singin’ in the Rain and the film it appeared in, The Hollywood Revue of 1929
  • On With the Show, the first all-talking feature-length film in color
  • William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury
  • Agatha Christie’s Seven Dials Mystery
  • Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms
  • Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own
  • Various works from Salvador Dali, including Illumined Pleasures, The Accommodations of Desire, and The Great Masturbator

The list also includes Popeye, who first appeared in E.C. Segar’s Thimble Theatre comic strip, with a story titled “Gobs of Work.” But this Popeye isn’t the one that eats spinach to grow big muscles; the brawny sailor didn’t start eating spinach to gain strength until 1932 (though the very first Popeye could still pack a punch).

“Everything that he says, all of his characteristics, his personality, his sarcasm… that’s public domain,” Jennifer Jenkins, the director of Duke’s Center for the Study of the Public Domain, told NPR. “The spinach, if you want to be on the safe side, you might want to wait.”

The earliest version of the young reporter Tintin and his pup Snowy (or “Milou” if you speak French) from Hergé’s Les Aventures de Tintin are also headed to the public domain. But folks in the European Union, where protections apply throughout an author’s life and 70 years after death, will have to wait a little longer for a copyright-free Tintin. Since Hergé died in 1983, the EU won’t see Tintin in the public domain until 2054, according to Duke University.

As with previous years’ works, this latest round of media could’ve appeared in the public domain much earlier, but US lawmakers in 1998 extended copyright protections to works from 1923 and beyond for an additional 20 years — conveniently protecting Disney’s mascot Mickey Mouse. But Disney couldn’t keep its iconic mouse all to itself forever, as the Steamboat Willie-era Mickey entered the public domain last year. We’re getting even more Mickey Mouse animations in 2025, including the short film The Karnival Kid, where Mickey Mouse dons his white gloves for the first time and speaks his first words: “hot dogs.”

Just like with Mickey and Winnie the Pooh, we’re bound to see games and movies starring Popeye and Tintin as people try to draw attention with the freshly available characters. Even Netflix is preparing an adaptation of Agatha Christie’s 1929 novel The Seven Dials.

There will be an even wider range of classic characters to use next year, with Betty Boop and Pluto set to enter the public domain in 2026.

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Author: Emma Roth