Slam Bradley by Jerome Siegel and Joe Shuster © DC Comics 1937

Although none have been quite as popular as their character in the blue tights and red cape, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster created other comic book characters too.  One was Slam Bradley, who debuted more than a year earlier.  He appeared in the first issue of Detective Comics, more than two years before that title introduced another caped crusader in a bat mask, and remained as a regular feature for 12 years.  Slam was a pre-superhero hero, a two-fisted private eye with a fondness for drink and dames, shown here taking on racist caricatures of Japanese thugs (sadly common in those days).

Unlike their more famous creation, which they developed on their own, Siegel and Shuster created Slam Bradley as “work for hire”, meaning that National Publications (as DC was known then) was legally considered the creator, rather than the actual creators.  Under PD56 the copyright would have expired after 1993; as a corporate work it won’t enter the Public Domain until 2058.

Annie, Daddy Warbucks, and Sandy, by Harold Gray ©1924

Little Orphan Annie is a classic comic strip, created by Harold Gray. Although commonly thought of today as a left-leaning product of the Great Depression era (especially since the Broadway musical adaptation, which reinterpreted it that way), it began during the boom years following World War 1, and took a stalwartly Hoover-era Republican view of society. Oliver Warbucks was (as his name was meant to indicate) a hard-working benevolent war profiteer, who took in a plucky orphan girl and invited her to call him “Daddy”. Accompanied by her faithful companion Sandy (a dog of indeterminate breed) Annie became an adventurer, often separated from her beloved capitalist foster father, but never for very long.

The strip began in 1924, continuing until its cancellation in 2010. In the 1970s, following Gray’s death it had lapsed production and ran reprinted strips from its glory days, but was revived in 1979 when the musical reignited interest. Under PD56, the copyright would have lapsed at the end of that year; it was narrowly revived itself the year before, when Congress extended copyrights to 75 years.