Cy Bell textual box pt. ii: contracts, trademarks, and copyright

Last column, we began a look into the small textual material box belonging to Cy Bell in the Bell Features fonds at the Library and Archives of Canada in Ottawa. We began that look with a hundred-page or so ledger-type book into which were pasted torn back cover contest sheets from late 40’s and early 50’s Bell reprint comics.

In this column, I want to make a second foray into that box and see some of the other things found in it.

The next thing I encountered in the pile of documents taken from the box was a contract between Bell Features and its Art Director and chief cover artist, Adrian Dingle. This is one of two contracts that found in the box. The second is a similar contract for Howard B. Cowan (whose pseudonym was Clayton Dexter), however, the difference is that the contract with Dingle was completed and signed, while the contract for Cowan was not.

Here is the contract made with Dingle:

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The contract is dated February 22 1946 and, like most of the documents in the box, is from the post-war period (1945-47), late in the existence of Bell Features as a publisher of original material Canadian comics. The handwriting that fills the open portions of the contract is Cy Bell’s because we can compare it with some of the signed, handwritten letters that also come out of the box. The slightly calligraphic style looks to have been done in fountain pen (Do younger collectors even know what one of these things is?) which, judging from other samples of handwriting in the box, seems to have been Cy Bell’s preferred writing instrument. I can visualize his small, gaunt form rushing around the Bell Features offices with a couple of these, perhaps gold-plated, in his inside jacket pocket ready to be whipped out, unscrewed and put to work scratching out impromptu notes or messages.

We can see, at the time, that Dingle lived in Port Credit and that the property Cy Bell was negotiating for was Nelvana. After looking through all the material in the textual container, we get the clear impression that Cy Bell was girding up his company for survival through the post-war storm of American comic glitz that had made landfall on the Canadian cultural coastline. The mini-skirted Inuit demi-goddess looked to be a key part of this.

Now, I can’t pretend to understand all the legalese in the contract, but what is clear is that Bell Features clamped down on the ownership and copyright of Dingle’s character, Nelvana, apparently removing Dingle, himself, from any ownership. I don’t know where copyright on the Bell Features characters stands currently, but in 1971, Patrick Loubert and Michael Hirsh purchased what was left of the holdings from publisher John Ezrin (father of legendary music producer, Bob Ezrin) and immediately sold most of it to the national archives in Ottawa to obtain seed monies for their new animation company Nelvana Studios. Though I haven’t seen any legal documentation to support this (if any exists), Loubert and Hirsh sold, along with the physical comics and artwork, half the copyright to this material while retaining half of it with their company Nelvana Studios. I base this on the fact that when I published Heroes of the Home Front, I had to seek permission to reproduce images of any Bell Features comic book covers and of any of the original artwork both from the Library and Archives of Canada and from Corus Entertainment which now owns Nelvana Studios. I did ask Corus to show me documented support for their claim to half the copyright, but never got a response.

In any event, current Canadian copyright law (see the useful FAQ here) indicates that intellectual properties become public domain 50 years after the death of the creator (which in Dingle’s case would occur at the end of 2024 except for the fact that the new Canada-US-Mexico Agreement would extend this to the 75 years waiting period in effect in the US). However, I’m not sure how the above-signed transfer of copyright to Bell Features impacts this.

Next comes a pair of blank, typed-out-Bell-letterhead applications to trademark the Bell logo.

According to BC artist Alfred Muma, it was Oscar Schlienger who originally designed this logo (see my chapter on Schlienger in Heroes of the Home Front). The letterhead gives the phone number for the Bell offices as “WAVERLY 6600” and you have to be a bit of an oldster to understand what this means. Phone numbers at this time in Toronto involved six pulls on the rotary dial. The first two pulls were the first two letters of the exchange area name, which in this case would be “WA” and these correspond to the numbers “9” and “2” on the rotary dial (see pic below). This was intended as a mnemonic of sorts to help you remember numbers more easily.

Both these are trademark letters are undated, one addressing the Commissioner of Patents, which is a Canadian office, and one addressing the United States Consulate in Toronto. I presume these, like most of the textual material in this box, to be from 1945-46 and their existence seems to indicate that Bell was looking to expand into the American market post-war. Bell wanted to establish their well-known bell logo as trademarked in both countries.

Here are a couple of examples of the Bell logo as it evolved:

Next up is a legal-sized notice addressed to Bell Features from the Trade Marks Office of the Dept. of the Secretary of State, Canada dated June 6, 1946. It is the negative response to a request by Bell Features to trademark the name “Johnny Canuck” on the apparent contradictory grounds that the phrase could be the name of a person and that there might be an infringement of the property “Jack Canuck” which had been registered six months earlier. I wonder if Bell appealed this ruling or dropped the process altogether?

The last thing from the Bell text box that I want to cover for this column is a set of 58 copyright certificates dating from 1942-47. I’ve organized the info from them into a table at the end of this column, but I want to look at a few individually.

The earliest are a set of four that cover the copyrights for Active, Dime, Joke, and Commando Comics.

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What we can learn from these copyright certificates are the actual dates that the books hit the newsstands since the date of first publication is given. The first issues of Active and Dime Comics were on the stands Feb. 1, 1942, while Joke Comics No. 1 was available from March 15 1942 and Commando Comics No. 1 from October 17 of the same year. The certificates also credit the creators involved in each issue so that we learn a little more about a couple of the more mysterious creator names given in the comics themselves.

For example, the creator of Ace Bradley in Commando 1 is given on the splash appearing in the comic as “E.B.C.” This must be the Barnard [Bernard?] Clarke credited on the copyright certificate and that he lived in Toronto.

From the Joke Comics copyright document, we learn that Josh Silburt was the contributor of one-panel cartoons to the issue which he signed “Burt.” Here is an example of one:

We also learn that Frank Mann Harris, who created and wrote the “Three T’s” feature and the text story in Joke 1 must have been a pen name for E. R. Harris. Frank Mann Harris also wrote short stories for McLean’s Magazine in the mid-1930s and here is an example.

Josh Silburt was a well-known political and sports cartoonist of the time and also a good friend of Avrom Yanovsky, who later also worked for Bell Features. The two were fellow Canadian communists who eventually also worked as fine artists.

The copyright sheets for the characters Johnny Canuck and The Brain are notable for the fact that, though copyright was originally obtained for both characters in 1942 on behalf of Leo H. Bachle, there is a handwritten note from Leo in the top left of each document dated Dec. 29 1944 that transfers this copyright to Cy Bell. It’s fun to speculate why Leo Bachle would have done this, but it was around the time he left Canada and Bell Features to try his luck in the U.S.

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There are also half-a-dozen copyright sheets dated in late 1945 that are for titles such as Jet-Man, Red Hot, Unusual, Slam-Bang, F.B.I., and Terrific Comics which we know from indicia came out first in 1946 or later but their stated dates of first publication are all before 1945 runs out. A possible explanation or this might be that these 1945 dates were the dates that ashcans were produced to cement the copyright and that the newsstand versions of these appeared later. For example, we know that ashcans were produced for Jet-Man, Red Hot, and F.B.I. Comics, but were ashcans produced for the rest of those titles as well?

I also need to draw attention to the copyright sheets for the characters Rex Rainer, The White Mask, and Mr. Monster, all claiming to have been obtained and also first published early in 1946. Mr. Monster does appear in the last panel of the Doc Stearne story in the last issue of Triumph Comics, but a full story featuring Mr. Monster didn’t appear until Super Duper Comics in early 1947. The White Mask is the superhero counterpart of Ted Steele’s Speed Savage and maybe Cy Bell was going to give him his own title, but as far as I know, that was never officially published unless as an ashcan though a compendium of Speed Savage came out in the summer of 1945. As for Rex Rainer, we do know of the existence of a half-dozen original art pages, but no splash, for a Rex Rainer story that was drawn by Clayton Dexter around this time, but there is no record of it ever being published.  From the pages that exist, it looks like Rainer would have been a sort of Flash Gordon trope adventuring in a civilization who dressed like ancient Romans but possessed advanced technology.

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The last oddity I want to mention is the copyright sheet for Super Duper Comics which is states that it is held by Cy Bell and Bell Features and that it was first on the stands March 31, 1947. The March date could correspond with the indicia for Super Duper Comics No. 3 since comics do tend to appear on stands a month or two before indicia dates, however, the book with that title appearing at that time was published by F. E. Howard publications and also distributed in the US. The mechanics of all this is still unclear.

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Some of the other copyright sheets may raise other questions, but let me list those copyright sheets in the following table so that you can survey them:

Date Copyright Applied for	Date of First Publication	Likely Place of First Publication	Property Applied for	Applied for on Behalf of
March 17, 1942	Feb 1 1942	Dime Comics 1	Dime Comics	Commercial Signs of Canada
March 25, 1942	Feb 1 1942	Active Comics 1	Active Comics	Commercial Signs of Canada
April 9, 1942	Mar 15 1942	Joke Comics 1	Joke Comics	Commercial Signs of Canada
August 7, 1942	Feb 1 1942	Dime Comics 1	Johnny Canuck	Leo H. Bachle transferred to CVB 1944
August 7, 1942	Feb 1 1942	Active Comics 1	The Brain	Leo H. Bachle transferred to CVB 1944
January 16, 1943	Oct 17 1942	Commando Comics 1	Commando Comics	Commercial Signs of Canada
January 12, 1945	Oct 27 1945	Dime Comics 26	Hugh Dunnit	Avrom Yanovsky
January 12, 1945	Sep 25 1944	Dime Comics 25	The Polka Dot Pirate	Allan Ross Mendes
October 27, 1945	Aug 17 1945	Ashcan?	Giant	Cyril V. Bell (CVB)
October 27, 1945	Sept 14 1945	Ashcan?	Jumbo	CVB
October 27, 1945	April 11 1945	Ashcan?	Colossal	CVB
December 4, 1945	June 20 1941	Triumph-Adventure 1	Tang	CVB
December 4, 1945	March 1 1942	Wow Comics 7	Jeff Waring	CVB
December 4, 1945	Feb 1 1942	Dime Comics 1	Rex Baxter	CVB
December 4, 1945	March 15 1942	Joke Comics 4	The Wing	CVB
December 4, 1945	Feb 1 1942	Active Comics 1	Active Jim	CVB
December 4, 1945	Feb 1 1942	Active Comics 1	Dixon of the Mounties	CVB
December 4, 1945	March 1 1943	Wow Comics 16	Phantom Rider	CVB
December 4, 1945	Aug 1 1944	Active Comics 18	Dr. Blue and Blackie	CVB
December 4, 1945	Feb 1 1945(2?)	Active Comics 1?	Thunderfist	CVB
December 6, 1945	Nov 19 1945	Ashcan	Jet-Man	CVB
December 6, 1945	Nov 19 1945	Ashcan	F.B.I.	CVB
December 6, 1945	Nov 19 1945	Ashcan?	Terrific	CVB
December 12, 1945	Nov 27 1945	Ashcan	Red Hot Comics	CVB
December 12, 1945	Nov 27 1945	Ashcan?	Slam Bang Comics	CVB
December 24, 1945	Dec  18 1945	Ashcan?	Unusual Comics	CVB
December 24, 1945	Apr  23 1945	Triumph Comics 26	Nels Grant	CVB
January 8, 1946	Jan 1 1945	Wow Comics 25	Clip Curtis	F. G. Kelly
January 8, 1946	Apr 1 1945	Wow Comics 26	Doc Stearne	F. G. Kelly
January 8, 1946	Feb 1 1945	Joke Comics 21	Steve Storms	F. G. Kelly
January 8, 1946	Jan 15 1945	Active Comics 22	Betty Burd	F. G. Kelly
January 8, 1946	Apr 15 1945	Active Comics 22	Cinder Smith	F. G. Kelly
January 12, 1946	May 1 1942	Active Comics 4	The Noodle	Ross K. Saakel
January 12, 1946	May 27 1942	Wow Comics 7	Captain Wonder	Ross K. Saakel
January 15, 1946	Dec 1 1943	Dime Comics 14	Nitro	Gerald J. Lazare
January 15, 1946	Jan 1 1943	Dime Comics 15	Drummy Young	Gerald J. Lazare
January 15, 1946	Nov 27 1945	Wow Comics 24	The Dreamer	Gerald J. Lazare
January 25, 1946	June 4 1945	Super Duper 3	Java Bean	Harry B. Moyer
January 25, 1946	June 4 1945	?	Happy Daze	Harry B. Moyer
January 25, 1946	June 4 1945	?	Dibs ‘n’ Dabs	Harry B. Moyer
January 25, 1946	June 4 1945	?	Nothing but the Truth	Harry B. Moyer
January 25, 1946	Jan 5 1945	?	Animal Tails	Edward Alton
January 25, 1946	Aug 14 1945	?	Salty Lane	Howard B. Cowan
January 25, 1946	Oct 4 1945	?	The Scarlet Mark	Howard B. Cowan
January 25, 1946	June 4 1945	?	Issy[sic] Bright	Harry B. Moyer
January 25, 1946	Jan 15 1946	?	Rub n’ Dub	Kenneth Ross Saakel
January 25, 1946	Jan 15 1946	?	Rex Rainer	CVB
January 25, 1946	Jan 20 1946	?	The White Mask	Theorore [sic] A. Steele
January 25, 1946	Jan 15 1946	Slam Bang Comics 7	Zip and Zoom	Edward Alton
February 25, 1946	Jan 15 1946	Triumph Comics 31	Mr. Monster	F. G. Kelly
February 26, 1946	Mar 1 1943	Wow Comics 17	Guy Powers	CVB
February 26, 1946	Nov 1 1944	Joke Comics 18	The Blade	F. G. Kelly
February 26, 1946	July 16 1945	?	Young’s Whittlecraft	Robt. Patterson Young
February 26, 1946	Jan 15 1946	Slam Bang Comics 7	The Blue Raven	Adrian D. Dingle
August 26, 1946	Aug 14 1946	Comic Crimes Comics nn	Comic Crimes	CVB
August 26, 1946	Aug 14 1946	Smasher Comics nn	Smasher Comics	CVB
April 12, 1947	Mar 31 1947	Super Duper Comics 3	Super Duper Comics	CVB
September 22, 1947	Aug 26 1947	?	Circus of Fun Comics	A. N. Nugent

NEWS

Rachel Richey’s book on Fred Kelly/Mr. Monster is in the final stages of being readied for publication by RAID Studio and there should be more news about it next month.

Besides the reprint of the first issue of Better Comics for the 80th Anniversary of the first Canadian comic book next year, other ideas that are seriously being worked on include joint Academic/Creator Conference focussing just on Canadian comics and graphic novels for October of next year. Perhaps the most exciting would be an anthology whose main content would comprise one-page cartoon bios of Canadian comic creators/cartoonists from the Platinum era to the modern era along the lines of the one below on Harry Brunt done by David Collier.

The idea is to commission a different Canadian artist for each one with a total of 80-100 or so of these. It’s easy to come up with more than 100 names ranging from Palmer Cox, Hal Foster, Joe Shuster, Adrian Dingle (and all the other Canadian wartime artists), to Win Mortimer, Jack Sparling, Dave Sim, Seth, Chester Brown, Todd McFarlane, but the hard part is making sure we have proper Quebecois, Gender, Orientation, and First Nations representation and then culling the list down to best reflect the evolution of Canadian cartoon and comics culture. I welcome any suggestions or comments from readers.