Betty Boop, ‘Blondie’ enter the public domain

The first appearances of the classic cartoon and comic characters are among the pieces of intellectual property whose 95-year U.S. copyright maximum has been reached, putting them in the public domain with the turn of the calendar. That means creators can use and repurpose them without permission or payment.

“It’s a big year,” said Jennifer Jenkins, law professor and director of Duke’s Center for the Study of the Public Domain, for whom New Year’s Day is celebrated as Public Domain Day. “It’s just the sheer familiarity of all this culture.”

Here’s a closer look at some of the cultural touchstones that entered the public domain on Thursday.

Betty Boop began as a dog. Seriously.

When she first appears in the 1930 short “Dizzy Dishes,” one of four of her cartoons entering the public domain, she’s already totally recognizable as the Jazz Age flapper later memorialized in countless tattoos, T-shirts and bumper stickers. She has her baby face, short hair with groomed curls, flashy eyelashes and miniature mouth. But she’s also got dangling poodle ears and a tiny black nose. Those would soon morph into dangling earrings and a tiny white nose.

She started as essentially the Minnie Mouse to a popular anthropomorphic dog named Bimbo, whom she would eventually outshine — and push aside. She’s got a supporting role in “Dizzy Dishes,” performing a slinky song-and-dance in a tiny black dress. She’s not named, but sings “boop boop, a doop.”

Artists are now free to use this earliest Boop in films and similar work. But making merch won’t be free. In an important distinction often raised by Disney over Mickey Mouse, a character’s trademark is distinct from the copyright of works that feature them. The Fleischer Productions trademark of Betty Boop remains intact.

Boops and doops were apparently in the air in 1930. Blondie Boopadoop was, like Betty, a young flapper, and the central character of Chic Young’s newspaper comic strip that debuted in 1930. It inspired a film series and radio show, and is still running today in papers that still have comics.

The strip followed her carefree breeze through life with her boyfriend, Dagwood Bumstead. The two would marry (and she would change her name) in 1933, and the strip would become the sandwich-heavy domestic comedy familiar to later readers.

Books entering the public domain this year open the door to three iconic detectives from the 20th century:

— The teen sleuth Nancy Drew, whose first four books came in 1930, starting with “The Secret of the Old Clock.” They were written by Mildred Benson under the pen name Carolyn Keene.

— The middle-aged(-ish) sleuth Sam Spade, who debuted via the full-book version of Dashiell Hammett’s “The Maltese Falcon.” (It had been serialized in a magazine the previous year.)

— The elderly sleuth Miss Marple, who solves her first mystery in Agatha Christie’s “Murder at the Vicarage.”

A year after his “The Sound and the Fury” became public, William Faulkner’s “As I Lay Dying” becomes public domain. It would help lead to his Nobel Prize in literature.

Movies entering the public domain include:

— The Marx Brothers’ beloved “Animal Crackers.” The film finds Groucho, Harpo, Chico and Zeppo invading a Long Island society party celebrating an explorer of Africa.

— “The Blue Angel,” the German film from Josef von Sternberg that emblazoned Marlene Dietrich’s top-hatted image into film lore.

— “King of Jazz,” featuring the first screen appearance of Bing Crosby.