Good people of the superhero comics community, I’ve kept quiet for 23-and-a-half months and I can remain silent no longer. It’s been almost two years since The Great Gatsby entered the public domain and yet — despite being absurdly overqualified for the job — Jay Gatsby is still not a Batman villain.
The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic of the American canon, entered the public domain on Jan. 1, 2021. Which means that it has been totally legal to write him into one of the major superhero universes for 710 days of human history. Despite that, no one has done it.
Related
Public domain characters show up in comic books all the time. We’re most familiar with mythological superheroes and their allies, like Thor or Zeus. And while they’re less prominent, you’ll also find a few idiomatic cultural figures, like Santa Claus or Uncle Sam, bouncing around superhero settings.........