Blatant Assholery (if you can’t stand the heat…)
Gabe, from Penny Arcade, had a blurb today (at the bottom of the page) that I thought was interesting. Partly because it could describe any number of people I know (no. I’m not mentioning names), but mostly because it reminded me of a similar situation in comic books.
More on that in a second. First, Gabe’s quote…
If you want to play the arrogant asshole and call people pedophiles I respect that. I really do. I’ve been overcompensating for my low self esteem by calling people names for twenty years. I know how it works and the only rule is if you can’t take it, don’t fucking dish it out.
Sort of blunt. A little vulgar. And ridiculously accurate.
What prompted this, you ask? Glad you did.
There was a recent, shall we say, hubub over Todd Goldman’s company David and Goliath Tees. It would seem that certain paintings by Mr. Goldman bear more than a superficial resemblence to works by other ar-teests (in other words, people are accusing him of being a thieving bastard). This, as you might imagine, has not gone over well with Goldman, and he crafted an intelligent, well-reasoned, calm response that politely and respectfully refuted the accusations levied against him.
Or, you know, he accused the artist he ripped off was inspired by of being a pedophile and a “huge infantilist furry.”
Whichever.
The point is, the guy has been accused of ripping off other artists. He eventually admitted that maybe it’s possible (but, you know, completely unintentional), which is great. Sort of. In a half-ass kind of way.
But, once you’ve tried to make it all a joke by making rather serious (if bullshit) accusations about someone being a furry and a pedophile, I’m not sure that you’ve got a lot of room to start throwing around court orders about “defaming, derogatory and malicious statements.”
I strongly suggest taking a look through that last page and looking at the comparisons between Goldman’s “designs” and some of the other artist’s works. It’s… interesting
Of course, if the allegations are true, Goldman would hardly be the first artist to blatantly rip off…erm… be accused of ripping off another artist or stealing work from other sources.
Now, I’m a sometimes artist myself. I’ve posted things online before, and I’ve occasionally done drawings based on other people’s works- photographs, paintings, etc. When I was a kid, I cut my teeth by blatantly copying the works of my favorite comic books. I’d sit down, and try to redraw my favorite scenes out of X-Men, or Spider-Man, or whatever. That’s normal, and, I think, fair.
What’s not fair or right is to copy another person’s work and take credit for it. When I do a drawing using a photograph as inspiration, I readily admit it. I don’t lightbox and I don’t take credit for the idea. I’ve also never, you know, been paid for any work like that, either.
There’s a line between theft and homage. Taking credit for and profiting from another person’s work is theft. These sorts of things tend to go unpunished. In some cases, there just aren’t laws that apply, or the theft is done in such a way that makes it difficult to prosecute, or the companies involved don’t care enough about the artists to actually pursue a case.
I think that we, as fans and consumers, have some power here, though. There are sites out there that help work to keep artists honest, and point out when it looks like something weird is going on. If you become aware that an artist is ripping off the works of other artists, don’t support him or her anymore. I refuse to drop money on any book that Liefeld works on (okay, okay, he was a shit artist anyway, so I wasn’t likely to drop money on his books, but I’m not buying any of Greg Land’s books, either).
April 27th, 2007 at 12:14 pm
With the spread of the Internet, this seems to be on its way to a larger and larger issue…or at least its making it easier to catch the copycats.
For a little while, I was spending a lot of time on Threadless. If you are familiar with it, you might imagine that its a breeding ground for “creative” infringement. It came out that one beloved member, who had submitted many,mnay designs and who was liked by many other hardcore members and designers, had blatantly traced the works of another artist for use in his t-shirt designs. Let me just say, the last thing you want to do is piss off a bunch of graphic designers with high-speed connections and too much time on their hands. He deleted his account and disappeared.