Comic Plagarism

[raerae]

If you've been hanging out in other communities, you've probably heard about Nick Simmons tracing from popular manga and other sources --including DA artists.

Tracing another's work might have some (small) merit for practice, but certainly not for profit. You would think that the son of a musical artist that blamed people downloading music for the hard times of the music industry(In a November 2007 interview, Gene Simmons said "Every little college kid, every freshly-scrubbed little kid's face should have been sued off the face of the earth.") would take copyright a tad more seriously.

[amanda]

Wow, that is just a little too close for comfort.

[Gibson]

Well, he's not tracing...copying, absolutely, it's obvious that he's spent too much time using Bleach as a reference, and that's pretty bad, arguably plagiarist for sure, but I wouldn't call it tracing. Really, professional comic artists have been doing this since, uhm, I guess always. If you go through a lot of the silver-age comics and even stuff from the 90s, you'll find a lot of this kind of thing, though not so much of a 1:1 ratio. There was an incident a few years ago when a Marvel artist was found to be tracing...legitimately paper-over-paper tracing every panel from photographs (not taken by him), so it's not that out of the norm. His mistake wasn't so much copying someone else's shit (though I do think that's wrong) but doing it so brazenly from a single source.

[raerae]

Some are outright traces, others do look like copies. And apparently he has copied from sources like Hellsing as well.

I realize it's a common practice  in some companies, but I personally never knowingly buy from an artist that I know traces from copyrighted material comic artist or otherwise.

[TakaComics]

The least he could do is trace and copy text from a good series. Pfft. 

[Dr. BlkKnight]

Tracing another's work might have some (small) merit for practice, but certainly not for profit. You would think that the son of a musical artist that blamed people downloading music for the hard times of the music industry(In a November 2007 interview, Gene Simmons said "Every little college kid, every freshly-scrubbed little kid's face should have been sued off the face of the earth.") would take copyright a tad more seriously.

Piracy is not plagiarism. I wrote my doctoral dissertation on piracy and will not hesitate to post my powerpoint slide on it if anyone questions. This is definitely a form of plagiarism, and should be dealt with like any other plagiarism scenario.

[Miluette]

The series has gotten high praise from certain sources while clearly in design (as well of some of the dialogue I've seen) there is not a fresh or original thing in his books. And, to top it off, THIS.

If you're going to copy from someone, make it look better than its source.
BUT, if you're good enough to do that, then make something original.
And, if you're not, then why are you printed agghh.

I liked Kubo's Twitter response, which basically boiled down to "So wait this kid calls himself a manga-ka?"

I hate how this kind of thing has to be so common in comics. Really is it that hard to come up with a panel? Just go by Wally Wood's 22 panels guideline if it's going to be that hard for you, gosh! And there's a point past which "homage" is just a huge crock.

[TTallan]

There has been some interesting discussion around the interwebs on a related topic: why is it that so many people are quick to condemn Nick Simmons, but have no problem with artists at selling prints of their own drawings of characters who belong to someone else? I see this kind of thing all the time at anime cons, rows of people selling nothing but prints or buttons of popular manga characters. Drives me nuts, especially when they seem to make more money than I do.    For that matter, even at comic cons it is an acceptable practice for artists to make money selling sketches of their versions of Superman/Batman/Spiderman. It makes no sense to me.

[wendyw]

I suppose there's an honesty issue.

We all know that the artist at the con doesn't own the character and they're not trying to fool anybody to think anything else. It's a copyright infringement, but it's an honest one if that makes sense. Nick Simmons on the other hand has been pulling a fast one on people, passing off traced images as completely new work. We know that the person selling Batman sketches didn't create the character or have the rights to sell images of him, but they're not cheating their audience or getting an undeserved head start over other artists who can probably do a better job of drawing from scratch.

[KidGalactus]

Hahaha. This is awesome and awful.

If you're going to swipe from something don't swipe from some world-famous property with legions of fans.

Man. The guy's got balls. I'll give him that.

[LegendWoodsman]

I see this kind of thing all the time at anime cons, rows of people selling nothing but prints or buttons of popular manga characters. Drives me nuts, especially when they seem to make more money than I do.    For that matter, even at comic cons it is an acceptable practice for artists to make money selling sketches of their versions of Superman/Batman/Spiderman. It makes no sense to me.

I've heard that it's accepted for artists to draw Superman (DC characters), Spider-man (Marvel characters), and Invincible (Image characters) because when the artists are no longer on a project (they were already paid their page rate) it's a way to make some money at the convention and still promote the brands. This goes for established artists who have drawn an issue or two for the big companies and for the unestablished artists who may someday draw for the big companies.

Kind of a unwritten rule, which leads to objections of hypocrisy.

Manga (Japanese comics) are considered a separate entity - even though fans of comics are fans of comics no matter where the comics originate from. I guess manga fan artists will always just be fans because their chances of getting hired overseas is very small.

Man. The guy's got balls. I'll give him that.

Is it "balls" or some kind of distorted view of work ethic? How much pressure is there on him to "succeed"? Why not use one of the most successful mangas out there for reference?

Has Nick made any comment on this?
 

(Try not to double-post and simply edit your post if you need to add something --Dr. BlkKnight)

[Rob]

When I ask an artist to draw me a famous character or I buy a sketch of a famous character from them I know they don't own the property but there is something to be said for purchasing their "interpretation" of that character.

I think what Simmons is doing is completely different. And far less agreeable.

But then I use a lot of "Google Image" photo references when I draw (trace) and I don't cite the original work. So maybe I'm just as bad. I don't know. Perhaps my claims to not be an artist shall serve as my defense. 

[Miluette]

Personally, if I had a famous set of characters and people sold their interpretations of them, I wouldn't be bothered -- especially since they couldn't possibly be making more cash off it than me, and especially since it couldn't be that damaging to me. Same with doujinshi. (If I were ever to meet them, they would be personally obligated to give me a print or two for free...) If they were straight-up copying my style, however, that would kind of suck. That isn't even the least bit fresh.

My local con recently banned fanart, and that not only brought in a new slew of artists last year but caused a bit of griping. Since I don't read much manga compared to some (and the series people usually draw fanart for I couldn't care less about), I love artist alleys full of original works, but I don't have a huge problem with fanart sales so long as that's not all they do.

http://manga.about.com/b/2010/02/26/nick-simmons-bleach-manga-plagarism-scandal-rocks-the-comics-twitterverse.htm This article has a great lot of discussion and response from people on the various aspects of tracing, plagiarism, piracy, and doujinshi.

Is it "balls" or some kind of distorted view of work ethic? How much pressure is there on him to "succeed"? Why not use one of the most successful mangas out there for reference?

From his DA:

Tools of the Trade: Brain, balls, left hand, pencil. In that order.

Straight from the horse's mouth. But he left out "other people's published work".

[raerae]

Most fanart is an interpretation and/or homage. They at least pay their respects to the original creator and don't claim the characters as their own.

While I draw the occasional fanart, I personally don't sell or buy fanart either. It doesn't feel right to me, so I don't.

[Gibson]

The only thing he did that isn't done by a lot, and I mean A LOT of other artists, was grift his work from one single source. It happens all the time that one professional artist will lift poses and panels from other artists. In fact, throughout the history of art, you find artists who copy other, more talented artists. Hell, this happens all the time in manga comics alone...it's probably happened many times with Bleach. Hell, chances are the artist of Bleach lifted a panel or two from someone else. The only reason we don't see this exact story happening every day is because most other people who do it are smart enough to lift from many different artists. Is this guy an uninspired hack? Sure. Should he hang his head in shame at the contrast of his ironic braggadocio? Damn right. Should everyone who wants their money back for what they bought receive it along with a hand-written apology? Absolutely. Is he a thief? Arguably, but this is only a concentrated form of a time-honoured tradition of thievery. The only thing he's guilty of is being stupid instead of talented...and maybe of being the son of an icon and more fun to crucify.