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Cartoonist Harry Bliss has been drawn into a bit of controversy over at the New Yorker because his illustration for last week’s cartoon caption contest (right) is the spitting image of a Marvel comic book cover from 1962 (left). Bliss’s editors were seemingly unaware of the resemblance, and no credit was given to the original, inked by Jack Kirby and Dick Ayers. And yes, life is now imitating Seinfeld episode #169, in which The New Yorker publishes a Ziggy cartoon inadvertently plagiarized by “some charlatan” (Elaine).
The connection was exposed by an eagle-eyed professor at the University of Wisconsin who thought Bliss’s cartoon looked familiar and fished out the Marvel comic from his archives. He immediately alerted the New Yorker and, after speaking with Bliss, a spokeswoman told the Post that the cartoonist “thought it was an overt reference, and not an attempt to plagiarize. He thought it was a tribute.”
The New Yorker has since amended the website to properly credit the original source. Lucky for them the snafu came to light after the contest was closed, so they didn’t have to deal with a flood of clever caption submissions reading: “The New Yorker is stealing my ideas.”
UPDATE: A reader points out that Neil Gaiman, The Sandman creator and an acquaintance of Bliss, has dipped his oar in: "It's hard not to feel that Prof. Lammers has sort of missed why it's funny -- it's because it's a Jack Kirby monster and a Harry Bliss man. That's the point."
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It's a cool cover. That's for sure.
um, i wouldn't really consider that plagarism at all. the content is the same, but the illustration style is completely different. i pretty much agree with the illustrator's assesment. people are getting too bitchy about this stuff. ideas get recycled back into the cultural milieu. copyright wise this would easily fall under the category of parody, so i'm not sure why the new yorker is being such a bunch of pussies about it.
funny the post should be jumping on this story, considering they've had at least one actual plagarizing staff member recently.
How is speaking with the artists and crediting the source that the picture is parodying/homaging being "pussies"? God forbid they look into a possible legal issue.
From what I've heard about Kirby, if he were alive, he'd be pissed at this.
sorry petebfd, he totally tried to take credit for kirby's work. he choose an old obscure cover & didn't mention it to anyone.
mainly it's not an homage because generally readers of the new yorker do not also collect tales to astonish. unless i missed the new yorker booth at the ny comic con.
It is unfortunate that the reference was uncredited, but it's clearly a homage/parody. The first time I saw the monster I thought it looked pretty classic-comic-book. And knowing about the parody only makes the setup better, because everyone can riff on how the wine drinking, sweater-wearing guy in the new version is either a nonplussed cosmopolitan or a self-absorbed jerk.
I wish I was taller.
@zodak - I don't see what Bliss really gains from obscuring his source - like I said I think the cartoon is *enhanced* by knowledge of the reference. I'd describe this as either a "lazy breakdown in communication between illustrator and editor(s)" or "cynical end-run around copyright problems."
An homage or parody assumes the audience knows the reference point. Obviously in this instance that's not the case.
I agree with zodak, it's not like he picked Amazing Fantasy #15, Action Comics #1, or Detective Comics #27. He chose a very obscure Tales to Astonish cover.
Now excuse me while I go rinse the taste of nerd out of my mouth.
Does anyone here know what the word parody actually means? It means to imitate for purposes of satire or ridicule. That may be an homage, but it is NOT a parody. It would be protected as a parody.
I wish I was taller.
Some charlatan has stolen a Ziggy and passed it off as his own!
Nothing new really. "Swiping" in the realm of comic books is a pretty common although not openly accepted practice. The fact that it's happened in the highfalutin realm of the New Yorker is amusing though. I'm sure if you mined through the Complete Cartoons of the New Yorker (all of their cartoons - on DVD!) you'd find more examples, especially of New Yorker cartoonists swiping from each other.
Read More About It!
http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=15087
http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=15100
@cowboys, the object of ridicule is the sweater-wearing guy (= contemporary NY society.) The juxtaposition between the old-school comic book monster and the New Yorker-ish mensch guy sets it up.
So, I've figured it out. Either Bliss or his editor was faced with the problem of how you show the reference, or whether the reference was suitable for the NYker. The NYker never runs cartoons and then says, "see, this is based on [blah]." The mainstay cartoonists there have a style this is unique and visually self-explanatory (Roz Chast's hapless-looking losers, the video-game diagram guy, the sharply-drawn gay men/yuppies guy.) In general, they don't use celebrities or Starbucks logos or other directly referential shit.
The cartoon contest, in particular, seems to emphasize creativity (watch me create some wacky juxtaposition which is super-suggestive and then it's your turn to read it cleverly) - either that or it's just cartoons that were stripped of really shitty captions. But saying, "hey, let's update this old comic cover" doesn't really fit with the vibe of the contest. Either Bliss or his editor knew that, and so the reference was suppressed.
"um, i wouldn't really consider that plagarism at all. the content is the same, but the illustration style is completely different."
i guess you have a point, after all, it's not in color...
Was the caption "Christ, what an asshole"?
funny the post should be jumping on this story, considering they've had at least one actual plagarizing staff member recently.
lol, i read this story on gawker.
yesterday.
http://gawker.com/5010394/new-yorker-copies-cartoon
TimSPC,
I wish I was a baller.
no credit was given to the original, inked by Jack Kirby and Dick Ayers.
That's an ambiguous and likely incorrect credit. In comics, "inking" is the second step in artwork, a very specific duty of going over pencil art with pen and ink for permanency and proper contrast before it gets finished by a colorist. Obviously, somebody penciled the cover first, probably Kirby, before it went to an inker.
#19, I don't think they used 'inked' in the literal comic-book sense of the word, but I'm glad you caught that.
This reminded me of Banky from Chasing Amy always insisting that he's an inker, not a tracer.
i wish i had a girl who looked good i would call her
it's a ripoff cause that comic isn't that well known. Simple as that. Homages are only good for something that's been saturated in the public's mind.
newsarama had a completely different take: http://blog.newsarama.com/2008/05/23/i-wish-i-was-taller/
the pull-quote from Mark Evanier, Kirby's assistant for years and his biographer:
"I cannot speak for Mr. Kirby but I seriously doubt Jack would have considered this to be plagiarism. It’s one drawing put into a new, funny context. It’s also an obvious and famous drawing (I included it in my book) and it’s not like Mr. Bliss could have expected everyone would have thought it was his design. The joke in the visual is that it contrasts so totally with his own style."
Another shining example of a ripoff is M. Night Shymalan's "Sixth Sense" which was a straight up ripoff of a Twilight zone episode called "The After Hours" but in that episode it was about mannequins instead of ghosts. M. Night Shymalan basically rips off Rod Serling and gets all this money and critical applause and a greenlight to do all these shitty movies afterwards and all he did was copy a twilight zone episode.