anyone read the latest Superman / Batman? Issue #6 has the climactic battle with Supes, Bats and Luthor. The last panel in the issue is taken from the last panel in Uncanny #132 with Wolverine rising from the sewer.
Anyone else have examples of Mr. Byrne being "borrowed from" or "paid homage to"?
Is Alan Davis swiping the Wolverine punching his claws in pose from Uncanny X-Men 140 in Captain Britain #11 with Captain Britain punching Slaymaster....
Big time swipe!
JB was one of Davis' influences from what he has said in interviews...
Sometimes JB does a little swiping too, you know.
Like, in BATMAN/CAPTAIN AMERICA, there's this hilarious scene where the Joker realizes he has been working for the Nazis and turns against them, saying 'I may be a loonie, but I am an AMERICAN loonie!".
Well, I loved that, but I recognized it from the ROCKETEER movie, where Paul Sorvino plays a gangster duped by a Nazi spy: "I may be a gangster, but I am an AMERICAN gangster!".
Not a swipe, not a homage either. I had not seen "The Rocketeer" in years when I did BAT/CAP, and did not remember the Paul Sorvino scene. The scene with the Red Skull and the Joker happened the way most of my scenes do -- as a direct consequence of the storytelling.
Sorry, JB.
I thought that had been a 'conscious' decision.
It's a terrific scene and it works well in both contexts. Actually, it is FUNNIER with the Joker and the Red Skull...
(edited for login)
This message has been edited by DocCuttySark on Feb 23, 2004 11:58 AM
This issue is a SHAME! They're destroying everything John did... the citizen Luthor concept; the LexCorp; the there's only one kryptonite stone on Earth idea...
What is the big deal now if Batman has a kryptonite ring? I don't want to see any Superman comic anymore after this, that's enough! That was the last I read!
I can live with the change in Luthor's status quo since we've had 18 years of citizen Luthor and having him as an out-an-out supervillain hasn't been done for any significant length of time post-Crisis. He can always go back to being respectable as he did in the Justice League cartoon.
I'm more uncomfortable with the shoe-horning of elements from Smallvilee and retconning Lex Luthor back into Clark Kent's youth since it just conflicts too much with current continuity. If they're going down that route they may as well reboot the whole series instead of just going halfway.
>>>This issue is a SHAME! They're destroying everything John did... the citizen Luthor concept; the LexCorp; the there's only one kryptonite stone on Earth idea...
Hmm. Anybody notice Luthor's dialogue, with the emphasis on "Crisis?"
Well, okay, maybe it's not a swipe, but it's clearly meant to allude to the Wolverine panel.
Is there sort of an unspoken rule that if a shot is famous enough, you aren't doing anything wrong by swiping it, since everyone knows what you're doing?
For instance, JB, you certainly weren't "getting away with anything" when you mimicked the covers of ACTION COMICS 1 (when She-Hulk lifted that car), FANTASTIC FOUR 1 (dozens of times), or AMAZING FANTASY 15 (that shot of Spider-Man swinging Mr Fantastic across the city in FF 250).
Is it fair to say that "swipes" like these can legitimately be called "homages"?
A swipe is something that Liefeld does as shown in the link above. Not referencing classic comic moments that are familiar to many but taking stock poses and panels from other artists and falsely presenting it as your own work.
Neat link, I'd not realised quite how many examples of that particular stock pose there were.
I run a superhero roleplaying game, and occasionally, my players spot where I've lifted plot ideas from. I must remember to use the phrases "inspired" amd "unconsciously influenced" the next time they catch me out!
Is there an impression that swiping only occurs in comic art or is there a significant amount of "plot-swiping" going on as well? Is this harder to spot than it is for art?
Stan Lee himself has admitted openly that he re-hashed many plots all during the Marvel Age--if I can remember the quote, he said "The idea is to make the reader FEEL as though he's reading a new story, even if it's really an old one." Apologies if I got the wording wrong.
A lot of Kirby stuff can be traced to its source, like the Eternals owe a lot to Erich Von Danniken books and Kamandi seems to have been extrapolated from Planet of the Apes. Easy? Remember, millions of people read and saw the same stuff...It takes a very special brain to 'metabolize' concepts the way Kirby did, I'm sure.
Supposedly the "Planet of the Apes" stuff in KAMANDI came from Carmine Infantino, who was EiC at the time, and insists he intructed Kirby in the creation of both Kamandi and Etrigan, the Demon.
Etrigan, it has been noted, was heavily based on a disguise worn by Prince Valiant in a strip drawn by Hal Foster, in which Our Hero crafted a demon head mask by skinning a duck and turning it inside out. In the original, Etrigan's distinctive ears were the duck's feet.
The Kirby estate has a "Kamandi of the Caves" newspaper strip proposal that Kirby shopped around in the 1950s. The one or two samples that have seen print are definitely after-the-disaster stuff, but don't feature the talking animal motif -- at least, the ones I've seen don't.
KAMANDI was one of the many old ideas Kirby dusted off and trotted out in later life. From what I know, much of the Kamandi lore we know was present in the original. As noted, the talking animals seem to have come from Carmine.
Pierce: Really? Do you have a sample you can post here? I don't remember seeing a Kamandi strip in any of the Kirby anthologies (which doesn't exclude the possibility that I've plumb forgotten it). Further evidence that Kirby was ahead of his time....
Flavio: Oh, that Hal Foster concocted soooo many ideas and motifs that appear in later comic book artists. Kirby always listed Foster as one of his greatest influences (in fact, I wrote an article for the Kirby Collector about this very topic; unfortunately, they had very little room to fit in all the scans I sent them). JB owns a small pencil layout for a Prince Valiant by Foster; indeed, I think of JB as being the contemporary bearer of the Foster/Kirby tradition.
Here is one of the treasures of my original art collection. This is what Foster gave to John Cullen Murphy as a "script". It's drawn on regular typing paper, with the panel grid already printed on the sheet.
I don't have a scanner, so I can't post images -- but check the old KIRBY UNLEASHED portfolio and the KIRBY COLLECTOR for samples (sorry -- I can remember the specific issue).
The genesis of the comic in the unpublished strip was discussed at least a couple times in the old KAMANDI letter columns, I believe. It's never been any great secret, though there is some dispute about Infantino's input on the final, published version.
I never understood the resistance of the Kirby Krowd to the notion that Infantino had input on KAMANDI. When the book came out there was a huge collective groan from fandom, so much of it was straight out of "Planet of the Apes". There was even a comment in one of the lettercols, stating that Jack had never seen "Planet of the Apes". (Perhaps not -- the stuff that was lifted for KAMANDI was in the first sequel!)
In any case, seems like Carmine saying "That was my idea" would be welcomed by the Kirby Kamp. "See! Not Jack! Infantino! Boo! Hiss!!!" I guess they fear allowing even such a small chink in the armor of Kirby as the Absolute Creator. After all, if Carmine did something, Stan might have, too!!!
On talking animals: the "key" to Kamandi, as well as to some other Kirby 70's stuff, is: JUST LOOK AT IT. DON'T READ. It's great, now, isn't it? Just follow Mike Royer's line...
Mark: Right, it's an extremely rich material, isn't it? My favourite aspect of Prince Valiant, however, is that it is a character that managed to change over time (from youth to maturity, kids) in a way that super-heroes so far have been VERY unsuccessful (Spider-Man?) probably on account of having many different "creators" working on them.
JB: thanks for showing that piece. It's a wow. Changing subject, slightly, could you comment on Alex Raymond? Did his stuff influence you particularly in any way?
Who input what into KAMANDI interests me from an historical perspective, rather than one of championing Jack (or Carmine, for that matter). Certainly, the reason the book came out was that Infantino asked for a PotA riff -- but if the 50s strip proposal included talking animals, it says a lot about Kirby's memory and tenacity.
He seems to have recycled stuff pretty aggressively. One of the FIGHTING AMERICAN stories is a reworked SF strip proposal, for example, and a surviving cover dummy for the never-published "Night Fighter" strip is an unused FA cover, and tne Night Fighter himself appears to have evolved into the Fly. When Topps leased a bunch of Kirby concept pages and such, one was TIGER-21 -- another unsold 50s strip, at least in name.
Not that talking animals were anything terrifically new, not even in Kirby's work. And if you ask me, it's Rod Serling who should have gotten royalties for that initial cover concept of the Statue of Liberty in ruins -- he came up with it when he adapted the PotA novel into a screenplay.
I think it's a crime that there aren't any books or editions of Alex Raymond's work available today. The ones I have are long out-of-print compilations of the Flash Gordon strips published by Denis Kitchen.
Someone recently published a nice volume of Mac Raboy Flash Gordon Sunday strips, but, alas, no Raymond. Comic Art ran a recent article about Raymond's post-war Rip Kirby and the advent of the photorealist "Madison Avenue" school of commercial art, but, alas, no Flash Gordon.
Discovering Raymond's Flash Gordon was a revelation for me! I could see how the whole field of superhero illustration was so influenced by him: Kirby, Kubert, Buscema, Sinnott, Gil Kane, etc.
And of course, anyone whom JB worships as a god is usually worth lookin' at...
About 10 years ago I attended a cocktail party at a neighbors' house. (Yes, I live in a neighborhood where people actually have cocktail parties!) As I entered thru the front door, several of the other guests noted my arrival and suddenly started calling to a woman off in another room. "Helen! This is the guy!" After a few seconds an attractive brunette approached me and said "You're the cartoonist?" Not knowing what others might have told her, I essayed a cautious "Yes?" She smiled brightly and said "Alex Raymond was my father."
In Brazil we had, in the seventies, a publishing house that put out Foster and Raymond stuff in lavish over-sized hardcover editions. I've got the complete Flash Gordon, six books, and some nine Prince Valiant volumes. No color, though, B&W.
These publishers really had a high regard for the material. There were always features in the monthlies telling how Burne Hogarth was showing Tarzan in the Louvre Museum (yeah, years before Watchmen made any freshman's reading list) and stuff. They went bankrupt, of course.
Pacific Comics Club published a number of Raymond collections -- Rip Kirby, Jumgle Jim, etc. They show up sometimes on eBay. Also, check out www.kenpiercebooks.com -- Ken has a great selection of newspaper strip books, including a good sampling of Raymond (Flash Gordon, Jungle Jim), and provides excellent service.
The book to look for is Kitchen Sink's SECRET AGENT X-9, which reprinted all of Raymond's inaugural run in one volume.
My favorite Tarzan was KUBERT's. Both Hogarth and Manning made him look too pretty, the jungle too tidy. Joe did the savage stuff! And if I remember correctly, he SWIPED a little bit from Hal Foster's original interpretation. I remember, particularly, a scene with a panther standing on hind legs, trying to get at Jane through a window.
JB wrote:
"About 10 years ago I attended a cocktail party at a neighbors' house. (Yes, I live in a neighborhood where people actually have cocktail parties!) As I entered thru the front door, several of the other guests noted my arrival and suddenly started calling to a woman off in another room. "Helen! This is the guy!" After a few seconds an attractive brunette approached me and said "You're the cartoonist?" Not knowing what others might have told her, I essayed a cautious "Yes?" She smiled brightly and said "Alex Raymond was my father.""
That's the first time I've heard that. Great story. I can't even imagine how I would have reacted, but the phrase "slackjawed yokel" comes to mind, since Raymond seems more of a legend than an actual person.
