Comments on: Scott’s Classic Comics Corner: Justice League of Recycling

By: benday-dot

benday-dot — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 02:25:58 +0000

Sijo: Thank you for your comments. I think we are after all much in agreement in your general point.. My thinking is very much yours. Every artist knows the “anxiety of influence”, and indeed as often is the stress shed and the influence plays itself out as homage, as it does as swipe. My intent was to suggest that these really are more concerns of professional courtesy vis a vis one artist to another, rather issues of company ownership or copyright. That was it.. Even if Scott showed an example of cross company image recycling the rightness or wrongness of the case of borrowing would still be between the artists involved and outside any publishers purview.

Regarding the initial pair of covers you cite, I think Scott is correct in showing them as instances of borrowing, or recycling, as he well puts it. Murphy Anderson is the source of each and conceptually and compositionally they are likewise akin. In both cases a parade off doomed or exiled characters are portrayed advancing submissively to their fate in very similar fashion, proceeding up the page from right to left upon a ramp in single file into a vertical zone: rocketship or wall of fire. Its hard to see them as divorced from each other as you suggest.

By: Sijo

Sijo — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 14:10:48 +0000

Benday: Even from an artistic viewpoint, many of those barely qualify as “swipes”. For example, the cover of “The Super-Exiles of Earth” and “The Last Mile in Space” have NOTHING in common other than the angle of vision of where the characters are. How is THAT a swipe? Also, let’s not forget that we are influenced by images we see all the time; it’s VERY hard to be 100% original. Is every cover of a person with a dead body in his or her arms a Pieta homage/swipe? As far as I’m concerned, it’s only a breach of etiquette if the swipe is utterly blatant; as long as you’re using it *create* something new, it’s OK.

By: benday-dot

benday-dot — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 03:04:07 +0000

Great retrospective, including some I never thought of before. Thanks Scott.

But Sijo, I don’t think a swipe is an issue company ownership. This is not an concern of copyright, but simply a matter of an artist explicitly or implicitly acknowledging (homage) the original source of his or her work, or otherwise engaging in a less honest act of imitation (swipe). Some use the words swipe and homage interchangeably. Indeed, we have all probably heard the phrase “he swipes from himself.”

The point is these terms are usually more to do with the domain of creative etiquette rather than of legal ownership.

By: Sijo

Sijo — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 01:14:34 +0000

I don’t consider them swipes if they’re done by the same company who owned the originals. It’s their right to reuse their ideas if they want. Besides they are all striking, “gotta read this!” covers.

Btw, I remember seeing the cover of the JLA issue with the claws trying to come out the door but not the story itself (it was on an ad, I think) and I found it scary enough that it gave me a nightmare! (I was a kid at the time, of course.)

By: Omar Karindu, with the power of SUPER-hypocrisy!

Omar Karindu, with the power of SUPER-hypocrisy! — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 20:21:54 +0000

That said, the design of Professor Amos Fortune does seem indebted to the design of that issue’s villain, Professor Zabor Zodiak, aka the Alchemist.

By: Omar Karindu, with the power of SUPER-hypocrisy!

Omar Karindu, with the power of SUPER-hypocrisy! — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 20:21:04 +0000

Sadly, “The Man Who Hated Science” is, IMHO, one of the weaker JSA stories of the 1940s, and has an ending that makes less sense than Golden Age JSA plots usually do.

By: Dan Bailey

Dan Bailey — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 19:20:02 +0000

The next time I’m formulating my list of 10 favorite comic artists ever & I leave Murphy Anderson off (as I am often prone to do), someone please kick me in the shin.

Thanks!

By: buttler

buttler — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 18:44:19 +0000

In addition, All-Star #43 is, in some ways, a mirror image of Brave and Bold #28 (right down to a knee cap being punched) – but it’s also a generic JLA vs. Big Robot cover, which we’d see again.

Oh, indeed. We’d see it again on JLA #15, in fact.

By: Scott

Scott — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 18:36:28 +0000

For the sake of thoroughness, I should have mentioned All-Star Comics #8 – just thought that that one might have been an official homage.

In addition, All-Star #43 is, in some ways, a mirror image of Brave and Bold #28 (right down to a knee cap being punched) – but it’s also a generic JLA vs. Big Robot cover, which we’d see again.

By: GarBut

GarBut — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 18:03:38 +0000

Agreed on Anderson generally improving the layouts–which is only to be expected, given the advantage of the homager. In numerous cases, though, the copy-writing on the original covers is better (which is no slight on Anderson, as he has nothing to do with it). Look at just the first three pairs: I’d much rather read about “…those doomed to walk The Last Mile of Space,” “The Chain Gang of Space” and man would I EVER love to read about “The Man Who Hated Science”!

By: Rebis

Rebis — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 17:40:51 +0000

Hey Scott. Great work. I didn’t know about this. Interesting stuff. Interesting to see how Anderson (usually) improved on the actual layout a bit. Though not always — the original carnival-barker cover is better.

By: Doron

Doron — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 17:22:10 +0000

I heard that Schwartz looked at how many copies a book sold, and if it did well enough he would “re-use” the cover

By: buttler

buttler — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 16:48:22 +0000

Come to think of it, JLA #29 is even more influenced by All-Star #8 than JLA #21 is.

By: buttler

buttler — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 16:45:10 +0000

Wow, I knew about half of these — the pinwheel, the space cages, the finger puppets, the super-exiles … but it’s great to see them all together like this.

Speaking of that first JLA-JSA crossover, although the composition’s totally different, the cover of JLA #21 is definitely thematically linked to All-Star Comics #8:
http://www.coverbrowser.com/image/justice-league-of-america/21-1.jpg
http://www.coverbrowser.com/image/all-star-comics/8-1.jpg