Earlier this month in his Lying in the Gutters column, Rich Johnston featured several pieces of David Mack artwork in his regular “Swipe Files” feature … pieces like this:
That’s the cover to New Avengers #39 … or was, anyway.
Over at iFanboy, Nightly News creator Jonathan Hickman weighs in on the situation:
I have no idea what the deal was with New Avengers #39. Whether it was because of time constraints, misguided attempts at being clever, too many commitments, laziness or the need for a quick check from Marvel to fuel an out of control vellum addiction – It really has nothing to do with my point, which is that the real tragedy of last week was as follows:
The belief that David Mack is somehow now a marginalized talent comes on the heels of what is arguably one of the finest ‘story as art/art as story’ narratives ever in comics – Kabuki: The Alchemy.
This is not the work of a hack, or a pretender or a fraud.
Sorry, it just isn’t.
So, dissect him however you want, do whatever it is that you need to do in protest. Refuse to buy New Avengers the month it comes out (Actually, scratch that. I understand that Bendis has taken out a mortgage on his third vacation home so he can buy a helicopter to jaunt from Chick-fil-a to the movies and back again – so let’s not leave the guy in a lurch – buy the book, just read the words… whatever) Just let me leave this subject with a single piece of advice on how you judge whether someone is the real deal or not – swear to God, it’s this easy…
Look at what they do next.
Personally, I feel confident that David Mack will once again blow our hair back.
(Thanks, Josh).
March 12th, 2008 at 1:36 pm
Just curious, why was Mack called out on it and forced to redraw but people like Land get to make a career out of it?
March 12th, 2008 at 1:51 pm
For all Land’s faults, I don’t think anyone has caught him swiping on a cover. The swipes are all inside, and less likely to be caught.
This is the cover, and much more visible. Copyright holders and lawyers are more likely to notice that.
March 12th, 2008 at 1:54 pm
What exactly is it that is wrong with using photo reference? I don’t even fault Land for using photo reference. (I fault him for referencing porn.)
March 12th, 2008 at 2:08 pm
Using an image that is owned by someone else as your photo reference is the problem.
If you are an artist and you draw your best friend posing at Magneto, that’s fine. If you take a still from Troy and slap a Magneto helmet on Brad Pitt, there could be legal issues if the studio or actor finds out.
There are exceptions though, like Nick Fury in Ultimates. Samuel L. Jackson gave his blessing to that.
March 12th, 2008 at 2:43 pm
Yeah, I guess but, my heart does not bleed for the fashion industry.
March 12th, 2008 at 3:03 pm
There’s also the matter of how close someone sticks the the photo reference. If an artist is using the photo to get the muscle position right or see how the hair falls with a certain style in a certain position, that’s reference. He could have looked at lots of pictures to get an idea of how to draw those muscles or that hair.
If the artist takes almost everything from the picture, that’s a problem. That means he’s not mixing and matching and making artist choices about how to put together various elements, he’s just using someone else’s work.
March 12th, 2008 at 3:29 pm
“What exactly is it that is wrong with using photo reference?
I don’t even fault Land for using photo reference. (I fault him for referencing porn.)”
There’s nothing wrong with using photos, images, real life anything you see for REFERENCE. But that’s what it is, reference. It aids you’re drawing when you’re trying to grab that image in your mind and put it on paper.
I often use photo reference, but would NEVER trace and use the exact same image.
The easy response is because I wouldn’t feel that I was actually drawing the image but most importantly if you’re tracing a photo image you’re allowing that reference to design your image.
Your porn example is a good one. If Land uses porn images to help him draw the woman’s body, face, etc… that’s fine, but if he places the character in a weird spread image (because that’s what she’s doing in the photo) that really doesn’t match the rest of his drawing, he’s just being lazy (my opinion) allowing his reference to call the shots.
March 12th, 2008 at 3:36 pm
Covers may infringe trademarks, not just copyright.
March 12th, 2008 at 3:40 pm
I kind of disagree with that Jason. Sometime appropriating someone else’s art is the point. If you were working in collage art (which Mack does a lot of) you would make no appologies for appropriating an exact image. Not that I think that is what Mack was doing. I just think he was looking for a certain kind of vibe and hit the fashion mags until he found it then started working on it. I’m not appologizing for him I’m just saying it’s not a big deal to me. I thought this kind of thing was a given.
March 12th, 2008 at 4:56 pm
So, because he’s capable of doing good work, we should give him a pass when he blatantly swipes?
No, sorry, to me, it’s the exact opposite; if you’re capable of doing good work, but you deliberately choose to swipe (and there’s no arguing that this is what he did), then you should be bashed MORE for it, not less.
I’m beyond any ability to tolerate the mentality that doing good work somehow entitles you to audience support when you do bad work, because screw you, we in the audience owe you no support whatsoever.
March 12th, 2008 at 5:28 pm
It’s weird. In Japan, it always seems as though when an artist is caught plagiarizing, they swiftly get fired and have their books canceled. Here, they keep their jobs, and the ramifications seem to be short-lived.
March 12th, 2008 at 5:49 pm
This “wait and see what he does next” argument is LAME. It’s the excuse that cheating boyfriends and lying children use.
The swipes are WORSE because he’s so talented. We know he doesn’t need to do this to produce good work.
March 12th, 2008 at 7:01 pm
Really, you show that cover to anyone, and then show the original work, and they’re going to say its a swipe (or trace or whatever).
Mack deserves all the heat he’s getting for it, especially since he seems to be nothing but dead weight in the Marvel bullpen of artists. He can do neat stuff, he has shown with page layouts he can make really neat stuff (his first arc in DD with Quesada), but this was just being lazy.
Also, his second Echo arc in Daredevil (51-55 I believe) was crap.
And, just for clarity’s sake, I’m not buying the issue. Not over this, but because we’re in a period (again) where New Avengers can’t tell the damn story it wants to because
a) there’s no regular artist now that Yu left and
b) it’s killing time until Secret Invasion, kind of like what the book did during Civil War.
March 12th, 2008 at 10:16 pm
Of course Land has been busted swiping on a cover. You can’t swipe that much and not eventually get a cover in there. Right off the one I can think of is the ‘Legion of Monsters: Satana’ from the Pamela Anderson pic.
A lot of artists photo reference though. Like in the case of Alex Ross he takes is own photos from models and then works from LOOKING at those pictures. In other cases, like this one with Mack, the work is so close it looks like it’s been lightboxed or worked directly over.
Just to put it in perspective, Will Eisner never traced. In almost every case, I’d rather see an artist’s own ‘imperfect’ work than something that looks like it’s been traced in Photoshop.
March 13th, 2008 at 12:02 am
I hate the notion that artists aren’t “real artists” unless the produce all their work in a vacuum. This idiotic notion seems to be one that non-artistic people seem to think of as being how a “real” artist works.
One of the first things I learned in art school is that you have to base your figurative drawings off of something, you can’t just make everything up. Every good artist uses photo reference/real life reference, if you don’t you’re gonna end up drawing human figures that look like Rob Liefeld on a bad day.
That Mack cover is a disingenuous due to the fact that he didn’t really alter the photo at all, but getting all pissed off and crying “swipe” is lame. You might as well be saying Chuck Close or Gerhard Richter are not real artists.
John Romita, Frank Miller, Alex Ross and many other great artists have freely admitted to having “swipe” files of photographs that they’ve saved and re-contextualized into drawings. As Wally Wood said, “Don’t draw what you can copy, don’t copy what you can trace and don’t trace what you can paste up.”
March 13th, 2008 at 12:56 am
Jesse, I don’t really see your point. Almost everyone in this thread have said that there is a legitimate use for reference photos and drawn a line between that and this New Avengers cover. Nobody is talking about artists needing to produce their work in a vacuum.
Also, the artists you mention either produced their own photos or they used stylised drawing styles that added significantly more than what what was done for this cover. The term “swipe file” refers to having a lot of reference material to base your drawings on, not tracing over other people’s work. Looking at reference and drawing something isn’t what people are saying is a problem.
As for how “real artists” work, the real artist that made this cover is now having to make a new one because this one got pulled. So we are very much talking about rules that real artists have to work under.
March 13th, 2008 at 4:23 am
a real shame he has to redo the cover.
March 13th, 2008 at 5:02 am
I know of another swipe:
the flying friar = any superman elseworlds story and the flying nun.
March 13th, 2008 at 6:16 am
Not really. The new cover is better-looking, anyway.
March 13th, 2008 at 12:21 pm
Kabuki proves that Mack isn’t a hack?
Swiping from Alan Davis for Kabuki:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v337/bruwin1430/davismackdb8.jpg
Again:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v337/bruwin1430/moremackswipenc41.jpg
From Frank Miller:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v337/bruwin1430/millermackswipepy2.jpg
April 22nd, 2008 at 12:19 pm
Because there is ABSOLUTELY NO WAY that out of the millions of images drawn in comics in the history of the medium that similar images could be created?!
People! Find something else to do with your time. Get a significant other – I don’t know. Until you do it for a living then you have no right to criticize for you have no understanding of the day-to-day grind for the artists involved in the making of your books. (I know that inevitably someone out there who does comics for a living will respond to that one.)
I’ve known people throughout my life (even a high school junior) that could draw an image perfectly just by looking at it.
Referencing. Swiping. Whatever you want to call it – it simply boils down to the fact that the job has to be done or the artists don’t get paid and you don’t get to read your books you’re so damn busy criticizing all the time.