Something’s spreading on Deviant Art, and it seems to be catching.

It started on the pages of comic artists like Francis Manapul (whose work is pictured at right), Dustin Nguyen, and colorist Christina Strain. A symbol with a cross bordered by four “E” shaped ends showed up on the Deviant Art pages of several comic book artists with the tagline, “It’s Spreading.”

But then the idea caught on, and the symbol started showing up all over the Deviant Art website, represented in a wide variety of artwork — and accompanied by the tagline, “It’s Spreading.”

What exactly is spreading remains to be seen, but it’s got people talking. New Ultimate Comics Spider-Man artist David LaFuente, who doesn’t have a page on Deviant Art but obviously visits the site enough to notice the phenomenon, posted on his Twitter page this morning, “the IT’S SPREADING thing has my attention.”

At left, I’ve shared a few of my “It’s Spreading” favorites that will give you an idea of how the symbol is being used by Deviant Artists. The images pictured are by Bill Reinhold (the hillside), Ben Kodjak (the shoes) and Kiora Keller (the self-portrait).

To see some of the “It’s Spreading” art yourself, you can check out this collection.

This whole “It’s Spreading” trend is most likely a viral marketing campaign by a clever comics publisher. Then again, it could just be some leftover April Fools joke or the result of a bar room dare. No matter what it is, it’s kind of fun to see how creative these artists are getting as they “spread” this funky little symbol.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 22nd, 2009 at 10:15 am and is filed under News & Views. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.