I’m not making any judgment on the relative validity of the complaint, but Tony Moore, noted artist of The Walking Dead and XXXombies, took a pot shot at Arthur Suydam, arguably one of only two or three more arists in the industry more closely associated with zombies than Moore, for apparently cribbing an image of his for an upcoming Deadpool: Merc With a Mouth cover. “a note to Arthur Suydam, start drawing your own covers, plz,” Moore “tweeted” last night.
The images can be seen side-by-side below:
This is, to me, what’s the most wrong with Twitter; it boils everything down to the lowest common denominator, where context is lost and an observation like this seems remarkably–well, bitchy. Whether that’s Moore’s intent or not, and whether or not he has a legitimate gripe with Suydam and Marvel, the airing of dirty laundry in a public forum has always seemed a little unprofessional…but at least back when people did it on blogs and message boards, we were able to appreciate a complete thought. When readers pressed for his thoughts on the matter–particularly since even the original cover was an homage to the famous Jaws movie poster–he responded with, “I think it’s one thing to homage a cover and change an element, but another to take that homaged cover, chage yet another thing and call it new.”
May 19th, 2009 at 5:20 am
If somebody stole something from me, a snippy tweet would be the least of there problems. Suydam got off easy.
May 19th, 2009 at 6:28 am
Both of them should design their own damn covers.
May 19th, 2009 at 8:00 am
I’ve never read any of Moore’s or Suydam’s work, but Moore’s comment seems extraordinarily disingenuous. The line between “homage” and swipe is blurry at best. If the Marvel Zombies story deals primarily with water, then Suydam’s cover may be justified, regardless of the similarities to Moore’s work.
Short Answer: If there’s an image that shares elements with an image that you cribbed from another source, you don’t get to gripe.
May 19th, 2009 at 8:17 am
To quote Cheech Marin from Cheech & Chong’s Next Movie,
“Hey, someone ripped off that great thing I ripped off!”
May 19th, 2009 at 3:02 pm
Hmm well it depends on the situation but I agree that the lack of context in those tweets makes his comments very snippy. Who knows if Suydam knew of the cover beforehand? Or did he think maybe something from an independent company could be cribbed unnoticed into the big two? I’d have to side with Moore though nonetheless. They are extremely similar. Moore’s homage was out first.
May 19th, 2009 at 4:58 pm
Yeah, it’s Spielberg’s fault. He should be ashamed.
May 19th, 2009 at 5:34 pm
As a great man* once said, “If this is anyone but Steve Allen, you’re stealing my bit!”
[*Krusty the Clown]
May 20th, 2009 at 12:20 pm
orrrr
in this case it was just the editors over at Marvel, telling Suydam that they had an idea that they would like to see done for them…