Plagiarism in Art exists or does it?

I love comic books. This love does not stem from childhood or young adulthood. The few that I read back in the day always disappointed me because I had to buy the next issue to resolve the story. This love arrived in adulthood. Thanks to digital subscription based services, I am now able to voraciously read series to their conclusion. But this post is not about the wonderfulness that is comic books, instead it is about art.

The reason I love comic books is not because of the superheroes or stories (although those are important), I love them because of the art (or sometimes in spite of it). It is fascinating to see how an artist conceives the story unfolding, how the panels are laid out, how they decide to showcase that emotion or action. It is not easy to draw a "massive primordial god surrounded by energy," but people like Jack Kirby could do it. He did it every day; very fast and very well. So when I read comic books for pleasure or for my comic book reading club, I tend to spend extra time staring at the artwork and trying to absorb it.

As I was reading, Annihilation: Silver Surfer (2006) Issue #2, I couldn't help but be shocked by what I saw on page 13. On that page, was the rendering of the throne room of Annihilus, the being from the negative zone, who was hell bent on destroying our universe (It is an epic storyline). I thought to myself, "That couldn't be Emperor Palpatine's throne room? That would be too obvious for an artist to copy." Star Wars is too famous and mainstream to go unnoticed even in 2006, which was a year after the Revenge of the Sith was released. But lo and behold (Thank you Internet), I googled the image and to my dismay it looked not only an awfully lot like the throne room, but it looked exactly like the throne room.

If we take a look at the image in this blog post and compare, it looks like the images are exact copies of each other. It feels as if the artist found a jpeg of the Emperor's throne room and did some digital Photoshopping on it to make it look like art. The artist then drew his characters onto it (and poorly ... no shadows). Immediately, my opinion of the artist, Renato Arlem, dropped to negative. I was aghast and could not fathom how he got away or if he got away with doing this. In 2006, both Marvel and Star Wars were independent companies with neither having been purchased yet by Disney. Also, it is highly unlikely that Arlem would have written and received permission to use the Emperor's throne room in his comic dealing with the Marvel characters. This leads me with my limited investigating to conclude that Arlem is a lazy artist and could not be counted on creating his own world. This was further proved in the next issue when one of the spaceships drawn was the Battlestar Galactica. Now, I know for sure that he's just using whatever he can to crank out this comic.

I still do not understand why he would risk plagiarizing such famous franchises. There is a lot of crossover between those who read comics and love Sci-fi. One would think that it would have been caught pretty quickly. Although on Reddit there is a forum or two dedicated to this finding, the nerdy members of my own comic book reading club did not pick up on either plagiarism. It must have been the artist and fanboy in me to have found these instances of plagiarism.

This brings us to the question of plagiarism in art, does it exist? Plagiarism in art is very easy to do and hard to get caught doing. As soon as you draw or paint something copying another individuals painting, based on date and time that artist could sue you for infringement unless you are able to show a material change to their image in some manner. But what artists are willing to go to court and argue subjective issues unless there is a lot of money on the table. Most of the time, plagiarism in art is the other way around, where an artist paints a piece and claims its an original by another artist (probably deceased). Sometimes artists will do tribute pieces or copies of famous pieces for private commissions not intended for mass market. These artists appear to get away with plagiarizing and the collectors are pleased that they do not have to pay top dollar for something that is either very expensive or out of their price range.

Anyway, I do not want to spend time writing a treatise on all the types of plagiarism and stealing in art. As the famous quote says, "Good artists borrow, great artists steal," implying that as a group we are okay with it. However, I cannot believe that anyone would give an artist credit for literally stealing art from someone else and presenting it as their own. Are you truly an artist at that moment or just a copier?