Wednesday, April 09, 2014

There's a fine line between homage and swipe.

Jim Lee's cover to Batman #615
Panel from Jason Fabok's Batman Eternal #1 
I'm honestly not sure which this is.

10 comments:

Nicholas Ahlhelm said...

Why is this bad? They're in a similar pose which clearly means he was inspired by the Jim Lee cover, but it's clearly all Fabok art. Different builds, different musculature. This is far from a lightbox.

Aki Alaraatikka said...

Homage.

Anonymous said...

I enjoy how you tagged this "phoning it in", since ostensibly that's exactly what Jason Fabok did.

FDIleague said...

Neither! So no one can ever use a running pose again without being accused of ripping off?

Wayne Allen Sallee said...

Homage, maybe. But Everything about the Batman figure is straight up from the way Jim Lee sketched the belt. I can't see this as different builds, either, or different musculature.

If someone does a running pose they should consider how similar the other pose is they are copying. If this were the cover, it would be very wrong if it did not say Fabok after Jim Lee.

Inside, its lazy art. Hate to think Fabok has a box full of Batman poses by other artists somewhere, considering its a weekly.

Wayne Allen Sallee said...

*sketched EVERYTHING all the way to small details like the belt. Doesn't the nu52 Batman have a different belt?

Caleb said...

Nick, I mean "swipe" in the traditional use-another-artist's-exact-same-pose-or-panel sense, not that a lightbox or any kind of Greg Land-ary was involved.

FDIleague, you think it's a coincidence that Jim Lee-inspired artist Jason Fabok drew an image of Batman running at the reader that is exaclty the same as Lee's, save for the costume updating then...?

Eric Lee said...

Hm... It just feels too random to be an homage. Like, why would Fabok homage that cover and for that panel? There is nothing special about it story wise in Batman Eternal.

Unknown said...

I don't think that it is either. I think of Batman and Jim running across a roof together, this would be roughly what I think of. I don't even think the images are that similar.

Diabolu Frank said...

One of the reasons swiping has such a bad reputation is that the extraordinarily lazy artists who get caught are always referencing a cover image, often one reproduced in a variety of ways (such as merchandising) for maximum visibility/obviousness. When it's the same pose from the same angle, and here even the same character, you're talking the creative equivalent of petty theft.