If you’ve been hanging around here for any length of time, you already know how much I despise Roy Lichtenstein and those who I feel treat comic book artists the same way he did. So I was delighted to learn via Bleeding Cool that UK comic book artists were planning to protest the Lichtenstein exhibition at the Tate Modern with an exhibition of their own.

Image Duplicator is the name of a show which will appear at the Orbital Gallery in Leicester Square from May 16th-31st, gathering together the works of artists commenting on Lichtenstein’s treatment of the original creators he never credited.

Here’s what they’ve been invited to do:

Every interested comic artist (or illustrator, graphic designer or other “commercial artist”) should “re-reappropriate” one of the comic images Lichtenstein used, and rework it, using some of their ‘commercial art’ drawing skills, to warp and twist it into something interesting and original, and in the process to comment on this type of appropriation.

The first response I spotted was by Dave Gibbons, who tackled one of Lichtenstein’s most famous copyings. First, here’s the Lichtenstein, titled “Whaam!”

Before taking a look at what Gibbons did, check out Irv Novick’s original panel from All-American Men of War #89 (Jan.-Feb. 1962).
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I was reading the December 12 issue of the New York Observer when I spotted something that irked me.

Now understand, finding something in the Observer that offends me isn’t at all unusual. Not an issue goes by when I don’t discover something to offend me in the salmon-colored pages of this snide, smarmy rag, which encapsulates just about everything I dislike about New York. It’s a publication for the 1%. When I think of its intended readership, what comes to mind is that picture going around of champagne-swilling bankers smirking while looking down at Occupy protesters from a restaurant terrace.

And to answer your unasked question—which I assume would be, “Well, then why did you subscribe?”—my subscription was entirely accidental. I had expiring air miles—from Delta, I think—and used them to sign on for a bunch of magazines and newspapers. I’d never read the New York Observer before then, and once the issues started arriving and I saw what I’d gotten myself into, I looked forward to the sub ending so I wouldn’t be tortured by its worldview. I’d read each issue while metaphorically holding my nose, doing my best to treat it as an anthropological study of a zeitgeist I despise.

And now that I’ve gotten that rant out of my system …

What was it in particular that I suddenly felt a need to bring to your attention? Something I saw in a half page ad for the Bernarducci Meisel Gallery. It offered for sale a single painting: “Mjolnir—To Thy Master!”

Take a look for yourself.

The artist’s name was … Jack Kirby, right? Wrong. It’s the work of an artist named Sharon Moody, and Kirby’s name was nowhere to be seen. I investigated a little further, and discovered other similar paintings. (more…)