I headed to Manhattan Saturday for a visit to the Bernarducci Meisel Gallery so I could see for myself those Sharon Moody paintings which had so ticked me off three weeks ago. Would experiencing the real-world art hung on a gallery wall, as opposed to seeing them diminished into relatively small .jpgs, change the way I felt? Would attempting to see the artwork with the guidance of gallery director Frank Bernarducci lessen my irritation about what I saw as an obvious attribution issue?

I believed both the art and the artist deserved a shot at changing my mind, so it was worth a trip before the exhibition closed, which it will do on the 15th. So if you want to see it yourself, you’d better hurry.

[And since I don’t want to recap everything I’ve said before, if you have no idea what I’m talking about, and want to catch up, check out this, this, this, this, this, and this, in that order.]

But first, before diving into the visit itself … a tangent.

One reason I’m sensitive to this issue is because the artists whose work has been repurposed here are more than just names to me. Sure, some of them I may know from their work only (albeit work that affected me deeply and helped transform my life), but there were others who were far more than that to me. I worked alongside many of these creators during my days on staff at Marvel Comics (and yes, that’s what I looked like below, seen with my then-future wife in photos from the 1975 Marvel Comics Convention program book) and later as a freelancer for both Marvel and DC.

So I think of these people as friends and colleagues. And when I see an image by Jack Kirby or Ross Andru or José Luis García-López (the last of whom actually drew one of my own stories) or any other comics creator used without even a tip of the hat, I take it personally.

Ironically, even the gallery visit itself was personal. Because 37 West 57th Street happens to be only a block and a half away from 575 Madison Avenue, where I spent so many years working for Marvel during the ’70s. Whenever I’m in that part of midtown Manhattan, I usually pause in front of the building to remember of how my life was changed there. So you can see how wading through the geography of comics past to speak up on behalf of comics past might have gotten me a little verklempt.

But enough misty-eyed nostalgia … (more…)

As I head to New York to see in person the Sharon Moody art exhibition I’ve been going on about ever since this post—I’m hanging out at the Baltimore Amtrak station right now—I realize I’ve never shared the ad that started it all.

So here it is!

I’m looking forward to seeing the paintings in their natural habitat … and to trying to see it all through the eyes of the exhibition curator. Should make for a very interesting day!

Tune in tommorrow to learn exactly how interesting!

I’ll be heading into Manhattan tomorrow to visit the Bernarducci Meisel Gallery and, I hope, reach some sort of closure as far as those Sharon Moody paintings are concerned. But while in town for the day, a guy’s got to eat, right? And if this guy’s got to eat in Manhattan, it’s going to be at Shopsins as often as possible.

I’ve told you before how much I love the place—because of rather than spite of all those one-star Yelp reviews that say things such as: “Incredibly rude. Incredibly ignorant. Incredibly sexist. Incredibly disgusting. Being called a c***sucker multiple times and told to ‘go f*** myself’ while I’m photographing on assignment for a very well regarded city food magazine at the cheese shop next door by a foul-mouthed old man and his idiot son is not my idea of a hip Lower East Side foodie experience.”

Hey, they’ve never given me any trouble.

Anyway … I was checking out the insane menu in preparation for tomorrow’s brunch, and saw the following image on their eclectic homepage:

(more…)

2011 is over and done with, so I thought I’d look back and see which of my posts were read the most last year.

One thing that’s clear is you’re all as interested in the issues raised by those Sharon Moody paintings of comics books as I am—my initial commentary on the matter was my most-clicked post of the year (almost virally so), and 3 of the top 10 posts were directly related to the case. (Which means you’ll want to check back in a week after I see the paintings in person Saturday.)

Here are the stories you read the most:

1. A few words in defense of Jack Kirby, Sal Buscema, Irv Novick, and other anonymized artists

2. Optometrist says blonde drivers “much more dangerous” than brunettes

3. Win $200 by making my zombie play into a mini-movie

4. Brian Bolland’s brilliantly blistering rebuttal

5. A few further thoughts on the artwork of Sharon Moody

6. It’s not too late to attend last weekend’s Nebula Awards

7. Can you identify this romance comic?

8. My favorite photo from San Diego Comic-Con: Pat and Dick Lupoff

9. Can you recognize this face?

10. Wall Street architect literally occupies Wall Street in 1931

Some who’ve read my recent posts “A few words in defense of Jack Kirby, Sal Buscema, Irv Novick, and other anonymized artists“, “A few further thoughts on the artwork of Sharon Moody,” “Brian Bolland’s brilliantly blistering rebuttal,” and “Why a comic book isn’t a Hershey’s bar” seem to have gotten the erroneous impression that I’ve have a thing against mashups, smashups, allusions, sampling, remixing, tributes, homages, or whatever word you’d prefer to use for the act of performing alchemy on existing works to make something new.

Hey, I’ve got no problem with any of those acts—I’ve committed many of them myself. But I do believe one should always act honestly, openly, and with full disclosure, especially when one is borrowing from another artist who could be considered il miglior fabbro.

I actually love that kind of comics-related art when done appropriately. Here are some examples that intrigue or entertain me rather than offend.

You should make a habit of visiting the Covered blog, where contemporary artists reinterpret classic (and some not so classic) comics covers.

Check out Brodie H. Brockie’s take on Flash #175.

One thing to note is that beneath these images, in addition to crediting Brockie, Covered also stated, “Original cover by Carmine Infantino and Mike Esposito; DC 1967.” The correct and classy thing to do. (more…)

There’s been a ton of great commentary about that Sharon Moody artwork over on the Bleeding Cool bulletin boards, though if you want to follow all the threads of what the site’s commenters have said so far, you’ll have to check out its republication of my original article, its posting of my wife’s essay on the event, plus Dean Butters’ defense of the appropriation.

One of the posts I was happiest to see was this one from Joe B. Pangrazio, which quoted one of the co-owners of the Bernarducci Meisel Gallery as follows:

Anyone who attends the exhibition of her work will read that she has already acknowledged the artists who illustrated the comics on which her art is based. I would like to extend to you my personal invitation to see the exhibition as well. Perhaps we can discuss the subject further face to face. You might be interested to know that there is a recently published book entitled, “The Art Prophets.” One of the chapters is devoted to Stan Lee and the early history of DC and Action Comics, a subject you certainly know much about. You might also be pleased to know that he and Jack Kirby and others are treated on a par with other fine art world figures, including my business partner who has his own chapter as well. We have this book on hand for people to purchase for their own libraries should they be interested in the subject. It is good to know that the comic book artists and creators are finally getting the attention they deserve.

I was pleased to read those words, because it was the first response I’d heard that credit was being given where credit was due. I have no idea whether the acknowledgements always existed or were only posted publicly after the brouhaha began, since if full credit was already in place, I’d have assumed we’d have heard that earlier, with a simple, “Hey, man, you’ve got us all wrong, we’re not trying to ignore the original artists, we’ve always been giving them credit,” which would have gone far to assuage much of the concern. I look forward to learning the answer to that, and also to seeing the nature of the acknowledgements themselves, which I plan to do in the beginning of January when I visit the exhibition.

There’s one other thing I’d like to address before then, though.

Over the past week, as I’ve read your comments here and those over at Bleeding Cool, I’ve realized that some were correct to call me out on one aspect of this. I was accused of being more concerned with the lack of acknowledgement of the comics creators than the anonymity of the creators of some of the other commercial objects that had been mentioned. After mulling it over it, I realized that, yes, I was. I am.

Well … why? Why, for example, didn’t I demand recognition of whomever brought the Hershey’s bar wrapper into being, since Moody drew on that for one of her paintings as well?

And after thinking it over, here are several reasons I feel that way. (more…)

If you think I was being too tough on artist Sharon Moody in my two recent posts, what Brian Bolland had to say about a similar situation—one during which he was the victim—makes anything I had to say look like a Valentine!

Bolland, who is perhaps most well-known for having drawn Batman: The Killing Joke and who created my favorite Batman: Black and White story, the chilling “An Innocent Guy,” was stunned when he visit the Pompidou Centre gift shop in 2010 and found “a large poster of MY ‘Tank Girl’ signed by you [Icelandic artist Erró] and on sale for 600 Eu. It consisted of a badly copied version of my work and, where the original logo had been, a group of figures presumably taken from Maoist Social Realism.”

To the left is a photo of Bolland with his original piece, and to the right is a photo of Bolland in front of that gift shop and the poster by Erró.

Here’s a small part of Bolland’s open letter to the artist who used his work without attribution: (more…)

While I was definitely hoping that attention would be paid to the paintings of Sharon Moody—or why else would I have told you about them Saturday in “A few words in defense of Jack Kirby, Sal Buscema, Irv Novick, and other anonymized artists“—I’m stunned by how viral my post went, with spirited conversation not just here, but over at Bleeding Cool, The Beat, Byrne Robotics, reddit, Twitter, and all across Facebook.

Most of you felt my point was valid, but I’d like to respond to some of the concerns of those who didn’t … though first, I’d like to share a couple of intriguing comments made by others.

First up, over at Byrne Robotics, John Byrne (who as you can see, I’ve known a long, long time) wrote:

Imagine if some “artist” got an old fashioned projector and a copy of some Disney movie made within the last thirty or forty years, and then set it up in a gallery, playing the movie against a blank wall, and saying it was a “comment” on how everything is going digital these days.

How long before Disney shut ’em down—hard?

This kind of thing happens with comics only because of the extreme contempt most people have for the form. Comics are not “art”, you know. When Roy Lichtenstein plagiarized Alex Toth, or Steve Ditko, or Jack Kirby, he was ELEVATING their pathetic creations.

FEH!!!

Meanwhile, over on her blog, Irene Vartanoff, who was in charge of rights and permissions at DC Comics in the 1980s (and who happens to be my wife, but don’t let that bias you), wrote:

Some comic book artists have helped support themselves in their old age by re-drawing comic book pages they were hired to originally create as works for hire for the companies in years past. Usually, the companies look the other way instead of pursuing these elderly artists for this kind of commercial use, presumably because it doesn’t involve enough money to be worth the lawsuits, and it would result in bad press. In fact, Disney did pursue the artist Carl Barks for making such copies, but backed away from the bad publicity the move generated. Bob Kane, known for his involvement in the creation of Batman, also used to sell paintings of Batman, without being sued. Thus Sharon Moody’s lawyers would have a potential rebuttal, that an artistic, single use has a pattern of being tolerated by the rights owners.

I could share plenty more interesting comments, but instead, now that 48 hours have gone by since my original post, I’d like to recap here a few additional thoughts in response to those who have come to Moody’s defense, and not just leave them scattered across the Internet. (more…)

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…)

The last time I saw Jerry Robinson—who created The Joker and suggested that Batman’s sidekick should be named Robin—was in July at the San Diego Comic-Con. He was in Artists Alley, surrounded by admirers. I unfortunately had work to do, with no spare time to wait in a line, so we didn’t get to speak. But he looked happy, and I was glad to see he wasn’t being ignored. Luckily, that happens a lot in both science fiction and comics—our elders, our living treasures, are often swarmed.

The last time I had a substantial conversation with Robinson, however, was in 2008, also at the San Diego Comic-Con. And one of the things I did during that conversation—without meaning to, I assure you—was make him feel old, by telling him about the first time we’d met—on January 5, 1972.

If you’re a comics fan of a certain age, that date will have meaning for you. If not, let this refresh your memory …

Robinson wasn’t there to be part of the show. Instead, he was in the audience, likely looking forward to a relaxing evening with his peers watching the Marvel Bullpen crack themselves up on stage. Until the annoying 16-year-old that was me came along to mess up his plans. I assume I recognized him from one of the two comic conventions I’d been to previously—the 1970 and 1971 Phil Seuling July 4th weekend cons—and so I came forward, thrusting my sketchpad and marker toward him. (more…)