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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