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…)