Being something of a comics fan over the course of my life this was not a surprise. Not being a big fan of Lichtenstein but knowing generally who he is, the question of whether or not he was a plagiarist was likely to come up. Now I haven't read comics in a while because I haven't bothered to keep up with newer titles. I get to things belatedly. How belatedly? Inu Yasha, there you go. Okay, Alan Burnett and Paul Dini's Batman run spun off from Batman: the animated series is pretty good and that's a recent run in comics that's still on-going. The last time I really kept up with a Batman arc was one Dini wrote. The Scott Snyder stuff was really hit and miss. Court of the Owls was fun but Night of the Owls was lame.
I lean toward Gil Kane's take on Spider-man more than Romita's. When Velma came along the staggeringly bad word of mouth and online responses reminded me that twenty years have passed and we never saw that animated adaptation of Andi Watson's Skeleton Key that was reportedly in the works. I got to catch Marjane Satrapi when she came to Seattle and discussed how Persepolis got made into a film. I.e. I'm rehearsing a few points about comics and manga and graphic novels across the world over the last half-century to show that in this day and age Lichtenstein as plagiarist isn't "just" a thesis that would be motivated by sour grapes but is something that should be at least given a hearing on account of how well-versed people are in visual media and because the comics that Lichtenstein cribbed from are out there. I don't have to hesitate to say the Russ Heath drawing is more compelling than the Lichtenstein knock-off but how many people are actually versed in war stories in comic books? I only know of a few titles myself because my brother got the old Enemy Ace re-issues.
If there were a case study for how the insulation of highbrow from lowbrow may have kept these from being a story earlier Lichtenstein might be "the" case. It's not even exactly a "new" issue but a new documentary makes for, well, news.
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