Comics are awesome.

[Shockwave]

I never read the killing joke. Or pretty much any Batman comics for that matter (except for the Batman vs. Predator 1 which I thought was pretty good). Which AHM cover are we talking about? I like the covers for AHM actually. The old-style propaganda poster style ones are neat, but I also like some of the "drawn" ones as well. The one with Rumble actually did reflect what happened in the issue.

[138 Scourge]

Variant cover for the first issue. Megatron's got a big crazy grin as he takes some pictures using Reflector.

And if you haven't read "The Killing Joke", It's really worth looking into. Great stuff.

[Shockwave]

Variant cover for the first issue. Megatron's got a big crazy grin as he takes some pictures using Reflector.

And if you haven't read "The Killing Joke", It's really worth looking into. Great stuff.

I think I saw that one. It's awesome if for no other reason than it shows Reflector's alt mode getting used.

[Dominic]

Reflector is taking pictures of Arcee. 0_o

Again with the plagiarism comments? Honestly Dom, it that was truely a case of plagiarism, such homages wouldn't be so prevalent in comics and something would have been done to change that long ago. But at any rate, I feel this cover works in the sense this issue ends the main storyline of this story.

At the very lest, it is bad form to riff without crediting in some way.

As for the cover, I am not sure it was worth a homage, especialle one like this, where the reference is a bit of a stretch.


Dom
-not as disturbed by Megatron/Supergirl as Sparky. Now, "house elf gang bang" bugs the heck out of me.

[138 Scourge]

You said it first, I'm just quoting you.

[Shockwave]

At the very lest, it is bad form to riff without crediting in some way.

Dom
-not as disturbed by Megatron/Supergirl as Sparky. Now, "house elf gang bang" bugs the heck out of me.

Why? Honestly I think too much gets credited nowadays. This is why movie credits are so freakin long, everyone and their dog need the damned credit. And how the heck would you credit that anyway? Seriously, what would there be a blurb on the inside cover saying "Characters arranged in this way in this position originally appeared in blahblahblah comic by blah publications, TM and C 200blah" That would just be ridiculous.

Also, we're number four on google for the house-elf gang bang search.

[Sparky Prime]

At the very lest, it is bad form to riff without crediting in some way.

Debatable. I'd agree, it'd be nice of the artist to give credit to the original for the homage, but I do not believe it is (not to mention the numerous examples with out it) a requirement. It is certainly not plagiarism though.

And how the heck would you credit that anyway?

Well taking the 'Megatron no more' cover for example, it simply says: "Coller -after- Romita JL-09" next to Megatron's foot. The few homages that I've seen give credit generally are something simple like that, hidden away within the image.

It might also be of interest to Dom that there is an alternate version of that cover with Galvatron walking away from the image of Megatron rather than Megatron walking away from... himself.

[Shockwave]

Does anyone have pics of these things or at least a link to where we can see them?

Edit: Wikipedia (I know not the most reliable source of info but good enough for this) describes an homage as follows:

"Homage is generally used in modern English to mean any public show of respect to someone to whom one feels indebted. In this sense, a reference within a creative work to someone who greatly influenced the artist would be homage. It is typically used to denote a reference in a work of art or literature to another, at least somewhat widely known, work. In literature and film, homage is similar to allusion, except that whereas allusion merely refers to another work, homage typically repeats a recognizable scene or stylistic element from the other work. Homage can be similar to parody, except that parody typically exaggerates characteristics of target works for comedic effect."

By this definition an homage is unto itself credit to the original work and crediting it further would just be redundant. And in my opinion, annoying and we all know my opinion is the only one that counts

[Dominic]

Plagiarism and homage are tough to define. This is made more difficult by the fact that they apply largely in fields not exactly known for intellectual honesty, making expert witnesses hard to rely on.



The Galvatron image might have worked aa a very ironic meta-reading for the Galvatron issue of "Spotlight".

Dom
-would settle for crediting the wrong guy.

[Onslaught Six]

I'm interested in what Dom would have to say about early 90s Valiant. I've said before--these books aren't exactly horribly cruddy. They *are* early 90s, so there's still some bits of it--there's a cruddy multi-crossover that interrupts Shadowman in Issues #5 and 6, I think it is. But even that makes it work, in a way. Shadowman gets pulled into the future and all the superheroes in the Valiant universe are fighting each other or some shit--I never got a clear answer and I never read the rest of the crossover.

But even Shadowman's issues were mostly self-contained. He shows up and finds out that he dies in the year 1999. (I never got to the end of the series, so I'm not sure if that ended up happening or not--but he's dead at the start of Acclaim's Shadowman comic, so hey.) They're decently written, near as I could tell, and all in all, pretty decent.

If you can ignore the part where Shadowman's original powers come from an alien vampire chick. They retcon that later. (Apparently this wasn't just him, other guys in the Valiant universe got superpowers this way, too?)

But yeah. If any of your comic shops have bargain bins, go digging for some Shadowman. I picked up like twenty or thirty issues for something like five bucks. Guy was glad to be rid of them.