Original?
So, I really need a topic right now, so I'm gonna tread some old ground.
Over on his column on www.comicbookresources.com, Eric Larson rambles about how, at the end of the day, there are very few truly original characters out there. In fact, even Superman and Batman, the twin fathers of pretty much every superhero ever, were based on previously existing characters/ideas.
I remember a column by Dave Sim, the creator of Cerebus, where in a fit of pro self publishing mania, he stated that if your lifelong goal was to be the artist or writer of, say, Batman, that you didn't have to go to DC begging for work, you could just take Batman, change his costume a little, and voila, write/draw Batman.
Now, I've Ranted about this same topic myself on at least one occassion. And on that occassion I've admitted that most (if not all) of my own characters have their roots in other places. That's just the way it goes, ideas have to come from somewhere. What makes my characters unique is what I do with them. How they act, how their dialouge sounds, and what situations I put them in. So, for example, even though Cactus Joe the Clown has elements of Sweetooth from Twisted Metal, Pennywise from It, Pinhead from Hellraiser, Pro Wrestler Cactus Jack, and historical samurai Myamoto Musashi, when I ultimately write him, he acts like, well, Cactus Joe, and not any of those other guys. It sorta like how some people see Pengy and immediately think of the Penguin from that one Wallace and Gromit short. Actually, Pengy was originally inspired by Opus from Bloom County, with the Penguin from W&G coming in later. But, again, if you read the book, you know that Pengy acts quite differently from the characters that inspired him. Hell, right now I'm working on a group of characters that are painfully inspired by Jack Kirby's New Gods.
Am I making excuses for laziness? Hell, I don't know. Just stating that everything draws inspiration from something is all. How far we take it is up to us.
Over on his column on www.comicbookresources.com, Eric Larson rambles about how, at the end of the day, there are very few truly original characters out there. In fact, even Superman and Batman, the twin fathers of pretty much every superhero ever, were based on previously existing characters/ideas.
I remember a column by Dave Sim, the creator of Cerebus, where in a fit of pro self publishing mania, he stated that if your lifelong goal was to be the artist or writer of, say, Batman, that you didn't have to go to DC begging for work, you could just take Batman, change his costume a little, and voila, write/draw Batman.
Now, I've Ranted about this same topic myself on at least one occassion. And on that occassion I've admitted that most (if not all) of my own characters have their roots in other places. That's just the way it goes, ideas have to come from somewhere. What makes my characters unique is what I do with them. How they act, how their dialouge sounds, and what situations I put them in. So, for example, even though Cactus Joe the Clown has elements of Sweetooth from Twisted Metal, Pennywise from It, Pinhead from Hellraiser, Pro Wrestler Cactus Jack, and historical samurai Myamoto Musashi, when I ultimately write him, he acts like, well, Cactus Joe, and not any of those other guys. It sorta like how some people see Pengy and immediately think of the Penguin from that one Wallace and Gromit short. Actually, Pengy was originally inspired by Opus from Bloom County, with the Penguin from W&G coming in later. But, again, if you read the book, you know that Pengy acts quite differently from the characters that inspired him. Hell, right now I'm working on a group of characters that are painfully inspired by Jack Kirby's New Gods.
Am I making excuses for laziness? Hell, I don't know. Just stating that everything draws inspiration from something is all. How far we take it is up to us.
2 Comments:
All my ex's live in New Nonreal comics that are up.
Many of our insperations can often come from innert, sub-concious imagery that bubbles up from the depth. And sometimes, we steal blatantly, but I believe, ultimately, it's how we choose to manipulate those inspirations, homages and/or rip-offs to create a truely unique voice. Making something from scratch can sometimes be interpreted as some latent representation whether it's an actuallization of Freud's psycho-analysis, Jungian archetypes or a picture of an apple that we had to draw in the third-grade. Pure ownership is hard to pin-point, but can often tell when something kicks ass.
Post a Comment
<< Home