Robserecaps Forty Forty Seven – Swipe Files part one
The Rob has been ON ONE this weekend! From claiming that April and May are part of the summer movie season to getting droves and droves of people booted from a comics swipes Facebook group, to asking people to do the research of what 90’s Marvel artists emulated him the most. Let’s get to day and date with the Rob today!
- Swiping has been used by some of the greatest artists of all time, from Steven Spielberg to George Lucas, but what is the difference between a swipe and an homage (which the Rob says with a level of disdain that cannot be measured) and an influence and an echo? The Rob is going to put it on trial this week
- Right off the rip, the Rob’s timeline of his own career is off. The Rob says he’s been working in comics for 40 years. He hasn’t. The Rob’s first published fan art was in Boris the Bear #6 (which he mentions here) with a cover date of January 1987. The Rob says this was when he was 18, and even with a printing date of late 1986, this would have been when the Rob was 19
- Just passing the four year anniversary of the pod, the Rob will be taking some of the summer off
- The first instance of ‘swiping’ the Rob remembers is the original Star Wars, which liberally borrowed from World War II films and Kurosawa’s the Hidden Fortress, which Lucas was PROUD to show he swiped from
- The Rob also feels much of Darth Vader was borrowed from Doctor Doom as the Lucasfilm marketing rep told the Rob that George was a big Kirby fan and a big fan of the Rob
- The Rob makes fun of his parents for their midwest pronunciation of words like ‘drama’ and ‘washing machine’ and follows it up saying ‘Princess Leia’ in a way I’ve never heard in my life, which must be a bit
- Spielberg, Scorsese, Coppela, the old men of cinema, are the last generation of film makers raised on westerns, specifically those of John Ford, which they also liberally borrowed from
- Very strangely, the Rob’s plugs of all his social media, etc. shows up in the middle of the show
- There are groups out there that will tell you what a ‘swipe’ or ‘homage’ is. Using words like petty theft, lack of skill, clumsy, desperate, lazy, sinister, shame or untalented hack. But, the Rob will read to you the literal, Webster’s dictionary definition of these words
- So much of what the Rob hangs his hat on here is ‘intent.’ By honoring your influences, with or without crediting them, are you stealing? The Rob feels not, but much of that intent is placed there not by the artist but by the consumer if they like you or not on purpose. 99% of your “sacred cow” artists have done swipes labeled as soulless theft
- The Rob tells a story of Kurt Busiek back in 1995/1996 going on Compuserve message boards with ‘tone deaf’ takes about homages saying Marvel and DC creators were meeting in bars in the 70’s, swapping ideas to come up with stull like the Imperial Guard and the Squadron Supreme. See, because the Rob did not know that, when he was reading these stories as a kid, there was a backstory as to why these echos were happening, it cannot be held against him for not knowing
- There is a Jack Kirby cover of Thor #126, which in and of itself is a self homage of the cover of Kirby’s Fourth World #2, that Walt Simonson homaged for the cover of Thor #338, but because it does not say “After Kirby” or some such acknowledgement, some people would have you believe this is theft!
- The Rob states he would put those acknowledgements on interior pages when ‘swiping’ but the editors would take them out
- the Frank Miller homages the Rob used from Ronin are addressed and OK because 1. everyone was familiar with these panels and B. the Rob was putting them in a book he knew was going to sell gangbusters (New Mutants #100)
- Most of, if not all of, the Rob’s recent cover homages to himself were requested by the publishers of said books
- Next episode, the Rob is going to pivot to style swipes, in both film and comics, which the Rob was soliciting for in his Facebook group this past weekend with his usual style
- The last ten minutes of the show is an explanation as to why the Rob will not be any conventions for the foreseeable future and a re-do of his plugs with focus on WhatNot and CGC, which the deadline has been extended to June 21st, if that’s your thing.
- Pam’s Mattress House and Bob’s Collectibles have reached out to advertise on the show, which I think is the Rob doing a bit
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