A Tale Of Two Comics UPDATES! UPDATES! FINAL plus 1 more

[nthdraft]

*plus one more: despite the fact I didn't want to revisit this article, please see this link for further info on censorship, racefail, and general suckitude. Thank you.

*ETA 0: I am reliably informed that the message boards over at Masque are being erased and censored. I mention this for anyone with the inclination to screencap the thing. I refuse

Comments

[boogybunny]

I know it's totally besides the point, but I just can't get over how crap the art has gotten.
The whole thing just bums me out hardcore. :C

[lady_ganesh]

It's pretty stunning that ADS was created by a teenager and MotRD...was not.

[nthdraft]

you brought Reynardine to my journal. I like you.

(edit to get his name right. <3 Gunnerkrigg Court. Doh!)

[lady_ganesh]

Thank you! :D

[jillicious1]

Going to be anonymous here. I don't know that I see 'stealing' as much as 'heavily influenced'. And this is not the first time that Pini (who I used to adore as an artist) has been 'heavily influenced' by other work.

Did you ever see Stormbringer? I came across the scans of it about a year ago and was shocked. As a longtime Elfquest fan, I'd have thought that it was a total ripoff of Elfquest...except it came first. So now I can't read Elfquest without seeing the parallels to her vision of Moorcock's work. Again, not outright plagiarism, but the concepts (the suffering hero! The earthy lover! the plucky buddy!) are all there and just Pini-ized.

Which makes me sad. Very sad.

[nthdraft]

yep, I bought Stormbringer way back in the day. Elfquest is Stormbringer filtered through Ralph Bakshi's Wizards.

[lady_ganesh]

Came here from Gail Simone's Twitter, and this is just stunning. As you say, there are a lot of commonalities that could be drawn up to tropes, but it's a really long list of commonalities. (Especially since Masque of the Red Death is a comic of the '00s, that seems to take a lot of tropes popular 10-20 years ago.)

[nthdraft]

that's another thing, it would be more understandable if (like some of the pictures and ideas) it was contained within the material from the original version of ADS in the 80's. (many of the color ADS pics and sequences were shot from the Donning version, but some of the early pictures were from the Warp version)

But some of this stuff concerns characters, situations, and costuming that did not even exist in either the Warp or Donning versions of ADS (Kovar, Emeris) and are recent right up to the last print issue of ADS (that one squicky scene); ADS is currently on hiatus but is supposed to resume toward the end of the year.

Which would seem to suggest that Pini was actively reading ADS long after the acrimonious split between Doran and Warp Graphics. Like 25 years long.

[lady_ganesh]

It sure does.

[scribblerworks]

O Plucky Girl Detective -- I bow to you for having taken the time to do such a full analysis. And, in spite of the conclusion drawn, indeed a FAIR one. You didn't leap to the conclusion (as I did, just on looking at Pini's character art - but then her art has never appealed to me, and I like Doran's), but gave MOTRD a full reading.

Nice job on presenting the evidence.

[nthdraft]

thank you.

I spend most of my life in "was it just me, or did I see that?" mode so it was important to sit back and watch the whole thing unfold before putting this together.

[saendie]

Bravo! I admit to laughing on several parts reading this because it's just that ridiculous, but the way you did it..brilliant. Well done, now get some sleep!