Marvel Swipes Hero By Night? You Decide!
My colorist and good friend brought this up to me at Wizard World Los Angeles over the weekend, and he was pretty shocked when looking through the programming guide… My reaction was, I laughed. But here it is… you decide, and then I’ll tell you what I think under the pics….
So, while not a traced swipe, clearly there are some things in the composition going on there to make everyone who was shown this, including people at the Marvel booth go “OHHHHH!!!!” — My old EIC, Jim McLauchlin, who actually worked on this issue said jokingly after his “OH!” — “Hey, now you’ve REALLY made it!” - And we laughed.
My opinion of course is that no one at Marvel is responsible for it, it would likely be artist Ed Mcguinness who found the cover and copied the composition. I found it funny that ours is “Iron Talon” — the swipe is “Iron Man” — perhaps someone stumbled upon it during a google image search of some name? Am I mad about it? Heck no! I immediately thought, hey, I’ll send this to Rich Johnston for LITG and hope he puts a link to herobynight.com to go along with it. I mean, let’s not forget, you’re talking to a guy who has had his art actually photocopied and put into a Bollywood Movie and production posters and all that and I couldn’t get much press for that— but Marvel? Ed McGuinness swiping from me? — I’m honored.
Every interview I do, or people come up to me at shows, even this past weekend in LA, and ask if I’m going to be working on stuff for Marvel or DC, I figure, heck, maybe this is the time to let them know I’m available for some work on the side if they want. So hey, e-mail me with offers at idrawcomics@hotmail.com - I’d love to do something for that Marvel All Ages line. (tee-hee)
And to Ed McGuinness or any other famous comic artists out there who’d like me to do composition and layouts for them, I’d totally give you a good deal on a page rate to save you the time of being creative! I know it must be hard with all the deadlines and such.
I’d say I was joking, but I’m actually not anymore.
One more thing…. It’s ironic to me that this is for Marvel’s “Digital Comics Unlimited”, when “Hero By Night” is STILL the #1 super hero webcomic. We’ve got more readers than Batman and Spider-Man (maybe combined?) — And I’m kinda sick of not saying that. Maybe it’s time to brag a little?
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hehe, I wasn’t really peeved man. It was more that I’ve read and heard a lot of crap on websites, over email or IM, and in person lately about, “oh, these guys are under tremendous pressure to produce under deadline” and stuff like that. Really? If any of these guys have ever worked in advertising, or marketing on BIG projects, they’ll know about the pressure of multiple deadlines. Theres a lot of pressure in comics as well, but I’ve done both now, and I have to say I prefer the comic deadlines really. You can either turn around 13 pages overnight, or you can’t you know
Yeah Jason— I didn’t mean you were storming mad about it– heh. We should all be more vocal about how awesome we are… you can color what, 13 pages over night in a pinch– and I can ink 6 a day? — But only because we have a truly UNIQUE working method here. The way we work together as a team, is truly the future of comics production…. Marvel or DC or some other company should get with us and make US an offer. Maybe a Hero By Night crossover or something? Heh…
I’d seriously love to do work on one of their all ages book lines. Or man, a New Frontier line or something? HOT DAMN!
Guys, I prefer to think of this as an homage to the #1 Super Hero Web Comic.
Exactly!!!
And, I would seriously love to work with Coffman if he were to work on one of their all ages book lines. I’m just saying…
that is awesome. There’s no way that wasn’t at the very least influenced by your cover. I’m not going to quite say it was copying per se, but I could see it being subconscious kinda thing….seriously…the editor or someone should’ve caught that…I can’t imagine they are ignorant of your book and it’s art lol. Silly marvel..always up to shenanigans.