Originally posted by -Pr-
👆but it's not like zombies in comics was pretty original either. i mean, you can trace it back all the way to george romero if you wanted.
honestly, i don't care where the inspiration comes from, as long as it's an enjoyable read, and so far, BN has been, imo...
I kinda take issue with people who freak out to much about derivation in comics; the spandex world is a pretty closed, repetitive genre, and things have a tendency to draw on a lot of the same story elements. It's the same way the literary world works, with books almost "talking" to each other, even if they're narrative is wildly different: the major difference is that literature has a couple of thousand years of head start time, and (2) what would be referred to as "ripping off" in the comics world would be called a homage or an allusion in the literary one.
Honestly, you can take any superhero story and reduce it down to antecedents:
Blackest Night: "Doc" Smith's "Lensmen" books+ 50s EC Horror Comics
World War Hulk: Timely Comics "Monster" books
Batman is basically the Shadow, Superman is more or less Wylie's Gladiator, and the Joker is literally just a transplanted character from the 1928 film the man who laughs.
A perfect example is DC's Swamp Thing and Marvel's Man-Thing. Two extraordinarily similar characters, arrived at similar times- it would be easy to claim one is a rip off of the other, when the truth is they're independently created characters who merely draw on the same spectrum of referrants (and both are more or less rip offs of Grundy).
Plus, who is Alan Moore to get made about using other people's ideas:
"Morrison's regular "Speakeasy" column, "Drivel," which ran for a few years just after the beginning of his American comic book career (the "Animal Man"/"Doom Patrol" era), featured his thoughts on a wide variety of topics, as well as updates on his career. In the "Drivel" installment from "Speakeasy" #111, Morrison writes -- in a section titled, "Cor, What a Coincidence!" -- about his recent read of Robert Mayer's 1977 novel, "Super-Folks."
"And what a read it was!" exclaims Morrison. "It starts off with this brilliant quote from Friedrich Nietzsche, right? 'Behold I teach you the Superman: he is this lightning he is this madness!' Then it really gets going!" Morrison continues:
It's all about this middle-aged man who used to be a superhero like Superman. There's a weird conspiracy involving various oddly named corporate subsidies. There's a simmering plot to murder the Superman guy and unleash unknown horrors on the world. There's another middle-aged character in a rest home, who's vowed never again to say the magic word that transforms him into Captain Mantra. There's a corrupted and demonic Captain Mantra Junior and loads of other stuff about what it would be like if superheroes were actually real. In the end, the villain turns out to be a fifth-dimensional imp called Pxyzsyzgy, who has decided to be totally evil instead of mischievous.
Then Morrison adds, "Let me tell you, it's a book I can only describe as visionary, and you must also believe me when I say it would make a great comic." "Or even three great comics," he adds, before writing, "If only I'd read this book in 1978, I might have made something of my life and avoided all this pompous, pretentious Batman nonsense that's made me a laughing-stock the world over.""
