I’m sure everyone already knows that Nick Simmons pieced together his manga by cutting out pages from Bleach and Hellsing, and glued them onto pieces of construction paper. Now, I don’t really see why this is a big deal. After all, with all the style Bleach steals from American rock history; we should consider it karma that rock would want its piece of the pie back. In this case, through the proxy known as legendary rocker Gene Simmons’ son, whatever his name was…

Plagiarism happens all the time. For example, nobody seems to care that Ikkitousen is probably, and always will be a huge rip-off of Tenjou Tenge. I would not doubt that if you were to place pages of either over the other you’d notice elements of tracing. But because Ikkitousen’s artist doesn’t suck as bad as Nick Simmons, he can get away with it. On the other hand, Flower of Eden’s artist sucked at art. Or more specifically, sucked at art involving people doing something other than standing. So when Random Person A mentioned that she traces from Slam Dunk and REAL, people made it a big deal. Keiji Kawaguchi traces from photographs and magazines all the time. Like hell he wants to actually visit these places and take pictures on his own. But because his art looks somewhat decent, and because he’s so well-established in the industry, nobody pursues him.

Frankly, I never liked DeviantArt. And I don’t like Incarnate. That doesn’t mean I don’t like American comics. It just means I have good taste.