THEY STOLE MY IDEA!

[The Donster]

Have you ever come up with names and concepts for comic or cartoon characters, only to be beaten to the punch by someone else? I'm sure we've all just thrown out names for characters like Deathblood and Otterman and drew them up then saw same named characters show up in comics.

In 1984, I had an idea for a character called Combat Wombat, had Dave Sim draw and Gerhard paint him with Cerebus at the MapleCon in Ottawa, started figuring out how to go with the concept, had dreams of getting Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle style rich, and found out that TWO Combat Wombat comic projects were announced to come out...one had to have the name changed and came out as Guerilla Groundhog instead.





I've had this idea for a walking talking cactus man that is the sheriff of a small town floating around in my head for years...the character has gone through design and origin changes. BUT since I've been developing this, I've seen cactus man images in a lot of places...restaurant and bar signs, commercials and a YTV intermission short on TV, the Digimon toys/cartoon and Paul Dini and J. Bone's Mutant, Texas mini-series. So I've lost enthusiasm for trying to work this concept out. I did have a few artists at a Chicago Comicon in 1994 draw him for me...

Paul Chadwick


Ted McKeever


Sergio Aragones


This is more like how I've been drawing him for a while now...


Another name and idea that popped up in a "Heeeeeey" way was for something called Mechanimals. Some Igor Rat$h!tnik ex-friend decided to use the name and published a few issues as a comic. In French, some line of Transformers was called Mechanimaux. In a segment of an episode of The Powerpuff Girls, the girls are watching TV, and the show they are watching is a CGI show called Mechanimals. There were some mechanical animal characters in CyberForce. The recent WE3 mini-series was a much more violent version of some of the ideas I had for Mechanimals.

Next?

[b.t.]

Have you ever come up with names and concepts for comic or cartoon characters, only to be beaten to the punch by someone else? I'm sure we've all just thrown out names for characters like Deathblood and Otterman and drew them up then saw same named characters show up in comics.

okay, i'll bite:

two instances that come to mind....

back in 1974 when marvel's DEATHLOK first appeared, i thought it was the niftiest thing ever.....so i started doodling my own ultra-violent cyborg superhero....his costume was less "patchwork" than deathlok's, more traditionally "superheroic", basically a head-to-toe purple body-suit with shiny goggles, and he didn't shoot people, he just beat the livin' snot out of 'em....when MACHINE MAN came out a few years later, i instantly realized that kirby had ripped me off! okay, my guy didn't have telescoping limbs, but other than that, they were nearly identical (visually anyway).....coincidence? I THINK NOT!

of course, i have no idea how kirby had gotten ahold of my jr. high school notebooks ....


then, when i was in college, i "inherited" my mom's car (she had developed a severe phobia about driving, so hey, lucky me)....it was a '74 mercury monterey, this HUGE family sedan.....my brothers and i had dubbed the car "matilda", after this toy aircraft carrier we'd had when we were kids, caled "mighty matilda"....funny thing is, i really felt matilda had a "personality", she was fussy and tempermental (and i was convinced she DEFINITELY didn't like the girl i was dating).....i thought it might make a good movie idea, a haunted car with a jealous streak....but then i thought, "naah, haunted car, that's corny as shit, and besides, somebody already made a haunted car movie, THE CAR, and it sucked"....cut to: three or four years later, stephen king's "christine" was burning up the bestseller list, and then john carpenter turned it into a pretty good little movie.....and i'm still waiting for my royalty checks, stevie-boy!

(and my dad still drives dear ol' matilda to this day....)

[digitaldreammachine]

Sometimes, it's the case of 'stereotyping' for lack of a better world. Cactus's can be found in old western films, grisly-bearded gunfighters and sheriffs are there as well - seems like a natural combination to me.

Not that I mean your idea hadn't been 'stolen' but that it could be part of the 'Collective Ether Theory' where others sense similar thoughts and pluck it down from that mysterious creative gas that binds us.

This is sort of a similar experience. Though I didn't submit my idea to anybody. Many years ago, I was dreaming up a movie about archeologists who uncovered magical gates that could transport you to different worlds. They found these in Mayan, Egyptian, and other ancient culture civilization remnants. I was pumped to write this thing, even though I was still in Junior High or High School. I was at the Public Library one day, and picked up the latest Starlog to read and bam! There's a small blurb about a movie starring Kurt Russell about a gate discovered in Egypt that could transport you to another world. Imagine my heartbreak. Looking back though, since I have always been fascinated by sci-fi, adventure, archeology, and ancient civilizations, it only seems a natural combination of elements. And undoubtedly somebody reached up and plucked it from the Collective Ether.

Plus, they probably saw the Star Trek 'City on the Edge of Forever' episode and it seeped into their head as well.

[The Donster]

Not that I mean your idea hadn't been 'stolen' but that it could be part of the 'Collective Ether Theory' where others sense similar thoughts and pluck it down from that mysterious creative gas that binds us..

I know what you mean and know I wasn't literally intellectual propertyingly and potential copyrightingly robbed. The collectiive ether is full of regurgitated influences. As a kid, I did more obvious knockoffs of existing superheroes and Star Trekish sci-fi stuff.

[MartinRedmond]

Well, I did put-out a comic in 96 and most of it wound-up in the Preacher Arse-Face special. Though it wasn't the "main" story. Reading-it I was like... hu... deja vu... Of course, it's obvious Garth never saw that comic, I'm sure.

[AgentHelix]

I came up with half of the villain list for Mega Man 3.

Including Gemini Man.

[RoboTaeKwon-Z]

I think that some of these instances support the "collective unconciousnes" theory.
My experience is equally frustrating. From about 1998 to 2000, I developed an idea for an animated movie about superheroes and pitched it here at Disney. It had the following plot elements:
1. A former sidekick that becomes a villain
2. A prologue that included newsreel footage
3. A battle with a robot that was staged by the villain to make himself appear heroic
4. A remote control fumble in the climactic battle.
I pitched it to Tom Schumacher here, and he said "Wow, this is great work John, but it is just too much like the movie Brad Bird is doing up north". "
He wouldn't go into specifics, but he assured me that it was just too close.
On the strength of my pitch, he hired me to direct the stupid cow movie.
If you look hard enough, you can see moments where I was trying to have a little superhero fun.
Oh well.

[The Donster]

I pitched it to Tom Schumacher here, and he said "Wow, this is great work John, but it is just too much like the movie Brad Bird is doing up north". "
He wouldn't go into specifics, but he assured me that it was just too close.
On the strength of my pitch, he hired me to direct the stupid cow movie.
If you look hard enough, you can see moments where I was trying to have a little superhero fun.
Oh well.

I liked that stupid cow movie. Like with The Incredibles, Home on the Range had a lot of cliche trappings (superhero and spy stuff...save the farm) but there were a lot of enjoyable parts to the whole to make me really like both movies a lot but not love, love, love...the vocal performances, character design and animation, funny parts. The same thing could be said about Robots, but that just felt so much more cliche and collective etherly regurgitated to me.

Don't get me started on how I had this idea for AbsorbentRobert CubicTrousers

[Animal Qwacker]

I had an idea once about strippers who become superheroes. But I deemed the idea to be stupid.
A few years later Stripperella came out. And it turned out to be stupid.

[Polx]

Do you remember Frank Miller and Dave Gibbons graphic novel

"Give me Liberty"

??

There were these 7 foot tall female Clones who had barcodes on their cheeks, and were generally bad news, well about a year to 18 months previously i had been drawing an almost identical idea. Except the one's I drew were albinos.

I was SO FRIGGING ANNOYED!

it's all a very long time ago.


serenity now serenity now

[Debussy]

Back in the '80s I came up with this idea that Mr. Freeze would be "dead to emotions," but was still trying to have his dying wife.

Then 1992 rolls around and you all know what happened. And I had to pay for my B:TAS Volume 1 box set too!

[Kelly Tindall]

It's one of the continuing annoyances of my life that superhero names I come up with are snatched up (or were never available) before I can do anything with them. I'm sitting on at least ten really good ones that I can't believe nobody's come up with, and probably fifty more that are being cherry-picked as the years crawl on.

When playing SNATCHER on Sega CD as a child, I thought it'd be a super idea if the guy hunting the robots was a robot HIMSELF. Cue an interest in cult films at age fifteen, and a little thing called BLADE RUNNER.

And I won't even get into my girlfriend's coworker, Zenobia, whose name immediately made me think, "Hey, that's an awesome name for the love interest in a Conan-type story!"

K.

[ben c]

poopy... i have too many
of these rip-offs to count.
it is sad.

then, i also have the oppposite situation,
where i'm doing something that's ripped
out of the collective ether, or from myths/
history etc, then have people insist that
i got the idea from some recent movie/book/
whatever that i've never heard of.

2 examples: "wait, so this guy is carrying
around a broken sword? you totally got that
from LOTR!" and "the peasant kid turns
out to be heir to the kingdom? that's
just like BONE, right?"
it depresses me how many people are
ignorant of myths and history, and seem to
think every creative idea was born in 1983
in some videogame development meeting.

wow. my post is almost entirely pointless.
sorry!

ben c

[MartinRedmond]

Yeah, I completely agree Ben. What makes me angry is people trashing something and then they praise someone who just copied that very same thing. Just goes to show how ignorant they are. It's often obvious they never even bothered to read the source material.

[Gobukan]

Oh, Cactus Man...I was also accused of "borrowing" the look of Roly Poly the little Armadillo in Mutant Texas. I was at a table in San Diego and a "pro" politely complimented me on my work and then said "Of course it's very clear to me that you were influenced by my ___________ from my book _________." I honestly had never seen this book at all and said that I wasn't familiar with it and did they have a copy. The artist insisted that "It was older work, much before Mutant Texas ever came out." They were a little huffy at this point so I just asked for the name of the book again so I could "look it up in the back issue bins and what, again, is your last name?"
At that they walked away.

All I can say is what I also told this person...Dini had these characters in a sketchbook from years ago and I was the lucky (and I mean that with sincerity since I am also prone to sarcasm) guy to get to translate a lot of them for almost the first time. Clint the cactus man is one of my favourites to draw as is Roly.

j.
p.s. Ask someday about the asian Scorpion...