Thats just nasssty.

Crabs pt.2

So here is the promised second half. Named crabs because of the crab like behavior of some individuals. The truth is the subculture comic genre I love the best is full of small people many who don't even get national coverage or any real money (not more then a 1,000 a month most times less, much less) from what we do. Its about the love. the love of comics, the love of creation the love of art. It's about the thought and the chance to get the proper notoriety and then be able to support your lifestyle while doing what you love. Thats what we are all working for. Some are closer then others. Their day job is drawing, sometimes even drawing comics, but they still have their own characters waiting in the wings. I don't think any one involved should stop doing what they are doing. I just think they should keep pushing their work and stop acting like another persons success is their  demise. In this situation, it's just not the case.

So anyway the second half of the arguement is about influences.  The original suggestion is that the older work was the influence on the newer work in question. I suggest differnet. that the older and newer work, both by artist close in age(less then 10 years I believe) is influenced by the same pop sub culture. Most of whats being mentioned in terms of similarities is based on one picture and has to do with boots. So first lets examine the characters as they are

 This is the whole picture the comparison was taken from. you can see more on Chuck Collins blog. dreadsocietyx.blogspot.com
 you can see from a turn around, there are lots of differences,
•she has baggy pants, with large openings on the side
•she wears no mask
• her colors are primarily black and grey
•she has facial markings
•she also has what looks like an over-garment space suit

In its creation Shawn shared a lot of art with his permission I'm sharing some of it.

As you can see from the actual turn around there are lots of differences. also in the color selection process there were lots of looks. I still think he should have kept the white boots or went with the tan, but hey what do I know.  you can see though the differences but I'll list some.
•Baggy pants  that stop at the knee and have no holes.
•Solid boots that look armor plated.
•has black full body costume undergarments and armored arm bands.
•she also has gas tanks on her arms
•face mask and goggles
•log scarf.

There is an image on chucks blog with his character in a scarf. Apparently she has had many different looks in the last 6 years or so. The scarf is  black and I guess not as much apart of the character.

Here's the thing and the meat of this argument  neither of these characters have a super original look both look borrowed from anime, manga, video games and comics. I'll talk about my friend first. The character Shawn has created is original, but you can see elements that have been used before. most easily the scarf. here are some characters with scarfs.

and yet Shawns character is still different. you can see the similarities in appearance, but thats where it ends much like his character compared with chucks.and chucks suffers from the same issue, here are some ninjas with holes in pants.

again from the little I've seen and understand the similarities end with clothing.
on color, it's really crazy if Shawn had picked the tan(like i suggested) there probably wouldn't be any discussion about color schemes, unless it was about Ibuki.

I don't think chuck really borrowed from these characters. but imagine if some one placed one of these images on facebook with the caption copy under chucks work suggesting it wasn't original. wouldn't he be upset? Defensive? And the picture would be wrong.

SO in conclusion. Good Luck Chuck. I herd he was doing some big things with his characters. Know that nobody thinks that Aje, is anything like Aizan and that if anything Aje has gotten a lot more exposure then she would normally. I hope your future fun raising goes well. And I think you should back off and maybe do a project with Shawn instead of blocking his ability to succeed. Successful people can't be blocked. We just won't let it happen. Later I'll talk about my beef with black female characters. Get ready Miranda Mercury!