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Back yet? Good. So you've at least checked out a bit of Mere Mortal. That's a project that came to me years ago, back in Nineties. I was working on other things so that got a few notes in a notebook and filed away to be revisited later. Later came in 2003 and I wrote the script for issue #1. Chris didn't get his hands on it until a few years later. He liked the script and wanted a crack at it and the rest is history.
Yesterday I get an e-mail from a buddy of mine, James, who tells me there this other guy doing a comic called Average Joe and it seems to be a copy of Mere Mortal. A little Google-jitsu later I've found the guy in question and shot an e-mail over his way. Rob Patey writes for Ain't It Cool News and is working on Average Joe on the side. After a few e-mails back and forth I got a chance to read some of the scripts. It's good stuff. Solid concept with fun characters spouting out dialogue I wish I was cool enough to actually say.
Both Average Joe and Mere Mortal deal with worlds in which everyone has a super power. In both stories the main character is named Joe. So, why am I not ranting, raving and plotting a vendetta again Rob for ripping me off? It's simple. He didn't.
We're both tackling the same concept from two different angles, and it's a big enough concept for the both of us. He'd never heard of me before I e-mailed him. So how did to guys from two different states who had never met, talked to or even heard of each other come up with such similar ideas for comics?
Think about your best friend. The one that you end up finishing each other's sentences. You know them well enough to know what they're thinking. How do you know so much about them and how they speak and think? Shared experiences. There's only so many ways people are going to react to things depending on prior experiences and upbringing. You're constantly being subjected to new information and events. We live now in the Information Age. The information your getting, the things you witness are being witnessed by people around the work.
On the surface it services as reference points, a cultural shorthand. You hear movie advertisers referencing The Matrix over and over again to hype new movies because so many people have seen it that it triggers the recall of watching that film and hopefully makes people want to have a similar movie-going experience.
Now apply this to a creative person. Everyone who creates draws to some degree from an external source. They're our influences. Somewhere down the line two guys got just the right combination of information that something in our brains sparked and you've got two comics, by two guys who've never met with enough similarities to make people wonder if someone is being ripped off. It's a safe bet that there's another person out there right now that neither of us know about with an idea just like ours.
So what am I going to do about one Mister Rob Patey? I'm going to wish him the best of luck finding an artist for his script, because it'll make one very cool comic. It's a big industry in a big world and there's room enough for both of us.
Both Average Joe and Mere Mortal deal with worlds in which everyone has a super power. In both stories the main character is named Joe. So, why am I not ranting, raving and plotting a vendetta again Rob for ripping me off? It's simple. He didn't.
We're both tackling the same concept from two different angles, and it's a big enough concept for the both of us. He'd never heard of me before I e-mailed him. So how did to guys from two different states who had never met, talked to or even heard of each other come up with such similar ideas for comics?
Think about your best friend. The one that you end up finishing each other's sentences. You know them well enough to know what they're thinking. How do you know so much about them and how they speak and think? Shared experiences. There's only so many ways people are going to react to things depending on prior experiences and upbringing. You're constantly being subjected to new information and events. We live now in the Information Age. The information your getting, the things you witness are being witnessed by people around the work.
On the surface it services as reference points, a cultural shorthand. You hear movie advertisers referencing The Matrix over and over again to hype new movies because so many people have seen it that it triggers the recall of watching that film and hopefully makes people want to have a similar movie-going experience.
Now apply this to a creative person. Everyone who creates draws to some degree from an external source. They're our influences. Somewhere down the line two guys got just the right combination of information that something in our brains sparked and you've got two comics, by two guys who've never met with enough similarities to make people wonder if someone is being ripped off. It's a safe bet that there's another person out there right now that neither of us know about with an idea just like ours.
So what am I going to do about one Mister Rob Patey? I'm going to wish him the best of luck finding an artist for his script, because it'll make one very cool comic. It's a big industry in a big world and there's room enough for both of us.
3 comments:
Crap you know I dispatched the assassins at the beginning of the third paragraph. Whoops!
If 4 million monkeys typing into infinity can produce Shakespeare, no surprise that comic lovers will step on each others dicks from time to time.
Rob Patey
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