Posted at

http://manga.about.com/b/2010/02/26/nick-simmons-bleach-manga-plagarism-scandal-rocks-the-comics-twitterverse.htm

I'm sure you've all heard about the Nick Simmons plagarism, and the fallout from that. I was going to just comment about that, and how as a fallout, there will be a considerable sensitivity to series that may be considered plagarized from another series, but this article I found, well, I've decided to switch over to replying to this, mostly because the comments are off now, but because there seems to be just a special kind of anger generated towards the fans of manga and anime. And to specify before I get angry letters, I'm not saying that the writer of article doesn't care about differing opinions, it's just that she probably had to shut it off due to bandwidth issues.

"Before you get all self-righteous about how you're standing up for Tite Kubo, ask yourself how many Bleach scanlations/fansubs you download. The sales lost to mass consumption of Bleach fansubs/scanlations hurts Tite Kubo far more than any half-assed Nick Simmons comic."

"It's fine that you love Tite Kubo's work & want to defend his honor – but while you're at it, buy his damn books instead of downloading it."

Whoa, that's one hell of a charge to throw at fans. How do you know that they're just downloading and not buying? Last time I checked, Bleach was doing well enough for Viz to continue putting the time and money into translating, and publishing the manga. The sales show that Bleach, and manga for that matter, a strong enough genre even with piracy. I'm not defending piracy, but I am defending the fans that do read scanlations of the manga, and then go to bookstores to buy the manga when it is released.

"I mean, if we're all outraged at Nick Simmons' copying Tite Kubo's artwork for profit, what about those people selling Bleach fan art at cons?"

It's different, Nick Simmons traced from the manga pages, while fan art, and doujinshi, are the artists drawing the characters using their own art styles. It' pretty obvious that you have never attended a con, otherwise you would know that artists generally don't copy the manga artists' art style.

On the subject of doujinshi, it's another legal gray area. A number of popular manga creators have even put themselves out there as "pro-doujinshi", with Rurouni Kenshin creator, Nobuhiro Watsuki even asking his fans to draw, and send to him. I don't think Watsuki is a stupid man, he knows what the fans draw with fan comics will inevitably be sold at a doujinshi convention.

"PLAGIARISM IS NOTHING NEW, PLUS IT'S FUN TO CRITICIZE THE FAMOUS & UNWORTHY"

That's right, but unlike the charge of plagarism against Eragon, or other creative works, Simmons deliberately traced over manga art, and pushed it as his own, while thinking that the fanbase would embrace his work. It's not just that he's famous, but because he thinks we're all too stupid to realize that he's tracing.

"I also wonder if this was a) Not a the son of a celebrity doing it and b) An amateur doing it, would we have anywhere near the outrage?"

The fact is likely no. But then the amateur wouldn't have been published in the first place. I would have thought that keeping an eye out for artists tracing famous artists' works, but then this is the son of Gene Simmons, and I suspect that Radical believed that if they published Nick Simmons that they were trying to use his name to have them make the jump from small time company to a name company like DC or Marvel.