Plagiarism Scam

It was originally intended for this blog posting to continue chronicling the early days of Legendary Press and the approach I took as I started building the company. Instead this post will revolve around my thoughts and opinions on plagiarism.

I read a few different websites and blogs for comic news and there’s a new one that has attracted many readers and followers in a short period of time, called Bleeding Cool. Last night I’m reading the blog and come across this posting about a dude named Josh Hoopes (using the name Ron Runstrom and representing himself as fan-favorite Art Adams) who has been submitting work that is not his own to up and coming publishers such as Legendary Press and then scamming people out of money. You can read all the ugly details here and a follow up posting here. Upon reading about how this creep actually scammed other artists and publishers, it turned my stomach. I was disgusted as a fan and as a publisher by the thought of someone actually being successful pulling off this type of scam and getting away with it. Many props to Rich Johnston at Bleeding Cool for doing the due diligence and calling out Hoopes.

I am thankful that I never came upon Josh Hoopes or any of the aliases he used. Like many aspiring comic book creators, I tried recruiting talent (writers and artists both) by using websites like digital webbing and comicjobz (which is still away and not back up yet). I posted jobs for writers, pencillers, inkers, colorists and letterers. I can say that I received many submissions from many talented people and not once did I think any submission could be from some douche like Josh Hoopes misrepresenting himself by submitting someone else’s work.

I consider myself lucky to have come across the postings calling him out on Bleeding Cool. Knowing about this scam will help me with due diligence when I start my next project and begin a new talent search. Speaking of talent searches, in a future post I will share some of the trials and tribulations of dealing with aspiring artists from an editorial / owner perspective and maybe some of you eventual / potential readers can offer some advice from an artist’s perspective. There’s so many people out there trying to break into comics, it’s hard to separate the serious ones who actually want a career in comics from the ones who only draw as a hobby.

But just to finish up, the idea of plagiarizing someone else’s work is abhorrent. Publishers and comic book creators already walk a fine line negotiating page rates and what is fair for each side. This type of scamming only serves to foster mistrust between publishers and talent, and that’s something both sides have to guard against. After all we’re making comics and it’s supposed to be fun, right?