A Teachable Moment

Reminds me of the time Rich Berlew and Rob Balder ran a Subway joke on the same day, on the two different comics on the site (The Order of the Stick and Erfworld), completely by coincidence.

This problem is of course particularly prevalent in gaming comics, or any sort of comic which focuses on contemporary issues.

When you have a bunch of comics out there about video games, and a new video game comes out that 20 of them decide to make a joke about, then there's only so many jokes you can make off a game that you know only by its publicity ... the same publicity that all the other cartoonists are also working off of.

In Response to IanNeufeld (#50458):

You stole the "The cake is a lie!" punchline from me! Ragh!!!!!!

:D

I'll have to bookmark this post for when somebody happens to accuse me of stealing someone's joke(to save typing & to prevent "theft").
Makes me wish my first accusation will be of me stealing from you. Although since I've read every single Sheldon comic, I hope my alleged comic will have posted first.

and this, ladies and gentlemen, is why Dave Kellett is the best damn cartoonist there ever was, is, and ever shall be

well said Dave

I just marvel at how cartoonists like Scott and yourself can think of witty observational humour on a daily basis. It's such an amazing talent =D

It's true, though. If you spent all your time worrying about whether you were going to unknowingly draw something that someone else had already drawn, you'd never draw!

I'm a bit bemused. Given what you've said today, which is perfectly reasonable, why didn't you say something like it when it was pointed out that XKCD had hit on the idea of punctuation and smileys earlier than you (especially since the answer you peoposed was different)?

I heard a very interesting interview with a plagiarism expert during the Joe Satriani-Coldplay feud a little while back. One point he made is that we hear so much background music - in the mall, in elevators, on movies and TV - that sometimes a tune gets into a musician's mind and a long time down the road, they put it into a song thinking its their own tune rather than something they heard in the background.

I'd imagine a lot of jokes are like that, as well.

On the other hand, I'm reminded of the Dave "Shmorky" Kelly / Todd Goldman situation.
To sum up: A t-shirt guy copied an image from a webcomic guy, and sold copies of it for $4,000-5,000. The webcomic guy found out and sued.
Here's an image [gremlin.net] showing Shmorky's original cartoon panel on the left, and Goldman's plagiarized painting on the right. And here's an article [sptimes.com] on the whole event. Mind you, it's all been resolved by now, of course.

I said coincidences happen in a tweet 8 months ago...you stole that from me. I'll have my lawyers call your lawyers and do lunch.

P.S. Your fax strips were funnier.

"But most of the time, it's from folks who just like to write "J'accuse!" at you."

Such people are known as J'accuzzis.

Huh, I could've sworn I've seen this somewhere before...
Couldn't agree with you more Dave!

I actually live in fear of ripping off someone's ideas. You always wonder when you've read so many comics for so many years if maybe some of those ideas are filtering up through your subconscious onto your cartoon. I find this happens especially when I get that feeling of 'recognition' when I write a strip; I hope it's from having a take on a genuine experience, but I tend to worry that it's because I read it in a cartoon somewhere.

I solve the worrying by having a beer.

I participate in a great web site (http://www.hipsoda.com/caption/) where the idea is to come up with funny captions for a steady stream of pictures from various TV shows and movies. It is not uncommon for two people to come up with almost the exact same caption for a given picture. We just call "mind meld!" and laugh at the situation. Then we quietly grumble to ourselves and plot how to take down the no-good, plagiarizing SOB...

In Response to eeceec (#50469):

@eeceec J'accuzzis - awesome :)

So did faxes become obsolete in 1985 or 1995? I don't know who to believe - both Sheldon and Dilbert seem pretty knowledgeable about these things.

See there, and I've just assumed that there was a "cartoon idea-a-day" calendar you all subscribed to:
Jan 12: Squirrels prefer Jiff.
March 30: Parent of teenager turns out to be amazingly savvy about Twiitter
October 3: Last fall leaf clinging to tree. ; )

A number of years ago, I heard a children's author speak, and she told of having written a new book which she was very excited about, until she found out about another book, already published, which had virtually the identical plot. When she moaned about this to her agent, the agent shrugged her shoulders and said, "It's ok, you just tapped into the Great Unconscious." That's been my excuse ever since.

This type of thing is especially true of 'editorial' cartoons. A comics related forum to which I belong often reprints editorial cartoons on a related topic. For instance, when a person of note dies (particularly in the entertainment field) it seems that 9 out of 10 cartoonists will go for the same 'punchline' using a quote or catch-phrase for which that person was known.

You don't see folks complaining at that point that one cartoonist is 'stealing' from another. We recognize that they are all working from common reference points. People have to lighten up!

Funnily enough, Scott Adams himself writes in one of his books (I think it's The Dilbert Principle) that all of his comics are in fact the result of stolen jokes, combined with lack of talent. Steal a joke, he says, and if your art is as bad as mine, it will end up looking nothing like the original.

Of course, it's a humour book, and he's not serious, but I found that funny, so I thought I'd point out.