In Plagiarism and You(Tube), Hbomb says "If you consider something so obscure you can get away with stealing it, you do not respect it." Save that line for the next time someone tries to tell you that Roy Lichtenstein brought respect to comics as art.
It's since been pointed out that while Lichtenstein did copy one of Russ Heath's drawings of an airplane getting hit, the painting depicted above was actually copied off Irv Norvick, because Lichtenstein did this so many times to so many comic artists.
In Lichtenstein's defense, he was doing this in a time when comic artists frequently weren't even credited in the issues themselves. In his condemnation, he never even tried to check, nor has he made any move to pay or credit any of the comic artists who recognized their own work later on. Rather than elevating the "low art" of comics, he was widening the gap of financial success and respect even further.
The Hbomberguy of this story is art historian David Barsalou, who has now spent decades tracking down the original art and the names of the original artists used in Lichtenstein's most famous output. Here's the full flickr gallery for the Deconstructing Roy Lichtenstein project. Frequently copied were Tony Abruzzo, Ted Galindo, Mike Sekowsky, Joe Kubert, Jerry Grandenetti, and dozens more Golden Age artists who aren't very well known in comics circles, let alone art history books. Many of them died in poverty. That's something that the Hero Initiative, mentioned in Russ Heath's comic above, aims to prevent.
Also, Lichtenstein didn't even paint Ben-Day dots. That's a specific thing.
Another throughline here: Plagarized work is lazy work, and lazy work shows through in the final product.
In a massive stroke of irony, the commercial artists he copied from display much higher classical technical skill than his enormous-scale paintings. There's a delicacy to the brushstrokes, a level of expressiveness, and a clear understanding of form and shadow in those tiny newsprint originals.
The changes Lichtenstein made often omitted or simplified backgrounds and text, used garish primary colors, and—later in his work—undressed the women in the panels. Central to his "iconoclasm" was depicting comic art as even more simplistic and culturally shallow than it already was.
Copyright law offers no help to the original creatives, freelancers on exploitative short-term contracts. Russ Heath explains, “I couldn’t do anything because all the characters that I did draw for comic books were, at that time, owned by the comic book company. So, if they want to sue, they could sue and have a legitimate reason to sue. But they wouldn’t make enough to bother having a suit.” Most of the writers ripped off by Somerton, too, were on contracts which meant they do not have the rights to their own work.
Art historians are correct that Roy Lichtenstein's work raises interesting questions about mass reproduction, parody, and the border between "commercial" and "high" art. The answers to those questions, however, are not flattering to the art world at all.
I feel like discussions over Lichtenstein are often well-intentioned, but ultimately shallow and wrong headed. I'm no fan of Lichtenstein, but I want to comment on some things, because so much context gets completely obliterated in the rush to villainize the guy.
1: Comic artists of the era almost never owned copyright to their work. Meaning that if somebody was going to have to go after Lichtenstein, it'd have to be their publisher.
2: Comic artists were rarely credited for their work by their publisher. And in some instances the artist credited wasn't the one who actually did the work (there were strips and series where all, or nearly all of the work was done by uncredited assistants).
I make the above two points because obviously a lot of the blame here falls on the comics publishers, not Lichtenstein. The industry failed to give due credit to their own artists and they failed to stand up for and protect their intellectual property.
3: As gross as it appears at a glance that Lichtenstein would get tons of money and a modicum of fame for his work, while the people he copied got a pittance from their publishers... it's really an apples and oranges situation. Lichtenstein wasn't making comic books. His work did not compete with comics he copied from. Lichtenstein wasn't stopping comic artists from making big paintings of their own work any more than comic artists were stopping Lichtenstein from becoming a comic artist. The only people who could have done that were... you guessed it: their publishers.
Further thoughts: it doesn't matter that Lichtensteins ripoffs were often more crudely rendered. He wasn't making 1 to 1 copies, he never aimed to. It's a basic point that often gets smoothed over in the rush to villainize the man and his work. If he simply wanted to make the comic panel, but bigger, a photograph and enlargement would've sufficed, but the point of his paintings isn't just "what if a comic but really big".
However, if you really want to get your blood boiling, look up Richard Prince who essentially did just that (take photos of other people's work and resell it) and (mostly) got away with it.
Edit: forgot another tangent: comics themselves are filled with absolute fuckton of plagiarism and idea stealing. But that's a story for another time.
