• http://edwardprzydzial.livejournal.com/37019.html

• When I first heard about this I just saw a couple of images that had similar angles and poses. But after seeing what is posted here, this looks an awful lot like a "I'm just gonna use my favorite panels and stories from these books" and make them my own. Now...I, myself, am a published comic artist that has used "poses" done by other artists for covers. There is a lot of that done if you look closely. BUT...I drew an entirely different character and then when I signed the art I signed it "John Doe AFTER John Hancock". This aknowledges the originating artist, and lets the reader know who had the original concept for the pose and/or scene. A perfect example would be a cover from Mario Gully's Ant comic. He re-created Todd McFarlane's Spider-Man #1 cover by putting his character Ant in the same pose. But he signed it "Gully AFTER McFarlane". This is perfectly acceptable. But I would never do a story that would use panel to panel duplication. That's just lazy. Doing it in your style as "fan-art"? That's fine. Maybe he should have credited the artist and writers of Bleach for the original concept before he printed it? Oh Yeah! That would have covered his ass just fine. And then the readers would have seen the book the way he states it to be---"An homage".

• Nick Simmons is such a loser. It's not that IF he offended or upset anyone, that apology isn't good enough. He certainly offended many manga artists and fans. He should acknowledge that he did something wrong. Making money off of plagiarized work, that's unethical and shameful.

• That obviously sounds like a lawyer thought up his statement. From what i've seen nick's just a snobby kid who's pissed his dad's getting more pussy that he is. The again that's kinda of a dumb suggestion cause it must mantadory

• Wow... it looks like he basically just took the Manga and then colored it in... but just changed some of the colors around from what they would look like in the Anime... I guess he was just hoping his American readers had never heard of Bleach or something...

• I know this might come as quite the shock to you but...in America, we split up the work. It's not just one person doing everything. It's normal for people to have colorists, pencillers, inkers or whatever they're called, etc. And if you noticed, Tite Kubo hardly colors Bleach either.

• For those of you who are saying that the story line is better than bleach and you like it, then I suggest you make your way over to white wolf's web site and thank them. Thats right boys and girls, his concept wasn't even original, he lifted it from Vampire the Masquerade. So sum up so far, he cant draw his own comic, has to steal from other artist ( including people who are unpublished and basicly helpless) He cant think of his own concept has to go to a table top RPG ( He claims that he wanted to do a vampire book but it was over done so he came up with this cool Revanent idea.) Hires someone else to ink and color. So... what has he "created" oh yeah JACK and SH*T. Fan art is exactly that made by FANS who give due credit to the original artist. That is homage. Stealing is when you take ideas concepts and art from someone else them proceed to go out and claim how awesome you are and that you thought this up all by yourself. To those defending him by bringing up fan art, learn the difference.

• His father disowned him, actually.

• yes and he claimed it as his passion... You don't cheat on something you call your passion, do you? unless passion= just another hobby, I was ok with him using his dad's name it just showed how much he loved comics I guess, but the blatant art theft with his passion claim really pissed me off, and I bet some others too D:

• I did not say that Nick colored I just said that it looked better cause it was colored. I'm not dissing on Kubo's work. His art is good which most likely made Nick copy it, which was his downfall and he was an idiot for doing so. (btw, even if you draw in photoshop it's still by hand idiot, it just means it was drawn with a pencil)

• Actually, no. He CAN'T draw. If you look at the comic you'll see that the traced panels are quite good-looking... at least in comparison to the original stuff. The non-traced stuff is nowhere NEAR the professional level. the anatomy is all off, the lineart is bad and emotionless, it's all really quite pathetic. He should NOT be publishing a graphic novel at the stage he's at.

• Kylara from the Bleachness post. I would just like to deliver a LMAO to you --- I greatly enjoyed that.

• His 'looks better' because it was done in photoshop and Kubo-sensei draws all his shit by hand old-style. Also, the coloring makes a big differance, which nick DID NOT DO. He hired a colorist.

• He used his father's name to promote this crap, so he should also suck it up when the famous dad gets him wanked off the planet for getting caught. He should have known better, but being in the lime-light already means he should have known better MORE.

• LOL. When Kiss was formed there was quote from one of the band members that said "If ONE Alice Cooper can become so famous, imagine FOUR Alice Coopers!" The douchery is in the blood with this pile of FAIL.

• Someone on bleachness did the math and actually one out of every 3 frames is copied or stolen from some other artist. There are about 20-odd examples of such in the bleachness post on LJ, and in the comments. More are being found all the time, when you go through his DA faves. http://img16.imageshack.us/img16/5403/incarnateanothercopy.jpg I write fanfiction, (sad I know) and I do 'homage' all the time... But I credit the original artist and disclaim any and all ownership of the characters and plot pieces that aren't mine.

• If Nick Simmons didn't have a rich and famous dad, nobody would give a shit about this. If some unknown schmuck in Toledo was caught doing this, would there be facebook pages, boycotts, lawsuit threats and demands for public apologies? No. Nerds would talk shit about them on blogs, they'd be written off as a hack and no one would buy their comics. But when it's a rich kid who's perceived as never having had to work for anything in his life, the shitstorm explodes. There's a distasteful stink of envy to this whole thing.

• Look, People have been copying Art/Writing since comics and manga have come to existence, it isnt anything new, just this time someone was caught, seeing as he went a little over the top with it, but still, this doesnt make him a horrible person, it means he made a dumb ass choice tying to make a buck easily, alot of people have done dumb shit in there life. I dont Respect him using art/writing he doesnt own, but i do respect the fact that he at least kinda admitted to it....notice i said kinda since he did kinda play dumb in the statement, still, look at other manga and other comics, tons of artists use a form of other peoples art.

• "Homage" is often the word that plagiarists use to justify their plagiarism.

• Thank you! You've just helped me explain plagiarism to a 10th grade class. Kudos to you and Nick Simmons for making plagiarism a fun topic once again!

• Thought he didnt know what bleach was or what a manga is? Liein ass....i dont by this shyt for a second i really wanna see Tite to get involved

• The point is not which one fucking looks better. You have to be completely and utterly daft not to recognize that as plagiarism. Some of the characters have unique features (like Kenpachi and Orihime) which are almost exactly replicated both in position and in form. That is PLAGIARISM. And I don't understand the bitching regarding Bleach. An unoriginal manga? The Soul Society arc had arguably the biggest twist I've ever seen in any comic book/manga I've ever read.

• I'd believe his apology more if the art was merely similar (i.e. it looked like Kubo's a bit, but with some Nick Simmons pizzaz) but it looks like he completely traced and that is not cool at all.

• Personally, I think that Nick Simmon's manga story looks a whole lot cooler than that of Bleach. I will admit I am really beginning to hate Bleach for various reasons. (Mainly the story is getting boring and it takes forever to get to a point, for example 100 chapters to get Orihime back maybe even more I didn't want to count, and now that stupid battle keeps going on and on and on, just kill that Fucking Aizen already) I think that in some ways the art is better than Bleach (but that could be just because it's colored) but the story looks better from what I've seen. Though I will admit it was not a good idea to copy Tite Kubo's work, since it is extremely popular. He should have come up with his own style of art that would have been all his and then all this would have never happened and he might have gotten some fans. (Though I do admit I love how he responds)

• Naw, if you look at Nick's DeviantART page in his comments it's pretty clear Nick himself has a distorted concept relating to art. http://images.encyclopediadramatica.com/images/thumb/2/21/CONVO_WITH_NICK.jpg/615px-CONVO_WITH_NICK.jpg

• Remixing? Geesh, people will explain things away using any nonsense. No when you use someone elses work in place of original work that is COPYING. Here's a good test. Remove all the stuff he remixed, homaged, whatever the hell apologists want to call it and just leave the stuff he created from scratch and see how much is actually left.

• I know people are probably going to shoot me for this but I think that the story Nick Simmons is presenting LOOKS much better then Bleach (Story not art because as you have shown us its pretty much the same), Granted I've never really liked Bleach, and I've always like Blond hair more than orange, but that's my personal opinion. Not that I think copying another's work is alright because it isn't. No matter how stupid and long, and slow moving a manga is it still belongs to the mangaka, art and all.

• While it's obvious he admits what's going on here, those poses are industry standard. You can see them in just about every manga illustrated in the last 20 years.

• When I was a kid I used to love copying my comics. I could draw well enough but lacked creativity so I'd copy entire comic books for fun. I didn't know you could make a living doing that shit. Geez.

• I think that what he actually is doing is remixing. Kind of what Girltalk does with music. Whether it's plagiarizing or creating something new in the process will be left for debate, but I don't see it degrading the art. Hopefully he's learning to draw in the process and then eventually create something unique.

• this guy has as much talent as rob liefeld...yeah i said it.

• I will again reiterate, that while he light-boxed out his ass on this, I highly doubt anyone has a criminal case against this man. It was a total douche move, but he did at least change the imagery enough to not make it straight tracing, even if it is only in the color stage. And let's be honest, comic artists have been lifting other people's panel designs for decades. Go read some stories about Bob Kane's Batman folks.

• at least he spelled manga right this time -.-

• Please be a girl Cowboy Johnny cause i love you

• This may be unrelated, to the actual article, but I have to say that the trailer for "Repo Men" physically hurt the first time I saw it- because I love musicals and I really want the sequels to Repo! The Genetic Opera. I'm pretty sure I'm not going to get them anymore due to the "major motion picture" release of that ripped off garbage. Fuck that movie. And fuck all of these damn ripoffs. The genre may have its generic traits, but he clearly used a lightbox here. And he'll get away with it, too. Scooby Doo doesn't save the day in real life.

• Douchey update: Nick Simmons signed on to his DeviantArt account and has been removing from his favourites page the work of DA artists that were copied. I suppose he's attempting to erase any proof that he had seen them.

• Well, as long as you hate *everything*, I guess your opinion is both studied and valid. Oh, wait, no it isn't. FWIW I hate discussing things on internet forums, blogs,and bulletin boards and I will NEVER talk about nerd issues on TR.

• Don't believe everything you read on Wikipedia. The "creators" of Repo Men saw the ten minute play. This film has been in the can for a while now, and they hoped they could just pass it out as original.....they can't. These guys are the cinematical version of Nick Simmons, they traced a whole original concept play and movie to make their "vision".

• I personally find Bleach to be dull and unoriginal as well. But I still find it troubling that it looks as if he essentially traced characters and then went ahead and stole dialogue while he was at it. So, no, I don't like Bleach and I think it and series like it are making it more and more difficult to find decent series out there, but the artist/author still deserves more respect than that.

• at Least Nick said that in his words some of his art is similar to his influences. for if one thought he was actully going to come out and say yes he copied straight from the stuff that influenced him. one will have to change their thinking for Nick is not going to admit something like that given the Legal mess he could be in doing so. besides he has already lost his cred now with this mess not to mention will find it hard to get any future comic work and RAdical their rep is tarnished because of this no winners in this mess.

• "I am a big fan of Bleach, as well as other Manga titles." Oh, we can tell, Nick. We can tell.

• What if Simmons IS, in fact, a fucktard? I mean, consider his parentage. Wouldn't we all feel pretty bad about our snide criticism if it turns out that Simmons is intellectually INCAPABLE of recognizing his blatant theft and compulsive lying? Shame on US, in that case. But...I'm gonna have to see a doctor's note. Until then, his fucktardation is strictly metaphorical.

• He's manga's version of Timbaland, eh?

• That's kind of a fuzzy area. According to Wikipedia, the writers of Repo Men first started on the screenplay around 2003. (The screenplay was based on a novel that was written by one of the screenwriters but not published until 2009.) While it's true that both "The Necro-Merchant's Debt" and the stage version of Repo! were in existence by that point, they were both pretty obscure. I find it believable that Repo Men (or, more accurately, the novel Repossession Mambo) is not a rip-off but a story that coincidentally has a similar idea.

• Radical, the comic's publisher, has already suspended all production...not really a manga fan, but I certainly won't miss any of the crappy artwork.

• There's also the fact that Nick's version looks slightly clumsier than the original Bleach panels. Notice the slightly oversized hand over his character's face as opposed to Ichigo's, as well as the loss of the slight tilt of the face on his the last panel. I'd say the most egregious example is the panel with the character clutching his chest, which otherwise doesn't look too much like the Bleach parallel, except for the fact that the only unique part of it is some terrible, terrible foreshortening of the arm. As an artist he clearly lacks his own sense of subtlety, which while Bleach, not being the most artistically groundbreaking manga, still has. Also, Ol' Big Daddy Gene paid Jo Chen to do the cover when he didn't do it himself. Shows what got him the deal in the first place.

• Screw that, just do a gritty remake of "Spaceballs".

• Wow I didn't know 'homage' and 'tracing' were synonyms. You learn something new every day

• I'd have a lot of sympathy if it was like, one or two frames, because, ya, there's a lot of similarities in the way things are drawn, particularly in a certain style. But this is well, well beyond what could have just been coincidence. And usually if something is meant as an homage, there's subtle signs an artist puts in to let you know.

• I don't know what's worse.....this or Repo Men ripping off REPO! The Genetic Opera.

• "Curse you, Cowboy Johnny" might just be my favorite reaction in the history of ever. I think I'm going to homage it very soon.

• hahah, he didn't even color it. he had a colorist. all he did was pencil. unoriginal talentless bastard :c

• Yeah, I second that: he'd indeed make a good politician

• Pfft... all manga looks exactly the same to me. I think they just reuse it all.

• So the word homage means theft now? Great. I'm gonna go homage me some DVDs from Best Buy. "What? No officer. I wasn't stealing! I was HOMAGING! Gene Simmons' dipshit son says so."

• Yes.

• honestly never read bleach , but I am an Battle angel Alita fan and I pretty sure i recognize just about every panel shown from that manga so yeah I kinda buy the whole "My inspirations reflect the fact that certain fundamental imagery is common to all Manga" bit.

• I gotta admit that it broke my heart when I discovered Mack was tracing. I still got autographed posters of his up in my room. Can't bring myself to take them down. Then again Land was disappointing as I liked his work a while back.

• So if I pay homage to Kiss by doing a recording of some of their songs and give no credit to them at all and say that I created "God Gave Rock & Roll to Me" myself, Nick's dad won't mind? I mean it's just a homage. Oh and I never bought the Kiss album, just downloaded it on a torrent and then sampled it into my own version of the song. Cause you know there's just fundamental lyrics to all rock and roll, right? Also if you download my stuff and steal my songs I expect you to pay. In cash. Spank you very much.

• You know what? Fuck if I care. There are enough changes to warrant that this isn't direct plagiarism, and his lines are clean and look better than the Bleach manga. Japan comics fuckin' steal from one another all the damn time, so eat dog shit. FWIW, I hate Bleach, manga, comics, and will never read Incarnate.

• Him and David Mack. How do they get to keep their jobs through all the scrutiny?

• If you look at the linked source, you'll see that those aren't the only copied frames. It goes on for ever. That and he obviously copied the plot and scenarios to match the stolen art, so basically what he has on his hands is a Bleach palette swap with slightly clumsier writing.

• mind you if he was a graffiti writer heed have had his fucking fingers broken by now

• I guess Narcissism runs in the family. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissistic_personality_disorder#Diagnostic_criteria_.28DSM-IV-TR_.3D_301.81.29

• It doesn't matter how much he apologizes for what he did the bottom line is he still did it. He obviously didn't care when he did it and doesn't care now or he would have come up with a better excuse. I'm just waiting for huge man boobs and pouches to show up on his charecters then we can put him in his place.

• Ol' Gene couldn't give a shit as long as it sells.

• what a berk, he was never gunna get away with that, hopefully he would have learned his lessons, and come up with some of his own shit, the hole manga style is pretty done anyway, and western artists never really get it right, it always looks derivative of summit else anyway

• Wow, I guess every generation needs a Rob Liefeld. They should get together and make a Levis commercial. Douchebags.

• Ok, just to play devil's advocate for a, Uh, Moment. I'm not condoning what he's done at all, but correct me if I'm wrong here. A standard comic book is 32 pages comprised of multiple panels on each page, right? So let's say the standard issue has 4 or 5 panels per page. That's about 128 panels in an average comic. Granted, this guy has flat out, Uh, Thieved, a lot of other artist's work, but I'm also assuming that not every single, uh square, in every single issue is stolen. He has to have some original work in there too, right? It's not like he doesn't have any talent at all. The guy can draw. It's a shame he's decided to copy others so blatantly, but maybe this incident will force him to be more original. What? What's wrong?

• I'm doing my own homage. I'm starting a band where me and three of my friends all paint our faces. We'll call it SMOOCH

• wow.... i knew this was bad but not THIS bad! now i haven't been interested in "Breech" in a long time, but there is no excuse for this amount of fail and douchebaggery. i'm an artist, and this disgust me to no end. i hope that waste of human flesh rots in hell or something worst. Gene Simmons ought to be disappointed that his wife didn't swallow that night instead of conceiving his fail of a son.

• Paying homage is just as bad as flat our light-tabling an image. Nick Simmons obviously traced his art but any artist who claims to be "paying homage" is saying, "I'm uncreative and have no original ideas of my own at this time." The best thing in the world would be for Simmons to say, "Yep. I traced that comic. I got lazy and you caught me. Big whoop. I don't care what you think because my dad's a millionaire and I do what I want. It's not like this stupid little manga book I do keeps me from living in a cardboard box." I can respect HONEST douchebaggery.

• I bet ol Gene is whipping his ass for such douchebaggery. Insert Gene walking into the room in full kiss attire swinging his battle ax bass.

• As of 12:30p EST it was still available. I just hope whoever takes it just lets you buy a damn t-shirt instead of making you spend your nights laying awake trying to think of the of the "perfect" Joss Wheden fellatio haiku in the slim chance that you might MAYBE win one.

• Couldn't have said it better. Exactly.

• It probably would have helped if I'd actually read the full post. Oh well.

• Ah, then I'm no longer torn apart.

• his dictionary defines 'homage' differently...

• Aren't "homages" supposed to be, y'know, obvious? I mean, if you were doing an homage to, say, <i>Akira</i>, you might have a couple of guys shouting each other's names while blasting each other with lasers in a junkyard, not copying certain second-unit shots inside a bar?

• Hehehehe. I give it less than 12 hours before someone has snagged the URL for ToplessGobot and starts posting stuff on there.

• Look at that last panel. Just... look at it. Slapping some colour and a giant scar on a face does not a new character make.

• I've been reading manga since the '80s, back when it was hard to get over here, and far too expensive. You have to admit that not everyone is Go Nagai, or Katsuhiro Otomo, or Goseki Kojima, or Shirow Masamune, or several others. The truth is that (and this is exactly like the TV or film industry) that the vast majority of the genre is filled with unoriginal drivel. Sure there are some gems, and they're great, but they are rare. Bleach doesn't strike me as terribly visually ground breaking or distinct (despite it's popularity), and an American knock-off artist copying it is just a sad commentary on the ubiquitousness of the style it employs. There's such a huge amount to choose from these days that you would think he'd have been smart enough to steal from something relatively obscure, but instead he felt confident enough blatantly rip-off an incredibly popular title, in the hopes that it would just blend in. In essence, this just validates my opinion in this matter: If it's so common that someone thinks they can blatantly steal it, then the commonality is itself a problem. I understand if you disagree, but that's just how I see it. Not trying to start a flame war, just expressing my feelings on the matter.

• Ok, just to play devil's advocate for a second. I'm not condoning what he's done at all, but correct me if I'm wrong here. A standard comic book is 32 pages comprised of multiple panels on each page, right? So let's say the standard issue has 4 or 5 panels per page. That's about 128 panels in an average comic. Granted, this guy has flat out stolen a lot of other artist's work, but I'm also assuming that not every single panel in every single issue is stolen. He has to have some original work in there too, right? It's not like he doesn't have any talent at all. The guy can draw. It's a shame he's decided to copy others so blatantly, but maybe this incident will force him to be more original.

• he's a flipping rip off.. Has any one seen any of his comics? The whole thing is riddled with other ppls work! All he did was trace and color...im a manga artist too thoug a good one but I would never trace and copy my fave manga..most artists I know pay homage by making similar characters or poking fun about the manga or anime...not tracing and coloring..and it is a big deal if some one copies something the idea is not there own no creativity just boy using his daddy's money to most artist copying someones work isn't cool I'd be piss if thatt happen to me all the hard work how long it took me to draw something and the hours it took for me to come up with ideas for something I made..then have some one come and make it there own..what a loser!

• Curse you Cowboy Johnny. Same idea, better executed. And you didn't have as much typing to do. Sigh.

• hmm....homage. I am currently writing a story myself. Its a "homage" to a movie I saw when I was a kid. I'm sure no one else saw it. In it there used to be a bunch of mystical powered super-knights who used energy swords to fight evil but they were all killed after this dark event called The Copy Cat Wars. Only one of them survived on a desert..er...frozen ice planet where he watched over the last hope of these knights...a young man named...um....Yuke. Yuke Cloudstrider. Think anyone will object?

• I don't see what the big deal is. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. If you're interested, I've written an article on the matter on my blog - ToplessGobot.com Sincerely, Bob Rricken

• Thanks for clearing that up.

• Waste. Of. Space.

• Wow! That speaks for itself. His name and his work are forever tarnished to me. SHAME!

• I would understand this opinion if you've only been exposed to these few titles, but there are genres, upon genres, within genres of manga that, while they may share similarities with closely related titles (such as the topical category of BL manga, or anything published in the same magazine, i.e. Shonen Jump, Ciao,) certainly don't have similarities with every and all other manga. It's like if you watched nothing but summer blockbuster films and claimed that the art of film making is trite and one-dimensional. It might seem that way if you're comparing Transformers to Terminator, but my God, man, what does that have to do with The Young Victoria?

• He apologized for upsetting people, not for flat out copying when the evidence is right there. He'd be a great politician

• It stops being a homage when you do it multiple times. There's only so many issues of Incarnate, but so many frames are literal tracings. Shame on you Simmons.

• So he's another Rob Liefeld in the making?

• I hope his father sticks a dragon boot up Nick's ass for this.

• The "Magma" post was by a Facebook Troll... This is his only statement on the subject.

• The first dude wasn't really him.

• Agreed. Greg Land is a hack.

• Dude, he's no worse than Greg Land. Just be thankful he isn't nearly as popular.

• Nick Simmons: "I never even heard of Bleach! Who would name a comic after laundry detergent?" Also Nick Simmons: "I am a big fan of Bleach, as well as other Manga titles." I don't know what to believe anymore! You're tearing me apart Nick!

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