He must have gone through lots of tracing paper. Sigh...

Geez, I didn't realize that he went to these extremes. This is just too much, considering his orignal statement stated that he didn't even read "magma" but his style is visibly manga influenced.

Homages are nice but usually they are a creative reinterpretation of someone else's work and integration into your own orignal ideas.

Le sigh

What an asshat.

MANGA fans and MANGA artists? How about an apology to ARTISTS who SACRIFICE YEARS OF THEIR LIVES creating work that lazy bastards shit on and claim as their own? I'm no Bleach/One Piece/Kiss fan, but I find this highly insulting.

Maybe he should stop being lazy and actually learn how to draw. Or even trace properly. Go smoke a bag of dicks, Nick Simmons! While you're at it, GET A LIFE.

Still a fucktard.

Aping an artists style is one thing, but I'll be damned if he didn't use a Xerox machine, scanner, and lightbox.

Damn. As someone who's done his fair share of manga inspired comics, and original character designs, I've "borrowed" things before. Like, the way you draw an ear, or a way to draw character's eyes (in general), but to blatantly rip whole panels, almost line for line, and then say it's an homage!? ...I think he needs to look up the meaning of 'homage'.

"My inspirations reflect the fact that certain fundamental imagery is common to all Manga."

Yeah, the style is pretty done to death, and frequently indistinguishable. That's what you get when you chop down a major deciduous forest to publish one fight scene in Dragonball, only to get to the "Let me show you the merchandise!" power up and three more telephone books of Goku looking pained. You have to start borrowing just to keep from drawing the same crap over and over (not that it doesn't all look similar anyway). Not that Dragonball and Bleach look that much alike, but you get the idea.

Seriously though, there is such a glut of the genre that it's not surprising that things get "borrowed" a great deal.

Meh, says I.

still looks far too similar to be a homage... I liked the fake Nick Simmons better.

Well I guess the apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

Don't forget, the man is probably being advised by lawyers NOT to admit to any wrongdoing at this time =P

Which is why I'm surprised he said anything at ALL.

Well..he apologized. I bet it will calm down some people. But if I was Kubo Tite, I'd still not feel that pleased about it. Nick should just given credit where credit was due and stop the copying.

I also don't like how they mention Gene Simmons in the synopsis of his manga. So his father is Gene..so what? He did not help in any stage of the manga. I know that they are just trying to garner attention and get people to buy the manga, but using a famous family member is just meh. I would not buy a manga of the daughter of Madonna either, unless she had something good going and did not mention her mom.

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!

...and the dungeons are the perfect place for trolls like you

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

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

So he's another Rob Liefeld in the making?

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.

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

Waste.

Of.

Space.

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

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?

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.

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.

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.

Aren't "homages" supposed to be, y'know, obvious? I mean, if you were doing an homage to, say, Akira, 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?

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

I guess Narcissism runs in the family.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissistic_personality_disorder#Diagnostic_criteria_.28DSM-IV-TR_.3D_301.81.29

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.

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.

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.

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."

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

"I am a big fan of Bleach, as well as other Manga titles."

Oh, we can tell, Nick. We can tell.

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.

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.

at least he spelled manga right this time -.-

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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)

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.

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.

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

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!

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

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.

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

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.

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...

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

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.

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".