When I was 11 or 12 I started to look at comics and try to draw exactly what I saw and as I got older I realized that it was a form of stealing so tried to learn how to draw the right way. That is what I always thought swiping was but I keep seeing that term on various web sites and I'm getting confused.

What is a swipe? Is it taking a photo and tracing over it, changing a few things and selling it as an original work? Or is it looking at somebody's art and doing the same thing? Wouldn't it still be a swipe if you did it freehand but using somebody else's artwork as reference? 

I ask because when I draw a picture of an animal I use photo references and then freehand while going through the structure and finally produce a finished picture. I never considered that a swipe, I considered it using photo references. Am I out to lunch? One of the pages I saw claimed the Superman on Wizard this month was a swipe but it looked like a photo reference rather than a trace, again I guess I'm just confused.

I could see a problem if you traced or light boxed or whatever but when did it become stealing to use a photo for reference?

The Superman image is Neal Adams.  Don't know did the non-attributed and inferior swipe.

Swipe = not just tracing, but copying a pose or a picture, even if you make changes. Any recreation of art is a swipe...technically even if its done by the original artist.

Greg Land is an artist who swipes a lot, apparently. He copied (and I mean traced) a picture of Spider-Man by another artist and just changed the position of one of his arms, and he uses photo-referencing a lot. I've heard of other accusations but those are the only two I know for sure are confirmed legit.

*edit* Nathan, that pose has been swiped TONS of times, and the first picture isn't even the original example - its a swipe, too. I believe the original was on the cover of a Sci-Fi comic in the forties.

nathan i'm suprised you didn't include the cover to Crisis on Infinate Earths #7as another example

Or....

Or....