| Posted: 28 May 2012 at 1:31pm | IP Logged | 3
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JB wrote:
| If you "footnote" the source somewhere in the story, it's NOT plagiarism? |
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I'm going to read 'Voyage to Arcturus', partly to see just how closely the two works mirror each other, and partly because it sounds like it falls right in my sweet spot by all descriptions. Based on other's analysis of the original book, the physical/spiritual journey metaphor structure is the same, but that's a wide enough thematic area that 'plagarism' would be too specific - not to mention pejorative - a term to describe what Moore was doing in Promethea.
If anything, what Moore is most frequently guilty of is the dreaded pastiche, which has rendered the last three volumes of 'League of Extraordinary Gentlemen' inert and interminable. 'Lost Girls' could perhaps also fall into this description, but I'm not sure how much of that is the writing and how much is the art, which is pretty and colorful but about as sexy as an old Playboy pictorial redone as a Paint with Water coloring book.
'Lost Girls' is obviously the hinge on which most of Moore's moral argument falls apart, because it's pretty clear that there's a distinction between legally and with permission taking someone else's superhero characters and putting them through a grittier adventure then they had previously been involved with and making a coffee table tijuana bible out of them humping their way through pre-war Europe. It's not plagiarism, per se, but it's also not a glass house I'd want to be living in if I wanted to prevent others from writing characters that I created, or at least felt I created.
It should be noted that when pressed on this issue - particularly with 'Lost Girls' and 'League,' he argues that either the original authors are long dead or the characters are public domain. Which is all fine and good, except for the fact that goddamn Voldemort turns up in the most recent 'League' volume, as a sort of hippie quasi-rapist, which I'm not sure is just irony-free blindness on Moore's part, or an actual 'come and get me' kind of swing against Warner/DC. In either case, I'm sure JK Rowling would be thrilled by the portrayal.
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