I wonder if I can get an honest opinion from the forum on the example below:

My honest opinion?  I would say homage (and not because this is JB's board) because it depicts the same circumstances and characters as the original, even some of the same text.  It is using the sequence for effect and as part of a bigger revelation (which is expanded on in AVENGERS #269).  There is also one panel in the newer page that is not taken from the older one. 

I would say the same for those instances where the origin of the FF is retold and the layouts in the original issue is used in the newer issue.  The artist prefers the older layouts because they work better at invoking the classic feel of the older stories than his own layouts would. 

That's my take on it, anyway.

QUOTE: Unless there has been a recent change in Rude's work, of which I am unaware, I don't see hims as "aping" Kirby. Like Simonson, Mignola, or me when I am doing something like the Fourth World, Rude goes for the same dynamics as Kirby, without mimicking the line or form. And therein likes the difference!

Well said.

OK, I get that the photos in the collage might give rise to another meaning and their juxtaposition created this artistically ... but the photos, as source building material, existed and Kirby didn't create them. Someone had to create them to make the collage possible.

Say that, instead of pictures, Kirby has used some else's line art in the same way: that would still be a collage, wouldn't it? Would he not then have had to credit the source material?

QUOTE: The artist on the right did not draw funny mustaches and pass it off as an X-Force story.

Good way to summarize it one sentence.

I dunno what was going on in JB's head when he drew that particular sequence. I LOVED IT, but I also felt it was unneccessary since it didn't really add to what Kirby had drawn before and followed in too closely ... in fact, the first panel actually subtracts some of the Kirby detail. (this might have been because of the greater detail afforded by the pre-1968 art-board size)

My impression is that the decision to draw so close to Kirby was to "legitimize" the twist about the time traveller: kind of like saying, "Wait, wait, you missed this before! It was always written between the lines!" If this is so, it was very neatly done.

"Personally I dont think of rubble with JB"

Heretic!!

What made/makes Kirby, Eisner, Kurtzman, Sterenko, Adams, Byrne, Simonson and a handful of others such great artists was how they innovated. They expanded the size of the canvas and showed up just how much more could be done with it.

It's like the difference between when Aeschines spoke (the people said "How well he spoke.") and when Demonstenes spoke (the people said "Let's march!") There are a lot of artists whose work I enjoy and find pleasing. And then there are that rare handful of others who knock me off my feet.

When an artist swipes as a shortcut -- not to faithfully reproduce a flashback, not to have fun with an iconic image, but just in an effort to churn the work out a little faster -- we as consumers are cheated by not seeing that artist's solution to a storytelling problem. And that artist is cheating himself, because he just might find his artistic voice through such an effort.

I just had a thought for a new thread: Artistis who swipe AND whose books are late: How lazy do you have to be?

I see Toth in this Rude sketch as well.  The man is very talented, and may be influenced by Kirby and Toth, but he has his own style(whcih I love by the way)