he takes the original forms and images and so alters their
context that they become entirely new images.

That's what a real artist does.

*****

I really enjoyed Kirby's cut and pastes in the Fantastic Four and The Mighty Thor.  He was experimenting, expanding the form, bringing an exotic element.  Some of them are incredibly memorable.  But I gotta say, the giant ship he appropriated from 2001: A Space Odyssey and cut and pasted into an outer space background of the Thor Galactus story confused the hell out of my 13 year old brain.  I loved the awesome Thor / Galactus art, but that cut and paste took me out momentarily, wondering what in the heck that ship from earth was doing there!  Probably a case of an homage that would have been more effective had he disguised the iconic ship more and made it a swipe!

I wish we could still see the influence of the greats on many of today's artists.  I'd kill for an artist that was influenced by Marshall Rogers, Alex Toth and Joe Kubert on a Batman title

QUOTE: Here I do NOT agree.  I liked Todd's art.  I still do.  His art was dynamic and I still like his Spider-Man.  The Image guys can draw.  It is a different style, but they can draw.  Jim Lee is VERY talented;  Larsen is HUGELY talented; Portacio is likewise very good.

I thought that McFarlane's faces seemed to get uglier and uglier as his ASM run progressed.

I also didn't think that Jim Lee's work even came close in X-MEN and WILDCATS to what it was in UXM.

QUOTE: Even Rob had his moments

Such as?

Knut, I agree with your definitions. The key word is plagarism, which would be reproducing copyrighted material (tracing, in the case of comics) and passing it off as your own.

Strictly speaking, altering a drawing based on reference a certain degree avoids plagarism. Of course, the amount of change required is open to interpretation.

I don't think artists aping a specific style is swiping, but I do find it a bit sad, when done to the extreme. Shouldn't an artist derrive pride drawing as 'themself', rather than be seen as a 'clone'?

QUOTE: 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.

I think it just fits since Kang is revealed to be Rama Tut.  It just seems fitting the original sequence should be used.

Tom Scioli, from a Newsrama interview:

It's hard to explain the appeal of something that you find appealing. The world he depicts in his art is alive. It's 3-d. It moves. No one else's art does for me what Kirby's does. Everything else looks limp and flat by comparison. He found a new way of doing things. I want to follow his lead. I think he found a way of drawing that is the optimal way of drawing for sci-fi comic book epic storytelling. There isn't one aspect of his style that I'd want to ignore. 

Can't say I agree with those comments, as much as I dig Kirby's work.  Also, judging from this page, I don't know if I'd want to see any more of GØDLAND.

In my own defense, I can only say "I got better."