Wikipedia tells us, "Swipe is a comics term that refers to the intentional copying of a cover, panel, or page from an earlier comic book or graphic novel without crediting the original artist."
Photographs can be "swiped," too. And we may expect that, in the heyday of Henry Luce's illustrated magazine Life, its superb photos and graphics might commonly have been found in any comics artist’s reference files. Let me show you an interesting example.
In Issue 1 of the 1958 revival of the war comic book Atom Age Combat, we find a feature entitled “I, SAGE…” The Semi-Automatic Ground Environment, robot sentry of the Cold War skies, narrates. It’s pretty effective non-fiction.
(SAGE is interesting to students of computer science as an early example of a complex system using computers to process real-time information. Some SAGE consoles are preserved at such places as the Computer History Museum.)
Question: How many of Andreas Feininger's photos in Life‘s six-page spread in the February 11, 1957 issue, namely “Pushbutton Defense for Air War,” have been swiped by the artist drawing “I, SAGE…?”
Answer: All of them, save one.
The uncredited artist even lifts some elements, like a radar dome, from the Life diagram of SAGE prepared by Matt Greene and Jerry Cooke.
One wonders how many of the other panels in the story were also swipes from sources we have not detected.
It seem strange that the artist did not swipe J.R. Eyerman's spectacular photo of an F-102 Delta Dagger unleashing fiery missiles-- one can imagine a young George W. Bush at the controls-- given that the SAGE story includes several panels of F-102s in combat. In addition, there is a single-page profile of the F-102 later in the book.



April 23 2013, 23:35:30 UTC 7 years ago Edited: April 24 2013, 00:56:41 UTC
How closely does a drawing have to follow a reference photo to become a swipe? These definitely appears to cross the line.
April 24 2013, 23:43:27 UTC 7 years ago
Google up "comics swipe" or a similar string and find sites which collect swipes in the wild.
April 23 2013, 23:53:04 UTC 7 years ago
http://sturgeon.css.psu.edu/~mloewen/Q7/
April 24 2013, 04:55:26 UTC 7 years ago
Still I had no idea those were parts of SAGE!
I'm going to have fun exploring that site.
The AN/FSQ-7 appears to be the Model T or DC-3 of TV computer props! I wonder how some components wound up on TV as early as 1966, while their sisters were presumably still protecting the nation from Soviet bombers.
April 24 2013, 06:22:21 UTC 7 years ago
The oddest thing I ever saw as set dressing was a submarine TDC in a 2008 episode of Dr Who... One of these days I've got to dig around and see when the Brits abandoned the TDC.
Anonymous
April 24 2013, 11:37:45 UTC 7 years ago
April 24 2013, 11:00:16 UTC 7 years ago
April 24 2013, 14:31:49 UTC 7 years ago
7 years ago
April 24 2013, 01:36:59 UTC 7 years ago
Love, C.
April 24 2013, 02:23:53 UTC 7 years ago
Clothing had been added, however.
April 25 2013, 21:09:07 UTC 7 years ago
How did this feature wind up in a comic in the first place? Was this a whim of the editor, or the result of a government PR campaign?
April 25 2013, 23:00:18 UTC 7 years ago Edited: April 25 2013, 23:02:03 UTC
In my opinion, there's a difference between "using magazine photos as a reference" and "slavishly duplicating the exact composition of six photos" with a side order of "copying another artist's graphic of a radome, complete with shading." Do you agree?
Is there a writer credit?
Not that I have found.
How did this feature wind up in a comic in the first place?
Atom Age Combat was a war comic devoted to World War III. The first feature in the book (pages 1 to 3, or 4 to 6 of the scanned pages, right after the ad for Uncle Milton's Ant Farm) is essentially an editorial prospectus: In practice, this meant World-War-II-type stories, with more helicopters, more missiles, and more mushroom clouds.
It's interesting to see the editors' strict stipulation of limited thermonuclear battle, as though they were running a think tank.
Also note: Whoever lettered page 3 could spell "ingenious;" whoever lettered page 24 could not.
I don't know why so many of the comic's pages are didactic. There is a one-page feature about the DEW Line on page 31, as well as the aforementioned SAGE and F-102 pieces.
I have one more thing to say about atomic-combat comics, but I'll communicate it to you by e-mail.
April 25 2013, 23:49:16 UTC 7 years ago
I hope someday I can write an introduction that includes the phrase "KA-VOOOOM!" Maybe I can work it into the SCADA cyber security brochure open in my neglected word processor window as I type this. Hey, it's only Draft #1, why not?
I remember Uncle Milton's Ant Farm. Did they ever offer a model with mushroom clouds on the horizon? That'd be keen.
April 26 2013, 03:04:11 UTC 7 years ago
May 1 2013, 20:47:57 UTC 7 years ago