On References (Comedy)

Homages vs Plagiarism, What's the Difference?

You'll notice that in Page 12 here of Stupendous: Super City - Arrival, a reference to Viva La Dirt League's Epic NPC Man is made. In fact, the dialogue is nearly identical to that of their muggers sketches. So would this reference, since it is taken nearly entirely from them, fall under plagiarism? They say mimicry is the sincerest form of flattery, but when is it okay to mimic or parody something, and when is it not okay. The problem, I believe, boils down to context.

In this scene, the two muggers are completely different than that of Viva La Dirt League's muggers. They use different tools, have different weapons, they are set in a different place and time period. However, that context alone is not enough to prove no plagiarism was involved.

After all, there's a pretty well known book that copied a scientific article and just plain inserted it into her novel (Shadow Bear). The context between this insertion into a novel, and my insertion of Viva La Dirt League's Dialogue into my webcomic could be considered identical. People lambasted Joan Hiatt Harlow (Author of Shadow Bear), for her blatant use of plagiarism.

I feel that the biggest difference in this case is intent. In the webtoon for this comic, I even credit Viva La Dirt League (in my author's comments down at the bottom) as inspiration. And while my dialogue is mostly the same, (it follows the same patterns with the same payoffs), there is an added bit of lore behind these muggers. For example, we know they have a goal (get home to New Zealand), and have been presumably taking shady deals to get money to achieve that goal.

The other key difference is the font. I specifically shifted to Comic Sans (compared to my normal font), to indicate when they were quoting something (more or less). It's apparent that something is different there than anything else.

Finally, there's the context that this is a parody. So far, Super City seems pretty serious, until you realize that in page 4 the main character talks about a giant monster killing people, wanders aimlessly for 4 hours looking for a building (when he can fly!), and even ridicules the name of the island and the absurdity of an island based around fighting. Roku, Obamashu (the Super City in question) is an unusual place, and just because our protagonist is more serious, doesn't mean that the comic needs to be taken seriously. This will be more apparent in further submissions.

But I leave it to you readers? Do you think this is an homage, or do you think this is plagiarism? Let me know,

Joey