I have an adage I go by, and it is quite simply “Professionals Steal, Amateurs Copy” which by that I mean nothing is new or original. All you have to do is look at the Hollywood system and realize that the biggest films are merely “rebooting” old ideas.
My point to this tiny bit of brain farting is to point out that nothing, and I do mean nothing, is “new” these days. And really, how can it be? My Exhibit A in this little post are the comics below. The top one is my comic from April 29th where Jeff gets dumped at a bar. The one below is from a great webcomic called “Savage Chickens” from May 14th. Now, I have never met the creator Doug Savage, but his comic was one of the very first webcomics I ever found and have read for years. It is my opinion Doug would not openly “copy” an idea. Also, I seriously doubt he reads my comic. So, in NO WAY am I saying he copied or stole my idea. It is not Doug’s style. But the fact that we produced two similar comics within a couple weeks might lead an uninformed person to think “Hey, he ripped off 1977.” No, he did not. If he did, he stoled it, which is even better!
Again, I’m not saying Doug took my idea, but if he did, he did a wonderful job of making it his own. And that my friends is what professionals do. We take something and make it our own. As in, nothing is new. A great friend of mine who is a champion fiction writer tells me that most big movie or book ideas are sold on the basis of a description that goes like this: “It’s ‘Friends’ meets ‘Godzilla’.” And some idiot producer goes “Love it! Here’s a 100 million bucks, go make it.”
I do not openly look for ideas to copy or “steal” but I have over 50 years of TV/radio/magazine/comic book images and stories shoved up into this tiny brain of mine and how can it NOT spit something out that’s been done before? I just try to make sure if I do, then I make it my own.
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