Marvel Used My Art Without Permission in Ultimate Comics Spider-Man #1

This happened a year ago and I never had the time to properly follow up with Marvel about this. It turned out the penciler was responsible and she felt terrible about it. I traded some emails with her. I would like to have badgered Marvel into giving some money to the Hero Intitiative for using my art without permission, but I had no life for most of 2012, so that didn’t happen. Maybe you’ll give a couple of bucks instead?

I decided to post this long-buried draft because at the end of the day, having this piece in a Marvel book is really funny (especially with a year to get over how pissed off I was about it.) Hat tip to Bob Holt for spotting this.

Check this page from Ultimate Comics Spider-Man #1:

Check out this black book page I did 20 years ago:

How about that?

For starters, I should point out that I’m almost happy since the graffiti in the background of comics is always so crappy. The letters in comics always look like either a font someone used or some art director’s idea of what graffiti is. It’s always awful. That said… it’s crappy that my art was used without my permission. I’m not hard to find and really, what would I have said if they had asked me? Who knows, but maybe it would have been something along the lines of “yeah, cool. Are you sure you want to use that piece it’s not exactly my favorite*?” Of course, I might have refused. We’ll never know since I never had any choice.

Please people, don’t take stuff of of the internet and reuse it without the artist’s permission. It’s not cool.

*As for the piece itself- it’s really not a favorite. I only have it on the net as a record of that period where SA and our friend Simon (who briefly wrote HEMP) lived on Park Drive. For us specifically, and for Boston graffiti in general, it was a prime period. There was lots of activity by lots of different people and, since it was still just a misdemeanor, people weren’t getting snatched up for depressingly long periods of time. The people we had around us were also special, which is why that roll call at the bottom is so awesome to me today. That said, it’s a half-assed black book page from 20 years ago. If you don’t know all that history (and not many people do) it’s just meh. Also: “Kevin’s Social Club” is classic.