A bit of a fuss — much more than is warranted — is being made over that New Yorker cartoon that was based on an old Jack Kirby drawing. As you may recall, (we mentioned it here) cartoonist Harry Bliss did a drawing that readers were invited to caption. He used a monster from an old issue of Tales to Astonish and a number of folks recognized it and, as reported in this newspaper article, are expressing some level of outrage.
I cannot speak for Mr. Kirby but I seriously doubt Jack would have considered this to be plagiarism. It's one drawing put into a new, funny context. It's also an obvious and famous drawing (I included it in my book) and it's not like Mr. Bliss could have expected everyone would have thought it was his design. The joke in the visual is that it contrasts so totally with his own style.
On the other hand, I think someone at the New Yorker is guilty of a bit of bad sportsmanship. Readers were invited to submit captions for the Bliss cartoon and quite a few entrants wrote to me that they'd submitted lines like, "What's that? You say you're the lawyer for the Jack Kirby estate?" Someone at the magazine must have noticed the name of Kirby popping up in many entries…and if they didn't know who that was or get the connection, they should have researched it and found out. Then they should have realized that one of the Kirby reference submissions would have been funnier than any of those they picked, and it would have carried Bliss's joke to a logical, honest punchline. So that's where I think the "wrong" lies…and let's be honest. It's a pretty trivial "wrong."