Robert Spina writes…
I couldn't help but notice you expressed no opinion of the "rightness" or "wrongness" of how Lichtenstein made his living. Or if "right" and "wrong" even apply here. It has always bothered me that Lichtenstein seemingly made his greatest fortune on the backs of some of the most talented, yet underpaid and under-represented artists in the field we hold so dear.
It bothers me, too. I should have made that clear. There was some degree of plagiarism in there in the sense of passing off someone else's work as your own. Lichtenstein did have the idea of enlarging comic book panels that way, and he worked out a way to replicate the dot patterns via (I believe) some sort of template. But otherwise what he was selling was the artistry of Mssrs. Romita, Heath, Colan, etc. He was hardly the only one to crib their work and his exploitation doesn't bother me as much as some of what their immediate employers did. But yeah, I thought it was wrong. I also thought that if you'd paid John Romita to do a comic book panel that size, you'd have gotten a much better painting for about a tenth the money.