Comics That Resemble The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan Album Cover

This is the iconic cover of Bob Dylan’s 1963 album The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan featuring Bob and his girlfriend Suze Rotolo:

These are some comic book illustrations that resemble the album cover:

I pulled these from the Facebook group Comics Swipes, where comics obsessives share instances of when a comic book artist references, makes homage, or sometimes just blatantly copies another artist’s work.

Here’s an example of a comic swipe:

Sometimes a swipe is just a single panel or pose.

Sometimes they copy the layout of a whole page.

And sometimes an artist will even steal from himself! These two pages from different Spider-Man comics are both by Erik Larsen:

One person in the Facebook group commented, “Deadlines are a bitch” to which Erik Larsen himself replied, “It wasn't because of a deadline crunch. I just thought it'd be fun to do.”

Sometimes people share swipes that aren’t from other comics, like in the case of the Bob Dylan album cover, or this panel from Punisher #1 (2011) and the movie Se7en:

Or these panels from Daredevil #501 and frames from, again, the movie Se7en:

Sometimes the swiped material would come from magazines.

If you’ve never seen comparisons like these before, you might be wondering how they can get away with that. Artists have always used reference material for poses, expressions, etc, and it’s generally considered fine as long as it’s not to a plagiaristic degree. But it has not always gone very well. Depending on the degree of “copying,” sometimes it is seen as lazy, or as theft. And sometimes it has resulted in legal action.

Here’s an Amy Grant album cover alongside Dr. Strange Sorcerer Supreme #15, which features an obvious reproduction of her face from the cover.

The face here is not meant to be Amy Grant, but Doctor Strange’s girlfriend in the comic. But the album cover photo was clearly used as reference material to a degree that may have gone too far in recreating the original. Amy Grant sued Marvel. She didn’t own the copyright to the original photo, but she sued them for associating her image with Dr. Strange, being that he is a practitioner of the occult and she is a Christian Music artist. She claimed that this association was damaging to her image. They settled out of court.

And speaking of settling things, it’s time I settled this edition of the Ironic Sans newsletter. Thanks as always for reading and — what? You don’t think I should end just yet without plugging my daily online quote game Gisnep that thousands of people are enjoying already, and encouraging people to share it with their friends? I’m not sure I have space left here to do that. Maybe next time.

Until then, thanks as always for reading!

David