ROBIN SNYDER'S THE COMICS! -- PART III

L to R: Dave Sim, Kyla Nicolle, Stoo Metz, Eddie Khanna

Glamourpuss #25 (May 2012)

Art by Dave Sim

DAVE SIM:
Tom Peirce further criticized my use of fashion photos without attribution.

It's quite difficult to attribute fashion photos because most fashion magazines don't.  As far as I can see Supermodels become Supermodels because -- despite the fact that fashion magazines won't print the models' names -- SOME of them become world famous.  MOST of the time, what you are looking at is someone who is going to get eaten up and spit out when she hits the mid-twenties threshold.  Her name doesn't become known so she just disappears: model, not Supermodel.

Also, I think there's  a sense of Perspective that's required.  Fashion magazines are very much disposable culture.  The moment the magazine appears, whatever fashions are depicted are "yesterday's potatoes".  At the High End of fashion (rock starlets, actresses, princesses) it's taken as a given that you will only wear a $2,000 outfit ONCE in public.  That's about as disposable as you can get.

So, to me, doing glamourpuss, it was a matter of basically taking what Conde Nast considered "the trash" and making use of it by skimming their fashion magazines for Al Williamson girls/outfits and Alex Raymond girls/outfits.  No one who was reading glamourpuss was concerned -- or even aware -- that the fashions  were literally "SO six months ago".

On the only occasion that I worked WITH a photographer and model -- Stoo Metz and Kayla on the second last issue -- I set up a deal with them where we EACH owned what we were doing and we EACH could use what the other had done without asking permission.  Stoo could use the Zootanapuss/ glamourpuss strips featuring his pictures of Kayla for anything he wanted.  Kayla could use the photos and strips for anything she wanted.  And I could use Stoo's photos of Kayla for anything I wanted.

So, in my own defence, I was developing a "Creator's Rights" angle to glamourpuss.  Unfortunately, by the time that I actually met a photographer who was interested in working with me, gp was no longer viable.

It was funny reading READS.  I had forgotten the part where Victor Reid suggests to Beth that she should get a share of M. Zulli's royalties because models were important.  These things tend to arrive in the creative zeitgeist and get processed as fiction before they incarnate as Real World things.

So, I don't think I have very much -- if anything -- to apologize for when it comes to "utilizing" photos in fashion magazines.

But, I can certainly understand why Tom would think that I did.