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Was Roy Lichtenstein the Ultimate Plagiarist?

Was Roy Lichtenstein the ultimate art-world plagiarist? When his comic-inspired paintings and prints debuted in the 1960s, comic book fans might have felt a jolt of recognition – and not always in a flattering way.

Those dramatic scenes of fighter jets and teary-eyed romance heroines looked awfully familiar. In fact, many of Lichtenstein’s Pop Art masterpieces weren’t invented by the artist himself – they were directly appropriated from actual comic book strips drawn by artists like Irv Novick, Tony Abruzzo, and Jack Kirby. Lichtenstein’s use of comic imagery raised immediate questions about authorship and originality – a tension at the core of the Pop genre itself.

Lichtenstein's signature style involved blowing up comic strip panels onto large canvases, replicating their bold lines and Ben-Day dot shading. Most of his best-known works are relatively close copies of original comic book art – often with only minor changes in colour, scale, or composition. The original comic artists, who rarely received any credit or royalties for their work, effectively provided Lichtenstein’s source material.

To ground this in specifics, let’s look at a few notable comic-to-canvas transformations in Lichtenstein's work:

Whaam! of 1963 is one of Lichtenstein’s most famous works, depicting a fighter jet firing a rocket and a fiery explosion emblazoned with the onomatopoeic “WHAAM!”. Lichtenstein adapted this dramatic scene from a 1962 DC war comic panel illustrated by Irv Novick. The general layout came from Novick’s panel in All-American Men of War #89, titled Star Jockey, while another detail – the aircraft itself – was drawn from a Jerry Grandenetti panel. Lichtenstein’s version is nearly identical in subject, though greatly enlarged and stylised for the purpose of his composition.

Drowning Girl, also from 1963, the painting of a blue-haired woman caught in turbulent waves, declaring “I don’t care! I’d rather sink than call Brad for help!”. The dramatic composition is lifted straight from a DC romance comic. The source was a splash page from Secret Hearts #83 (1962) illustrated by Tony Abruzzo. Lichtenstein cropped the scene tightly around the distraught woman’s face and the swirling water, intensifying the melodrama. Even the MoMA openly states on its label that Drowning Girl is “based on original art by Tony Abruzzo,” underscoring just how directly the painting mirrors its comic inspiration.

Other examples include Blam, copied from a panel in Russ Heath’s All-American Men of War #89 and Girl In Window, borrowed from a 1963 newspaper stripe drawn by Hy Eisman. Eisman’s original comic page (for a series called Private Secretary) earned him just a few dollars, whereas Lichtenstein’s painted copy sold for millions. Upon discovering this decades later, Eisman said bluntly, “It’s called stealing.”

These examples are just a sampling. Researcher David Barsalou has traced hundreds of Lichtenstein’s paintings back to specific comics. Lichtenstein even borrowed from Marvel’s superhero books. His painting Image Duplicator reproduces a pair of menacing eyes from an X-Men panel drawn by Jack Kirby and Paul Reinman, adding a tongue-in-cheek speech bubble about an “image duplicator.” The irony didn’t go unnoticed – he was essentially commenting on his own practice of image duplication.

Lichtenstein’s comic-based works sparked immediate debate about authenticity and originality. Was he a creative genius for recontextualising low-brow comics as high art, or was he simply copying others’ art and calling it his own? This question cuts to the heart of Pop Art, a movement that routinely appropriated mass media images. Lichtenstein himself maintained that he wasn’t just mindlessly tracing comics; he argued: “I am nominally copying, but I am really restating the copied thing in other terms… the original acquires a totally different texture” with his use of paint, dots, and bold colours. Indeed, he altered details: combining elements from multiple panels, adjusting colours, and enlarging images many times over. His supporters, like Jack Cowart of the Lichtenstein Foundation, insist “There is no exact copy” in Roy’s work – the scale and context change everything.

Art critics and historians have often defended Lichtenstein as well. Art historian Bradford R. Collins draws a line between plagiarism and Pop appropriation: “It’s not plagiarism. It’s appropriation… If Lichtenstein made comic books out of it, that would be stealing. But appropriation means you’re taking something and reusing it for a very different purpose… making it into a painting.” In other words, Lichtenstein transformed the intent and audience of the images, turning throwaway comic illustrations into objects for contemplation in art galleries. Under this view, his work adds new meaning: isolating a single frame of action or emotion and elevating it (or at least relocating it) into the realm of fine art.

However, many in the comics world have been far less charitable. To this day, some cartoonists and comic art fans see Lichtenstein as a glorified copycat. Comics legend Art Spiegelman once quipped that Lichtenstein did “no more or less for comics than Andy Warhol did for soup.” In that witty jab, the “soup” refers to Warhol’s famous Campbell’s Soup can paintings – basically saying Lichtenstein didn’t really improve or enrich comics; he just took them, as Warhol took a soup label, and made it art because he said so. Similarly, Watchmen artist Dave Gibbons criticised Lichtenstein for profiting off uncredited work. Gibbons noted that in music, you can’t simply perform someone else’s song without credit or payment; he felt Lichtenstein’s paintings should be labelled, for example, “WHAAM! by Roy Lichtenstein, after Irv Novick.” But of course, Lichtenstein’s gallery plaques never mentioned Novick or any of the original artists.

The lack of credit or compensation for the comic artists remains a sore point. In the 1960s, comic illustrators like Novick, Abruzzo, and Heath laboured anonymously or under work-for-hire contracts. Lichtenstein’s multimillion-dollar sales and art-world fame contrasted sharply with the modest wages and obscurity of the artists he borrowed from. As one commentary put it, Lichtenstein “elevated comics into an art form,” something he’s both praised for and reviled for. Admirers say he helped people appreciate comic imagery in a new light; detractors counter that he “got rich on the backs of other people’s talent.” Either way, by putting comic panels on museum walls, Lichtenstein undoubtedly sparked greater discussion about the artistic merits of comics themselves – a conversation that might never have happened otherwise.

It’s important to note that Lichtenstein’s approach was not an isolated case of one artist “stealing” imagery. He was part of the larger Pop Art movement, which thrived on borrowing from popular culture. By the early 1960s, Pop Art took inspiration from mass-produced media of all kinds – advertising graphics, news photos, movie stills, and comics. What Lichtenstein did with comic strips, Andy Warhol was doing with soup cans and publicity photos of Marilyn Monroe. Warhol quite literally silkscreened a publicity photo (taken by someone else) of Marilyn, over and over, in garish colours – an icon of high art made from a piece of mass media. James Rosenquist, another Pop artist, came from painting billboards and likewise used advertising images in his giant canvases. He would splice together pictures of household products, food, and celebrities in surreal combinations, directly lifted from print ads. In this climate, appropriation was practically the Pop Art modus operandi. The question of “authenticity” took a back seat to questions of meaning and context: Pop artists asked, what does it mean when a mundane image is presented as Art?

Lichtenstein’s comic imagery fit perfectly into this ethos. Comic books were a quintessential American mass medium – cheaply printed, widely consumed, and generally considered disposable entertainment. By re-framing comic panels as paintings, Lichtenstein was commenting on the culture of mass production and consumer imagery. The melodramatic content of the panels (war heroics, love-lorn girls) was part of the message too: he froze these clichéd moments for us to re-examine. Some argue he was poking fun at the hyper-dramatic emotions of romance and war comics, even as he loved their bold visual style. In any case, whether one views him as an appropriator, satirist, or plagiarist, Lichtenstein’s work embodied Pop Art’s spirit by blurring the line between high art and lowbrow comics.

One might wonder: did the comic publishers or artists ever take legal action against Lichtenstein for copying their panels? Surprisingly (or perhaps not, given attitudes of the time), Lichtenstein was never actually sued for copyright infringement. The original comic art was owned by publishers like DC, and according to at least one DC artist, the company was “never interested” in suing – probably because they saw there wasn’t much money to be made by going after an avant-garde painter. In the 1960s, comic art simply wasn’t valued as intellectual property the way it might be today. So Lichtenstein freely painted his versions without permission, and the issue wasn’t raised in court. (Ironically, years later Lichtenstein’s own estate has been known to threaten legal action against people copying his images – a twist that highlights the complexity of appropriation art.)

Instead of legal battles, the debate around Lichtenstein has played out in the court of public opinion and art criticism. In recent years, documentaries and articles have revisited how the comic artists struggled financially while Lichtenstein made millions. This has led some to re-evaluate his legacy: was Roy Lichtenstein a pioneer, a plagiarist, or something in between? The truth may lie in nuance. His paintings are undeniably striking – clean, stylised, and impactful in a way that grabbed the art world’s attention. He took something ephemeral and gave it a lasting, iconic presence. Yet the content wasn’t his original invention, and acknowledging that doesn’t diminish the skill it took to adapt and recontextualise the images.

In the end, Lichtenstein’s appropriation of comic book imagery forces us to think about what we value in art. Is it the idea, the execution, or the context that matters most? Pop Art, with Lichtenstein at the forefront, suggested that the line between “high” art and pop culture was arbitrary – that a comic panel could be as significant on a museum wall as a historical painting, if presented in the right way. Authenticity in Pop Art became more about capturing the zeitgeist than inventing forms from scratch. As Lichtenstein once said, he was interested in the “highly emotional content yet detached, impersonal handling” of themes like love and war in comics. That tension between emotion and mass-produced imagery is what gives his paintings a unique flavour.

Roy Lichtenstein’s work, borrowing and all, endures as a cornerstone of 20th-century art. Love it or hate it, it opened up a conversation between fine art and pop culture. Comic enthusiasts may bristle at seeing uncredited panels in gilded frames, while art lovers marvel at the graphic punch these works deliver. More than fifty years later, we’re still debating the merits of Lichtenstein’s comic appropriations – and that, in itself, is a testament to their impact. As one observer noted, Lichtenstein created more serious discussion about the nature and artistry of comics than perhaps any other single act. And perhaps that blend of homage and provocation was exactly what Pop Art was meant to do.

Last updated17 June 2025
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