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Plagiarism, Illustrated: Legendary Lifts Draw Ire of Cartooning Community

6 months AGO

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by Holly Wall, News Editor

Urban Tulsa Weekly continues its search (see page 7) for a new contract editorial cartoonist after David Simpson, who’d been drawing for the paper since 2005, resigned last week amid accusations that he plagiarized two Jeff MacNelly cartoons in October editions of the alt weekly.

Though Simpson and UTW editor/publisher Keith Skrzypczak have been virtually silent on the incident, Simpson did write a letter of apology to the widow of the late MacNelly, the cartooning giant whose work appeared regularly in the Chicago Tribune. It’s unfortunate for Simpson that the letter was sent just as The Daily Cartoonist, the industry blog manned by Alan Gardner that first exposed Simpson’s tracing tendencies, uncovered another copied cartoon.

This Land Press found two more toons, published in September, that strongly resembled ones MacNelly drew years before, and we posted what cartoons we could find—in a year’s worth of issues publicly available on the third floor of the Tulsa City-County Library—online in hopes that other cartoonists would alert us to additional plagiarism.

Here’s what we learned.

Paul Berge, who draws cartoons for Q Syndicate and blogs at Berge’s Cartoon Blog, pointed out three (and helped us locate the original cartoons):

Simpson drew this cartoon for the June 30-July 6, 2011, issue of UTW:

Pat Oliphant drew this one for the Denver Post Dec. 18, 1974:

UTW published this Simpson cartoon in its July 15-21 issue:

The Denver Post published this one by Oliphant Aug. 31, 1972. It was published in his book Four More Years:

UTW published this in the Dec. 31, 2010-Jan. 5, 2011 issue:

Jim Borgman drew this one for the Aug. 2, 1985 issue of The Washington Post. It was published in his book The Great Communicator.

Borgman also confirmed that this image, published in the Aug. 25-31 issue of UTW, was ripped off of one of his, though he wasn’t able to locate the original.

“It was when Clinton was being investigated by Ken Starr,” he wrote in an email to This Land Press. “I’m retired from editorial cartooning and have shipped most of my files to the Ohio State Cartoon archives.”

Borgman now co-authors the Zits comic strip.

Chris Elkman pointed out that this Simpson cartoon, published in the Sept. 22-28, 2011, issue of UTW…

…closely matches this one by Oliphant, published July 2, 1985, in the Denver Post and in his book Between a Rock and a Hard Place.

Simpson’s plagiarism seems only to have surprised local media and readers of UTW. Most of his peers in the industry have been aware of his plagiarist status for decades. They’re mostly surprised he’s been able to find publications still willing to print his work.

“It’s a mystery to all of us how Simpson has survived in this profession for 40 years,” Borgman said. “We all knew him as a plagiarist even in the ‘70s. He seems to have lived under the radar somehow—I was astonished to hear he was still working.”

In a blog post on Batesline.com, Michael Bates, former contributor to Urban Tulsa Weekly and unofficial local historian, pointed out that Simpson isn’t just plagiarizing cartooning greats; he’s also copying himself, recycling work he published in the Tulsa Tribune in the 1970s and reprinting it in Urban Tulsa.

This cartoon, for example, published in the July 14-20, 2011, issue of UTW and featuring a Gahan Wilson-inspired blob…

… is a near-exact replica of this one, which he published in the Tribune in the 1970s and which was republished in his book Simpson: A collection of cartoons from the Tulsa Tribune in 1980.

So far, that’s five cartoonists (including Bob Englehart, whose work he was accused of plagiarizing in a Tulsa World cartoon in 2005. The World fired him over the incident) whose work Simpson seems to have copied. That’s five people who could file copyright lawsuits against him, if they were so inclined. And Simpson’s self-plagiarism means the Tulsa World could also find grounds for a copyright infringement suit, since when the paper purchased the Tribune in 1992, it also bought the rights to all content published in the paper.

Chad Hinrichs, an attorney for GableGotwals with expertise in intellectual property, said Simpson’s reproduction of his own toon could be “a cause of action or lawsuit alleging copyright infringement.”

“I have not seen any of the documents regarding Mr. Simpson’s employment with the Tulsa Tribune and the sale of the Tribune to the Tulsa World,” Hinrichs said. “But I would expect that the ownership rights in the cartoons originally belonged to the Tribune. It is also likely that the Tulsa World obtained those copyrights as part of its purchase of the Tulsa Tribune. If both of those facts hold true, then there would be grounds for a claim of copyright infringement by the Tulsa World against Mr. Simpson and Urban Tulsa for reproducing those cartoons.”

The Tulsa World, which has, as an organization, declined to comment on Simpson’s most recent plagiarism scandal, has also not given any indication that it would file such a suit.

Copyright protects the expression found in a particular work, Hinrichs explained. It’s a bundle of rights that gives the owner the right to publicly display, copy, distribute and make derivative works of the copyrighted material.

“In order for there to be copyright infringement, there has to be some copying involved,” Hinrichs said. “You have to show he had access to those earlier cartoons, or some link there showing he’d copied them or was inspired by them.”

Simpson changing certain elements of a cartoon or adding his own expression to it wouldn’t protect him from a lawsuit. Copyright prevents others from making derivatives of protected material.

Whether or not any lawsuits are filed against Simpson depends on whether the copyright owner, presumably the original cartoonist or his newspaper, deems it worth his time.

Although copyright exists by virtue of creation of the work, in order to file an infringement lawsuit, the copyright must be registered.  A registration can be filed at any time; however, there are benefits to filing within three months of the initial publication of the protected work, namely statutory damages and attorney fees.

If one could prove that Simpson willfully violated a copyright, then statutory damages could run him upwards of$150,000 per copied work, Hinrichs said. Urban Tulsa Weekly could also be vulnerable to potential lawsuits.

Most folks in the cartoon industry, though, don’t seem too eager to litigate; they’d rather wipe Simpson from their memories—and from the cartooning industry.

Borgman was happy to exchange emails with This Land Press on the subject, but he declined a phone interview, saying, “I’m retired from editorial cartooning and would rather let it be.”

“My only thought that could help you further is this: Most editorial cartoonists strive to be syndicated, which has the effect of spreading our work wide—a form of vetting, I guess,” he wrote. “If we stray too close to the work of our seminal influences, as happens in the course of finding one’s own voice, we’re likely to be called on it.

“Until the Internet, the work of an un-syndicated cartoonist would probably only be seen among his/her own newspaper’s readers. I suppose that’s how someone could work so long without the searchlight finding him. Still, it amazes me if no one identified this much plagiarism. The cartoons Simpson stole were iconic images from the very biggest and brightest stars in our profession.”

R.C. Harvey, a cartoon historian, told This Land: “Cartoonists have always ‘swiped’—copied—from one another. It’s usually regarded in the profession as a minor failing, not a felony, but a failing nonetheless.”

And yet, Harvey said Simpson may have been caught plagiarizing more than any other cartoonist in the country.

“I don’t think the sort of line-for-line copying that Simpson is guilty of should be condoned or excused,” Harvey said. “He’s clearly taken ‘swiping’ to an unacceptable extreme. But, as I said, I’m surprised, given the habits of many cartoonists, that there aren’t more instances like Simpson’s.”