The webcomics blog about webcomics

Stuff’s Gonna ‘Splode

Several mentions in the webcomicsosphere for the past twelve hours or so about Michael Bay. Yes, that Michael Bay. Specifically, news about the newest project that he’s signed onto:

The film will reportedly center on an academic researcher who discovers that multiple versions of Earth co-exist in different dimensions, but all are threatened by an apocalypse to occur in 2012 prophesied by the ancient Mayans. By opening a portal into a parallel universe, he makes contact with his double to stop the prophecy from being fulfilled.

The film is currently looking for a screenwriter.

Here’s a suggestion: how about Jon Rosenberg? Sounds an awful lot like the storyline that’s been running in Goats for most of the past two years.

Apparently, a forthcoming novel by Whitley Strieber, 2012: The War For Souls, is the basis for the Bay production; given that Strieber’s book isn’t due to be published until September, it’s impossible to say whether or not ideas got (let us euphemize) farmed from Rosenberg. After all, Mayans are hot right now, right? On the other hand, this isn’t a new experience for Rosenberg, whose long-running strip has featured a genius goldfish and sexually-deviant gray aliens living among ordinary Americans (which, let’s face it, is a pretty particular combination of themes right there).

Attempts to reach Rosenberg for comment were unsuccessful. We at Fleen can only speculate whether he is:

  • flattered that his ideas are good enough for people to make money off of them
  • pissed off that it’s not him making the money
  • horrified that it’s Michael Bay who’s making the money, or
  • ready to sue for 1.6 billion dollars

Personally, we at Fleen are hoping for that last one, because it would be awesome, like a flaming train running into a bus full of nuns, kittens, puppies, and orphan children, and then they all blow up in slow motion. Hey — somebody get me Michael Bay on the phone, I got an idea for him.

You can consider tomorrow’s strip my comment.

Uh-oh…

I believe Paul Southworth said it best.

If I may play devil’s advocate here…was it not the same Whitley Strieber’s factual (snigger) account of abduction and sexual experimentation by large eyed grey aliens in Communion that popularized the concept, meaning that Jon is ripping him off?

Or is that not plagarism because it’s “true?”

If I might play devil’s advocate to your devil’s advocate, apparently Whitley Strieber is alleged to have borrowed some of the ideas from Communion from another writer named Budd Hopkins.

I just hope that in 2012 Mayans will return to play that weird football game with the skull of Michael Bay.

[…] Gary Tyrrell asks: Is film director Michael Bay plagiarizing Jon Rosenberg’s Goats? (Above: sequence from the April 25, 2006 episode of Goats, ©2006 Jonathan Rosenberg.) […]

I’m just hoping your article was meant in jest, Gary.

“Garfield” stole my idea for “cats” two years before I was born. I totally invented the entire concept of cats! I still have the blueprints scratched on the inside of my mother’s womb to prove it!

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