• RELEASED: 16 May 2013
• FORMAT: one-off illustration / print / catalogue
• LABEL: n/a
• CAT No.: n/a
• DESIGN: Openmind after Tony Abruzzo / Dave Gibbons
• EXTRA ZEN: What is Image Duplicator?

The Image Duplicator exhibition at the Orbital Comics gallery in London was set up by Rian Hughes to highlight the original artists that Lichtenstein copied, uncredited, for his most famous Pop Art works. For my entry I chose Tony Abruzzo‘s work that was copied for two other ‘Kiss’ pieces. I wanted to give a nod to Dave Gibbons – the original artist on Watchmen – for his speaking out on the subject of appropriating imagery whilst also referencing the similar outcry when Watchmen was remodeled as Before Watchmen the year before. Not quite the same thing I know but it makes for a tenuous link.

Creating a fake cover for a comic called Before Lichtenstein was the first part, I then made this into a ‘real’ distressed comic that looked like it might have been the sort of thing Lichtenstein copied from. I chose to do one of the ‘Kiss’ images because of the visual link to Watchmen – the iconic silhouetted kissing imagery that crops up throughout.