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SWIPE FILE: The Firefly Ships

So there are a bunch of fans of Joss Whedon's Firefly and Serenity fans who spend their days and possibly nights creating space ships that might exist in said self same galaxy, including for the fan film Bellflower.

So they were quite surprised to see images of their ships appear in the recent Dark Horse Serenity series, Float Out.

And the Bellflower creators went to town establishing what they'd created;

Scott Allie wrote on the Dark Horse site;

My apologies to the crew of the Serenity fan film Bellflower–

Recently, we made a truly unfortunate mistake regarding the use of art from a fan film in one of our comics. We would like to make an apology to the artists and the filmmaker who were affected by our error.

While preparing to draw Serenity: Float Out, artist Patric Reynolds researched ships from the 'Verse online, and mistook some ships designed for the fan film Bellflower for canonical ships. The ships were designed by John Douglass, S. E. O'Brien, Sam Osbourne, and filmmaker Mark James. Their work is terrific, and completely professional, like so much of what the Browncoats do, so no one realized the mistake.

We understand that this was a serious oversight on our part. We want to assure everyone that this is not a usual occurance, and we will make sure to be more careful in the future.

Please accept my most sincere apologies, on behalf of Dark Horse and artist Patric Reynolds.

Although Patric seems to have a different take, writing in e-mail;

"Serenity: Float Out" simply could not have been possible without the inspiration and reference that I found at fireflyshipworks.com. I was more than fortunate to find a wellspring of ideas that were very thoughtfully designed by such dedicated artists who have created (and maintained) a completely engaging universe. I am glad that their ideas have gotten the visibility they deserve by being depitcted in a mainstream comic. They were too good not to be seen by so many readers and they only add to the rich Serenity vocabulary. The artist's imagination not only saved me a lot of headaches, but they have inspired me to keep thinking about how I as an artist can push my own creative boundaries. They have made the extraordinary very real and attainable, and I owe them a debt of gratitude. Thanks y'all.

And another poster reports Patric telling them that he sent in "acknowledgement of his inspirations to Dark Horse, but they failed to print it for some reason."

In Swipe File we present two or more images that resemble each other to some degree. They may be homages, parodies, ironic appropriations, coincidences or works of the lightbox. We trust you, the reader, to make that judgment yourself. If you are unable to do so, please return your eyes to their maker before any further damage is done. The Swipe File doesn't judge, it's interested more in the process of creation, how work influences other work, how new work comes from old, and sometimes how the same ideas emerge simultaneously, as if their time has just come. The Swipe File was named after the advertising industry habit where writers and artist collect images and lines they admire to inspire them in their work. It was swiped from the Comic Journal who originally ran this column, as well as the now defunct Swipe Of The Week website.

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