Posted in: Comics | Tagged: Comics, dawn, image, Joseph Michael Linsner

Fanboy Rampage: Joseph Michael Linsner And Eva Hopkins, Part Two

Published Mon, 15 Jul 2013 10:00:54 -0500

Over the weekend, Bleeding Cool ran reports of a serious dispute between Dawn creator Joseph Michael Linsner and his ex-colourist Eva Hopkins. Linsner began the war of word in an editorial in his most recent issue of Dawn, published by Image Comics.

Eva took to Facebook to dispute the allegations and make a number of far more serious ones in return.

Since then, both parties have continued, though neither seems to be able to see the other's Facebook postings, as each has barred the other, relying on third parties… and, it seems, Bleeding Cool. Eva began;

TRUE CONFESSIONS: I've re-read the published Dawn editorial I was talking about, in my note & there's one thing JML says it in that's true. I *did* trace 3 JML originals. One was inking & then coloring a drawing he penciled, a dryad, which he co-signed; once was a pinup for the Image San Diego Yearbook CCI 2010 – He encouraged me to do it; my confidence in my own abilities was at an all-time low & he said if the drawing looked bad, then he'd look bad – & then there were some drawings I copied off of the Dark Ivory trading card from the Dawn 15th Anniversary trading card set, & then drew into the same book. I did maybe 5? of these, & he drew a Dawn face in them on the inside front cover, & I sold them. He drew on the IFC instead of the first page to make it easier for me, even. Of course he knew about all of them at the time so the surprise & outrage seems inappropriate.

The model, pose & photo used for reference for the Image San Diego Yearbook 2010 were mine, even the rough (but not very good) sketch was mine. There's no doubt it's basically a Linsner drawing, though, one look at it will tell you.

Not proud of it. But I wouldn't have done it without his full support at the time.

Everything else I've drawn is mine, thanks, but there you go, I'm guilty of that.

Joseph Michael Linsner then countered this post saying;

There is some vile shit being said about me on a page which I can't even see because I am blocked from it. My former assistant is really talented at playing her violin, but let the proof be in the pudding. I spent a lot of money getting my lawyer to get her to stop tracing my art and selling it as original Eva Hopkins paintings. Now she says that she only did that with my blessing but she was doing these a year after she left my employ. This is only the tip of the iceberg —

No one likes being ripped off. I have to ask why Eva Hopkins kept tracing drawings of mine — the same ones over and over again — even after I had asked her to stop doing it? Her accounting of how many times she ripped me off is very imaginative. How many times did she draw that same shot of Dark Ivory? She says that she only traced my art 3 times, but each time she drew another version counts because she sold them to different people. I have done recreations upon request, but this is a whole other matter. Why am I beating this dead horse? Because I don't like being ripped off.

While I understand that more is coming, Linsner hasn't, as yet, chosen to counter any of the points made by Hopkins, countering his original allegations printed in Dawn.

Fanboy Rampage was a website run by Graeme McMillan before he got respectable, collecting the higher profile online conflicts. We use the title here with permission. Bleeding Cool is doing no more than posting public statements, and not verifying the validity of either party.

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