Posted in: Comics, Movies, Swipe File, TV | Tagged: Ignition Press, The Beauty, the substance

Separated At Birth: The Beauty And The Substance?

Separated At Birth: Which came first, The Beauty or The Substance? Bleeding Cool looks at the similarities and differences

The Beauty television adaptation by Ryan Murphy for FX/Hulu was first announced at the end of September 2024 and has since been widely covered by my colleague, Ray Flook, here at Bleeding Cool. With additional reporting on the comic book co-created by Jeremy Haun and Jason A. Hurley itself by yours truly, naturally.

After teasing elements of the series for a year, Murphy and the cast of The Beauty (including Evan Peters, Rebecca Hall, Anthony Ramos, Jeremy Pope, and Ashton Kutcher), revealed series details to a packed room on the Main Stage at New York Comic-Con in October. This was followed by an official release date, key art, and a teaser trailer in December. As more details emerged about the show, the online discourse turned to the similarities between the Academy Award-nominated 2024 body-horror film, The Substance, starring Demi Moore by writer/director Coralie Fargeat. The debate came to a head earlier this week when the official trailer dropped on Monday with fans of the comic book pointing out that the comic predates The Substance by many years. So much so, that Vanity Fair's exclusive feature on the show tackled the comparisons head-on, saying "The Beauty is based on the eponymous 2015 comic book series by Jeremy Haun and Jason A. Hurley. Murphy and series cocreator Matthew Hodgson optioned the rights nearly a decade ago, long before the release of 2024's similarly themed body-horror film, The Substance – starring Kutcher's ex-wife, Demi Moore, in a performance that earned the actor her first Oscar nomination."

The comparison seems to stem from a change that Murphy and Hodson made from the comic series, which is that the origin of The Beauty in the show is a miracle drug akin to GLP-1s rather than a sexually transmitted disease. Although Vanity Fair also confirmed that the drug's "powers can also be sexually transmitted from one person to another." Which current publisher, Ignition Press, was quick to celebrate on their Instagram…

And not to put too fine a point on it, but longtime comic readers will recall that while the full The Beauty series did debut at Image Comics in 2015, it was actually initially published in 2011 as part of Top Cow's Pilot Season initiative, which it won that year. In a full circle moment, current Ignition Press Publisher and co-founder Filip Sablik greenlit The Beauty for Pilot Season when he was Publisher of Top Cow at the time. So did The Beauty swipe from The Substance? Or the other way around?

In his most recent Substack newsletter, co-creator Haun made his thoughts on the matter clear. "I genuinely, truly, believe that Coralie Fargeat DID NOT steal the concept for the 2024 film The Substance from my 2011 comic series The Beauty… I really appreciate people speaking up for The Beauty comic coming first. Just…be nice." So that settles it, doesn't it?

Call it Separated At Birth or call it 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, we ask that you please return your eyes to their maker before any further damage is done. Separated At Birth doesn't judge; it is more interested 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 artists collect images and lines they admire to inspire them in their work. It was swiped from The Comics Journal, which originally ran a similar column, and the now-defunct Swipe Of The Week website, but Separated At Birth was considered a less antagonistic title.

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