Another Cosmo Cover?
on January 19, 2010 at 12:29 pmAs you might guess, the last week has been extremely fun for the two of us as we watched links get passed around the net and our internet traffic spike to levels we weren’t expecting so quickly. It seems like we struck a nerve with more than a few WoW fans who like what we’re up to and would like to see more.
What we weren’t expecting though was what showed up in our email this morning: We’ve been accused of stealing an idea from another WoW site, namely our Cosmopolitan cover. It’s been pointed out that our cover bears a striking resemblance to an image made by Michelle Madison over at Warcraft Outsiders. In the age of the internet, it only takes one person to start a PR nightmare, and I was not about to let our fledging website be buried in accusations of wrongdoing. So, I quickly shot Michelle an email explaining things.
To be blunt, the accusations of plagiarism are completely, 100% without merit. Neither CP nor myself had seen the other image nor had we visited their website before coming up with the idea ourselves. I have a chat log of the two of us coming up with a ton of ideas, including the Cosmo cover, that I have offered to show Michelle as evidence that this is a case of two camps with aligned tastes and senses of humor coming up with a coincidentally similar product.
Michelle has assured us that she will be bringing up the incident on her podcast and she understands that this is just an uncanny coincidence. In the meantime, we’re making a peace offering by sending everyone over to their website, Warcraft Outsiders, to check out their podcast and also the other Cosmo image that caused this mess in the first place.
We’re rather new at this, and I’m not sure if this is something that happens a lot. There are a more webcomics, WoW blogs, and websites than I could ever start to count, and ideas are bound to cross over from time to time. All I know is that because we are still new, and we don’t have reputations to stand behind just yet, I’m going to jump through a few extra hoops to make it clear that we’re not out to commit what has to be one of the stupidest crimes you could conceive of when creating a webcomic: Ripping off another known, popular entity and expecting to get away with it. That’s not the case here, nor will it ever be.
That being said, we hope this is satisfactory for everyone, and if it is, we will go back to our regular tomfoolery, already in progress.
Yours actually looks like a cover. The other looks more like an attempt at a magazine layout.
Looking at the two of them, I can see why someone thought the “uncanny resemblance” – but you’re using the same Blizz model, so DUH they’re going to look similar! Honestly, yours is better. I like their “Cosmmorpg” but yours is far truer to the IRL mag cover. (Having had the unfortunate recent experience of far too much time in line with little else to stare at… yeah. You nailed it.)
Accusations of plagiarism create huge nightmares where none need exist. With the thousands of fans of the game, it’s unlikely that you and they are the only ones who even HAD that idea. I’m glad Michelle is being cool about it. Kudos to her for that, and to you for heading off what could be a messy uproar.
But, really… similar idea, yes, but your execution was stellar. =)
Just checked them out and yours is way cooler. It’s nice that they are being so good about it as I’m sure many wouldn’t. A couple things:
1) Their cosmo cover really isn’t even funny
2) Their podcast = fail! I get that it’s live, but annoying, hard to follow, and blew up after the first couple of minutes.
I don’t mean to bag on them, just figured I’d throw in my two cents. Keep up the great work!
Yours is graphically better that’s for sure, but not shocking seeing as hers is admittedly just a print screen of an in game shot. However I think her footnotes are way funnier and I really dig the mmorpg thing she did too.