#timothy hunter

John, head in hands as he stands in front of a smoldering magical crater: Okay, brats... which one if you did this?

Billy, Klarion, and Timothy, who decided Magic Rock Paper Scissors was a good idea:

(Turns out Rock does beat Volcano, but the ever successful Gun is S Tier... but for this, it was magical versions of them actually fighting...)

Shortly after she and some other women went public about it, there were some people who chimed in talking about other misdeeds of his.

Her ex was, and is, a loathsome waste of oxygen, and the words, "...who deserves every accusation leveled at him" would almost escape my lips...

...Except that some of the accusations people began throwing around because they (understandably) hated this guy weren't true.

This did not help my friend at all! It muddied the waters, and gave her awful ex ammunition for his claims that people were just out to get him, and were willing to make stuff up to smear him.

Switching gears: there's been a lot of discussion recently about how some brilliant and influential art has been created by objectively terrible people. Part of that discussion has been calling out people who say, "Their work always sucked," or "I never liked it." Not only are statements like this unhelpful, they provide cover for predators. If you insist that your tastes reflect your morality, you're giving yourself a huge blind spot, and making it easy to dismiss evidence of harm done by creators you happen to like.

This is one reason why I think exhibits like this one are important: they help teach that lesson.

Three notes on this: 1. by the time of that exhibition, Gill was long dead and therefore unable to profit from it.

2. This kind of thing isn't necessary for every artist, because not every creator does heinous things.

3. My friend's ex is nowhere near the artistic league of Eric Gill or any of the other creators I'll discuss.

Switching gears again...

If someone mentions a bespectacled British boy wizard with an owl familiar, in a modern setting with "secret world" magic, the name that springs to mind is most likely "Harry Potter", right?

But Timothy Hunter, from The Books of Magic, was published a full seven years before that. I was working in a bookstore when the novelizations for the BoM comics came out, and had to tell kids that no, this was not a HP rip-off.

I don't think the reverse was true, either: for one thing, The Books of Magic is set in the DC Universe, and I've never heard of JKR reading superhero comics. But also... sometimes completely separate creators will come up with strikingly similar ideas, utterly by coincidence. It's one reason why most authors tell fans NOT to send them ideas or fanfiction based on their work: there is rarely any good way to prove that you didn't steal a concept.

Now, obviously every creator is influenced by other people's works, and I completely agree that it's good to acknowledge that and to point fans towards your influences!

When Rowling began channeling her resources into making life worse for trans folk, I saw a lot of people saying, "Well, Harry Potter was just a mediocre rip-off of The Worst Witch anyway."

While I haven't read that series, I strongly doubt this claim. The idea of magic schools is older and more widespread than either of those series, and "British boarding school hijinks, but it's a magic school" was bound to be written more than once.

Now, some of you already know, and others have looked up, who originally wrote Tim Hunter. And... yeah, it's Neil Gaiman. *sigh*

In the last few days, I've seen some people saying, "The Sandman ripped off Tanith Lee's Tales from the Flat Earth." They cite a number of similarities: Azhrarn, the Lord of Darkness, is a pale-skinned, raven-haired Byronic figure with a sibling-like relationship to the Lord of Death and the Lord of Madness. Like the Endless, these beings are god-like, but specifically not gods. Apparently some people have mistaken fanart of Azhrarn for Morpheus. And Chuz, Prince Madness, has a bisected appearance, half his face horribly messed up, like the demoness Mazikeen.

But speaking as someone who was a fan of the late Tanith Lee years before I picked up an issue of The Sandman: I don't believe the latter was stolen from the former. Are there similarities? Yes, but they're superficial. If you've read both series, as I have, you'll know that the stories, settings, and characters are very different!

It's possible Gaiman was influenced by Lee's writing, and if so, I agree he should have acknowledged that. He did promote the work of other female creators, which is one reason why many of us thought he was "one of the good ones". But it's also entirely possible that these two authors independently came up with similar ideas.

When it comes right down to it, I think that statements like this -- "their best work was just a rip-off of something else" -- are just another variant of "their work always sucked".

It's often an easier accusation than "they've always been crap", because, as I said, writers come up with strikingly similar concepts all the time, and it's very hard to prove you didn't steal an idea. But it has the same problems, so -- barring the kind of case you could make with a college-level plagiarism-catching program -- I think it's best avoided.

Now, telling people, "Hey, are you sad about this creator turning out to be an awful person to whom you don't want to give any more money? Try this other person's work instead!" This is good! Let's have more of it!

Addendum 1: I think "separate the art from the artist" should mean, "you don't have to treat books already on your shelf as if they're suddenly coated in poison", not "I'm going to ignore this creator's actions and keep buying their products anyway."

Addendum 2: I just posted a version of this to Bluesky.

Hunter: The Age of Magic #3 (2001)

Vote to trans someone's gender!

Why do they deserve to win?

Bruce Wayne

Timothy Hunter