I am writing in response to Lauren Saul’s comic in yesterday’s Free Press (Iggy and Rolf: April Fool’s edition, pg. 13). More than the comic itself, I am extremely disappointed with the newspaper’s editors.
First of all, Lauren Saul’s comic is called Rhoda, not Iggy and Rolf. I understand she was attempting this April Fool’s day to seem witty by taking a spoof off someone else’s cartoon, but she has gone too far. She has not only taken Derek Larson’s title for the day (which he should think about copywriting) but she has placed his name on the comic [(not) by Derek Larson]. She also stole the first panel of his comic strip from Monday, and placed it, exactly as it is, in the first panel of her comic. Where I come from, we call this plagiarism.
Second, the comic is not very good-let’s not forget that she put his name and comic title on her comic in a way that appears to the glancing reader that Larson wrote it, and really forgot how to write a comic (no matter how offensive you may find his strips, he gets a point across).
Finally, I understand that Lauren may not have thought she was stealing when she stole Derek Larson’s comic title and pictures, but I would hope that the editors at the Daily Free Press would point out to her certain things such as, “use your own title,” and, “if you want to have Iggy or Rolf in your comic, draw them yourself.”
Taking a spoof off someone’s ideas and hard work can be funny if done well. But taking, well taking just sucks.
Matthew Skolsky CAS ’03 bigbu3@aol.com (732)804-7321
This is an account occasionally used by the Daily Free Press editors to post archived posts from previous iterations of the site or otherwise for special circumstance publications. See authorship info on the byline at the top of the page.
