Reconsidering Roy Lichtenstein’s Borrowed Genius Today

Feature image: Roy Lichtenstein, Whaam!, 1963 via Wikipedia/Public Domain

Read my personal Substack deep-dive into Roy Lichtenstein’s plagiarism controversy here:

Roy Lichtenstein’s paintings once looked like the future. Bold, graphic, and unapologetically commercial, they captured the rhythm of postwar America. His canvases magnified comic-book panels into monumental works of Pop Art that filled museum walls and defined an era. Yet decades later, a quieter story has resurfaced behind those vibrant dots and speech bubbles, the story of the comic artists whose drawings he transformed and whose names rarely appeared beside his own, a story of injustice and unacknowledged creativity.

Lichtenstein’s rise coincided with a moment when comics were seen as disposable entertainment, not as fine art. He recognized their visual power, their clean lines, and their cinematic tension, then reimagined them for a new audience, inspiring a new generation of artists. But as art historians and researchers have shown, many of his best-known paintings were lifted almost line for line from existing panels created by underpaid illustrators working for publishers like DC and Marvel.

Today, the conversation around Lichtenstein has shifted from admiration to accountability. His art still fascinates, but it also asks a difficult question: when does inspiration become appropriation? And how do we honor the artists who shaped the very imagery that Pop Art celebrated? It's a question of justice and recognition that we must address.

When Lichtenstein began painting, comic books were viewed as cheap distractions. They were printed quickly, sold in corner stores, and thrown away after reading. The artists behind them were paid by the page, with little chance of recognition or creative ownership.

Pop Art turned this visual culture into a mirror of modern life. Artists like Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol borrowed from advertisements, cartoons, and product design to reveal the language of consumerism. For critics of the 1960s, this shift felt radical. Lichtenstein’s massive canvases of comic panels seemed to elevate the ordinary to the extraordinary.

What many missed was that those “ordinary” panels were already works of art. Comic artists created precise compositions, dynamic linework, and emotional storytelling under tight deadlines. Their work defined visual modernity long before the fine art world paid attention.

Decades after Lichtenstein’s rise, art historian David Barsalou began tracking down the original comic panels that inspired his paintings. His long-term project, Deconstructing Roy Lichtenstein, has identified dozens of panels that match Lichtenstein’s works almost exactly. These findings revealed how much of his success relied on the creativity of others. Among the most frequently copied artists are Tony Abruzzo, Ted Galindo, Mike Sekowsky, Joe Kubert, and Jerry Grandenetti.

Abruzzo illustrated the panel behind Drowning Girl (1963), one of Lichtenstein’s most famous paintings. The original image appeared in Secret Hearts #83 in 1962. Abruzzo’s turbulent seascape of a woman engulfed by waves became a Pop icon once it was cropped, simplified, and enlarged onto canvas.

Galindo’s expressive compositions shaped Masterpiece (1962). His command of gesture and clean structure gave the final painting its emotional clarity and visual balance.

Sekowsky’s romance illustrations inspired Happy Tears (1964). The painting preserves the pose, expression, and tears of his original work, transforming intimate emotion into graphic design.

Kubert’s dynamic war scenes helped form the basis for Lichtenstein’s military paintings, including As I Opened Fire. His sharp lines and explosive motion carried the intensity that Pop Art later reframed as abstraction.

Grandenetti’s cover for All-American Men of War #89 (1962) provided the source for Jet Pilot. The resemblance between the two remains unmistakable.

Another key figure in this conversation is Russ Heath, a master of war comics whose illustrations were among those transformed by Lichtenstein. In his later years, Heath drew a single-page autobiographical comic describing how he never earned a cent from the paintings based on his work. He mentioned living on Social Security and receiving help from The Hero Initiative, a nonprofit that supports comic artists in need.

Heath’s comic is both poignant and revealing. It shows how creative labor can be celebrated in one arena and ignored in another. His story reflects a larger pattern within twentieth-century art history, where commercial illustrators shaped the visual language of an age without receiving due acknowledgment.

Supporters of Lichtenstein often describe his paintings as transformations rather than copies. They point to his scale, color, and stylization as forms of reinterpretation. His art, they argue, invited viewers to reflect on mass media and the industrial production of images.

Critics see something different. The compositions remain the same, and so do the characters, gestures, and emotions. The supposed transformation feels cosmetic, changing medium and size but not substance. The question becomes whether repainting an existing image is enough to make it original.

Lichtenstein’s technique also raises questions about authenticity. His signature Ben-Day dots, which are a printing process that uses small dots of varying sizes and spacing to create shading and secondary colors, were painted by hand or stencil. This process only mimics the mechanical printing process that gave comics their distinct texture. The imitation evokes the look of cheap mass printing while separating his paintings from the craft of actual comic production. In that gap lies the debate over whether Lichtenstein’s art honored comics or exploited them.

Barsalou’s 'Deconstructing Roy Lichtenstein' project is a comprehensive archive that provides an invaluable resource for anyone studying Pop Art today. His meticulous research pairs Lichtenstein’s paintings with their original sources, restoring credit to the illustrators who drew them. The archive shows how connected the visual worlds of comics and fine art truly are, and it aims to bring recognition to the often-overlooked comic artists who contributed to Lichtenstein's work.

Through Barsalou’s work, names like Abruzzo, Galindo, Sekowsky, Kubert, Grandenetti, and Heath have reentered the conversation. Their influence stretches beyond comics and into the very foundation of modern visual culture. This recognition does not diminish Lichtenstein’s achievement, but it reframes it as part of a shared creative history rather than a single artist’s innovation.

The growing awareness of these origins has influenced how critics and museums interpret Lichtenstein’s legacy. Exhibitions now acknowledge the comic artists who inspired his work. Academic studies use Barsalou’s comparisons to explore questions of authorship, appropriation, and power in the art world.

Roy Lichtenstein remains a defining figure of twentieth-century art. His paintings played a significant role in shaping the visual identity of Pop Art, advertising, and design. Yet they also embody the inequalities that often divide art from labor. His career reminds us that credit in art is not only about fame but also about fairness.

To revisit his work today is to recognize both its brilliance and its blind spots. His paintings captured a culture fascinated by repetition and mass production, but they also reflected an art system that valued transformation over attribution.

The comic artists he borrowed (or stole) from deserve their place in this story. They were not footnotes to Pop Art but its foundation. Their work provided the emotion, narrative, and visual energy that made Lichtenstein’s canvases resonate.

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