Another good find there. Seeing these makes me wonder whether this is Nihei's way of paying homage to this artist, or whether the majority of his ideas are drawn directly from other sources like this. There are a lot of other random scenes like the one above in his works.

I think it was here that I first read about it, so everyone probably knows about the book . From the excerpt I read it looks like he borrowed a lot from that, so it makes me wonder if all those interesting ideas I love him for are quite as original as I'd first thought.

Any work of art only appears original to the extent that its sources and influences are obscure, which is to say that "originality" shouldn't be judged by how unprecedented something is because in reality only nothing comes from nothing. Art works very much like evolution in my opinion. An artist takes existing elements and filters them through his consciousness that has been determined by his genes and life experience, producing a unique combination of the original elements along with some small mutations and then selecting the best results. Only very rarely can one see an actual leap in art or evolution, but that doesn't mean the small, sometimes infinitesimal, changes are without merit.

That said, I value Nihei's work not because what he has created is completely without precedent, which of course it isn't, but because the way he has melded the different sources and influences in his art is very much unique and certainly something I enjoy even more than the source material.

Oh, I understand that. As an artist myself I'm always drawing ideas from works that appeal to me, Nihei's included. But it's one thing to be influenced by something - to absorb ideas, mix them up and put your own twist on them - and it's another to simply copy it.

One year ago Zdzisław Beksiński was found dead, murdered in his own appartment.

Requiescat in pace, Zdzisław .

R.I.P. Visionary.

No one's disagreeing with that. When I mentioned ideas drawn directly from other sources, I meant directly – as in taking the complete idea and doing little to make it your own, such as the examples posted in this thread where even the compositions of the images are similar. But of course, if these are deliberate references to the artists that influenced him then it's another matter, which is why I brought it up.

It's true that, as psiberpunk said, artwork is only original to the extent that its influences remain obscure, but I think originality can still be measured by how much an artist develops and changes the borrowed idea, or mixes other ideas into it so that the end result is quite different from its sources. And it was that that made me think Nihei might be less original than I'd first thought.

I find that judgement difficult to make based on single frame comparisons from a huge amount of sequential work. In it's hundreds of pages I'd imagine that a undertaking of that scale requires a substantial amount of unique development however way you slice it.

Yep, that's why I'm just speculating.

Awhile back, I was introduced to Zdzislaw Beksinski when an acquaintance of mine posted a link to the artist's website on his forum. Very impressive stuff -- truly a shame that he is no longer with us.

Looks like a safeguard isn't it?