Not happy to only be diluting the music of yesteryear with the “90’s alternative rock throwback” tour, Summerland has started ripping off DIY art as well, appropriating (everyone’s favorite word of the day) artwork from zine icons the Henandez brothers of Love & Rockets fame.
In the poster for this year’s tour, which features Soul Asylum, Eve 6, Spacehog, and tour founders Everclear, there’s an image of a guitarist that looks eerily similar to the cover of Love & Rockets #24. Turns out that the reason it looks similar is because it’s a traced image of the original Love & Rockets cover, which Summerland tour even seems to acknowledge with a tiny “L+R”, for Love & Rockets, etched onto the guitarist’s instrument.
The similarities were spotted a few days ago by Eric Reynolds, an associate publisher at Fantagraphics Books, which publishes Love & Rockets. Since then, fans of the influential comics series have started calling out the tour organizers and the bands on Twitter and Facebook:
shame on @Eve6 @EverclearBand @soulasylum and @SPACEHOG for ripping of the great Jaime Hernandez http://t.co/Xnl5qe46u2
— inkstuds (@inkstuds) July 21, 2014
Everclear frontman and tour organizer Art Alexakis defended the poster, calling it “an homage” to the original Love & Rockets cover:
@inkstuds @Eve6 @EverclearBand @soulasylum @SPACEHOG Hey you knuckleheads….it was meant as an Homage…a thing of respect to an influence — Art Alexakis (@artalexakis) July 22, 2014
But fans of the alternative comic series seem to disagree, and are asking Summerland (and Alexakis) to apologize and pay the original artist, Jamie Hernandez:
@artalexakis @inkstuds @Eve6 @EverclearBand @soulasylum @SPACEHOG If you had any respect for Jaime Hernandez, you’d have fucking paid him. — Ian MacEwan (@ianmacewan) July 24, 2014
While Alexakis has been involved in most of the ongoing Twitter conversations, both Summerland tour and the Hernandez Brothers have yet to comment on the poster, so it remains to be seen what, if anything, will happen. In the mean time, you can check out their entire Love & Rockets series here. And feel free to weigh in on the Twitter battle.
