Here’s a link to an old issue of “Strange Tales” circa 1951.
http://readcomiconline.com/Comic/Strange-Tales-1951/Issue-3?id=33318
The second story bears quite a resemblance to a TZ episode from 1959.
(Story-The Man who Never Was)
I’m not to blame for additional time wasted on this site.
Which TZ episode? I don’t see any that sound close.
!!!OPEN SPOILERS IN FOLLOWING POST!!!
There may be a Twilight Zone where a guy doesn’t know he’s dead, but it doesn’t seem to be in 1959. Anyway, that’s a pretty common plot-- it’s in everything from Carnival of Souls to The Sixth Sense, and episodes of every ghost-seer TV show. But the specific thing about the shadow, I don’t recall from any Twilight Zone, and I used to be pretty well-hooked on The Twilight Zone when I was in high school and college.
Now, granted, I didn’t just go read every episode summary for every season, just the ones for 1959.
I believe the episode being referred to is “And When The Sky Was Opened”. And other than how the concept is introduced, yes, both the comic and the episode are relatively and eerily similar.
That was it, Maven. I didn’t name it specifically because I wanted to see if it struck someone else the same way. Both the ep and the comic story used the photo with a disappearing person and both had a diner scene.
I find it highly unlikely it could be called plagiarism. Rod Serling was one of the most original writers of his time.
the Wikipedia article for the TZ episode states that it was adapted from a Richard Matthieson story “Disappearing Act” from 1953. (A lot of TZ stories were adaptations of previously published stories.)
I think it’s likely that the Strange Tales comic book story stole it’s plot from there.
Oh, but on second look…that can’t be. The first page of the ST issue clearly states that “any similarities to these true-to-life tales are purely coincidental.” That settles it then, because if Stan Lee and company went through the trouble of printing that disclaimer, then it must be a coincidence! No way would Stan Lee swipe a plot-line from another story. Not Stan the Man! Nosireee.
Well if not you, then who?
There was also an element of “A Most Unusual Camera”, albeit in reverse (by the way, many people see my extensive collection of selfies as evidence of self-absorption. If they only knew).
Reading the rest of the issue, it was interesting to see a glimpse of Haiti before any black people lived there. It was also kind of cool to see that “Strange Tales” was published out of the Empire State Building.
As for plagiarism, well, maybe. I note from the Wikipedia that Serling was adapting a story by Richard Matheson (the next-most prolific author of TZ episodes), written for some pulpy-sounding thing in 1953. I’m now wasting more time reading up on Zakarin and Romita (the two credited author/artists of the “Strange Tale”). That’s your fault, too.
The Matheson story, which I reread last night, was actually very different. The germ of the story was there but there would be a far greater case to be made, if one were inclined to make it, that Serling “ripped off” Strange Tales than that Strange Tales ripped off Matheson.
That’s a non sequitur. Rod Serling can have been one of the most original writers of all time and still have copied a particular story.
Indeed, Shakespeare copped all his stories.
The point is that a plot line or story idea doesn’t belong to any one author.
I know this is an old thread, but I ran across another example last night. From “Forbidden Worlds” #55. A story called “U-boat 327” bearing a strong resemblance to the TZ episode “Judgement Night”.
So, the Strange Tales was from 1951, and the acknowledged source story was 1953, but people are saying Strange Tales might have ripped off the other story?
Time travel.
The stories don’t seem all that similar to me. Copying ideas is fine as long as you don’t copy the story, and these are very different stories.
I thank you for the link, though. I intend to joyfully waste quite a lot of time there through the holidays.
ETA: Didn’t notice the zombification.
Ray Bradbury called Bill Gaines and EC out over a story about an astronaut who has a family watching fom earth. He got paid.
I believe that was straight plagiarism, though. They simply used Bradbury’s stories without permission.
He sent this letter
and got his money and credit. (Source)
My earlier link should have stated that the story in question starts on page 12.
As someone said, a number of TZ episodes were adapted from earlier short stories, including the famous Cornfield one. Adaptation is a pretty obvious third choice besides coincidence and plagiarism.
Ideas, themes, plots, are not copyright-able. Depending on whose analysis one favors, maybe 3 or 7 or 22 or 87 or 154 basic plots exist, and each has been written-over thousands to millions of times. Mark Twain’s 3-act structure: 1) chase them up a tree; 2) throw rocks at them; 3) see if they come down. Kurt Vonnegut traced 7 basic story arcs, with an 8th if nothing much develops. (Graphs provided upon request.) Spin-off your own version and blame inspiration, adaptation, re-visualization, correction, parody, whatever. Change enough words and it’s not plagiarism unless the source copyright owner retains better lawyers than you do.
Just re-read the comic and re-watched the TZ episode (it’s on Hulu).
There are more similarities than I remembered, but nothing that would be plagiarism.
The premise is the same, almost exactly so–someone is being erased–but that’s fine. Every story has a similar premise to some other story.
Practically every other similarity is something that any self-respecting story of that type should have (called scènes à faire).
Somebody’s being erased is the premise. That a handful of others remember him and notice that he’s missing is necessary to the story–without them, we’d never know that anything was amiss, so we’d have no story. The phone calls and photographs are scènes à faire, things that are only to be expected in a story about somebody being erased (see Back to the Future).
The only other major similarity is that everybody who knows about the missing person is also being erased. There’s a clear-cut reason in the episode (they were all on the mission together), but in the comic it’s done just because you remember, evidently. If a case for plagiarism were to be made, it’d be on this point.
So no, definitely not plagiarism or copyright infringement in my book. I haven’t read Matheson’s story in a while, so I won’t comment on that, but I get the feeling that either the episode was influenced by the comic or that both versions were inspired by some prior work.
Sometimes an idea’s time just comes around.