Well, he’s since acknowledged that, at the very least, the image was brought to him as an idea by one of the artists working for him and he copied it without checking where that other person got it from. So at best, he’s an idiot.
Of course, that leaves aside the question of all of these. (Warning: massive page with lots of images; slow to load.) The full press release from Goldman is at the bottom of the page.
Let’s hear what Todd Goldman has to say: “I made a judgment error and did not research the background of this particular submission.” See? He’s innocent. He just happened to run across this web comic and naturally assumed it had been put online for the purpose of having its picture traced and its caption copied word for word so other people could sell it. Granted a little background research would have cleared up that misapprehension but it’s a mistake anyone could have made.
As for numerous other allegations of plagiarism, Goldman goes on to explain: “This is just a bunch of hater artists trying to take me down.” Bastards and their damn intellectual property rights. Do they have any sympathy for how difficult it is to be a cutting edge commercial artist with no personal creativity? You have to spend hundreds of hours looking for works by other artists who are both talented enough to copy but obscure enough so you don’t get caught. Or at least small enough that you can outlawyer them and still make a decent profit after paying legal fees.