I’ve been hearing about a television show called Sunny, and just read a review on The AV Club. I was horrified to learn its premise, which involves a woman’s relationship with a robot stand-in for her dead husband, because it’s identical to a Martian Sun story in the works, “Revenant Lane.” Not that it can be proven, but I started the first draft of the comic’s script long before I’d ever heard of the show, and I started reaching out to artists back in March. I suppose that can be proven, but as there’s been some difficulties on the art side, I won’t be going into details. (Theoretically, it could’ve been out by now, obviating this entire issue). So this raises the question of how to proceed, anticipating possible charges of plagiarism.

In fact, twice I’ve had to abandon comics in development because I found out they were too similar to — wait for it — episodes of Futurama. One called “Imposters,” about a pop idol hunting her robot dopplegangers (“I Dated a Robot”) and another called “Devotees,” about a vampiric celebrity who fed on her fans (“The Thief of Baghead,” which I don’t believe I’ve seen). Even more embarrassing, one time I realized a story was similar to an episode of SpongeBob! It was about a soldier returning from a space war who couldn’t tell if she was home or still surrounded by aliens — like that time SpongeBob and Patrick went in Sandy’s rocket. That story? It was entitled “Martian Sun.”

To be honest, Sunny is a show on Apple TV, and by the time “Revenant Lane” is published, months from now, I don’t know if it’ll still exist in our cultural consciousness like Futurama or SpongeBob. By that logic, the whole issue is moot anyway, because I haven’t started building the readership to receive “Revenant Lane” in the first place. So, this question is more philosophical in nature, especially since I’ve already invested money in the comic. It’s gonna happen!

More than that, “Revenant Lane” is a work of science fiction, a genre that’s always building on old ideas. We barely even say that every alien invasion story owes a debt to The War of the Worlds, because the idea seems like such a natural result of speculation. And that original novel itself came from an existing literary tradition, borrowing from proto-scifi novella The Battle of Dorking.

Of course, these two stories won’t be separated by decades. That “Revenant Lane” will follow so soon after Sunny premieres, it’s gonna look suspicious. So, this is where my actual argument comes in. As a media critic, I always knew where I stood on the Hunger Games vs. Battle Royale debate. In that case, movie nerds would criticize The Hunger Games (movies or books) for being derivative of the earlier (and usually, by their accounts, superior) Battle Royale. The extreme view is that The Hunger Games shouldn’t exist if it’s just a ripoff.

The counter example is that Vince Gilligan claims he wouldn’t have gone ahead with Breaking Bad if he’d been aware of Weeds. If The Hunger Games can offer anything different, its existence is justified, and we’ll evaluate its merits from there. I still think Battle Royale is better than what I’ve seen of The Hunger Games (the second movie), but what about Squid Game?!

It’s a self-serving argument, for sure, but I still believe in it. I can’t really prove that the upcoming “Revenant Lane” wasn’t swiped from a very recent TV show, and that makes me sad. But hopefully you’ll find it has its own merits, too.

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