Possible Plagarism

I would like to report possible plagiarism by one of your writers, Jerome Maida, in an article on the comic book 'Wanted' - which was released today.

'Wanted's' Effect Debated

I'm one of the experts quoted in the article and while I was reading it today, I thought that part of it sounded familiar.

A quick check of Wikipedia confirmed my suspicions, as Mr. Maida appears to have taken large portions of his article using Wikipedia's article on the comic book Wanted.

Coincidentally, someone edited the Wikipedia entry yesterday so that the borrowed portions now have completely different text.

From Maida's article:

"The premise of "Wanted," as created by writer Mark Millar and Jones, is that all the world's supervillains decided to band together one day in 1986 and use the combined might of their vast powers - including science, magic and mind control - to not only defeat all the world's superheroes but eradicate them. Once that was done, they proceeded to rewrite reality in their own dark image. Now superheroes are remembered as fiction and a secret cabal of supervillains runs everything."

From Wikipedia:

"The premise of Wanted is that all the world's super-villains decided to band together in 1986 and use their vast collective powers — including mad science, magic and mind control — to eliminate all the world's superheroes and rewrite reality in their own dark image. Prior to this the world was a brighter, more hopeful place. Superheroes are remembered as fiction (as they are in the real world), and behind the scenes a cabal of the leading super-villains runs the entire world."

From Maida's article:

Indeed, the comic appealed to those who liked edgier fare on the shelves, like "The Authority" - and like that title, many of the characters and super-villains are based on DC Comics characters. Likewise, the movie should appeal to those who like "Fight Club" and "The Matrix," since, like those films, it is about a man who finds a new lease on life but becomes increasingly violent and out of the mainstream. Of course, the difference between "Wanted" and those films is that the main character has no desire to improve the world through his increasing violence, but instead embraces it in the pursuit of selfish pleasures and satisfying his ever-growing ego.

From Wikipedia:

"The series is adult in nature, similar to more grown-up 'super-hero' titles such as The Authority or The Ultimates. Like the Authority or the Squadron Supreme, several characters are based on DC Comics characters and super-villains (See below). The series also bears resemblance to the 1999 films Fight Club and The Matrix, as it is about a despondent man in an unfulfilling white-collar job who finds a new lease on life but becomes extremely violent and marked as outside of 'normal' society. It differs from these films in that the main character has no desire to improve the world through this violence, but only embraces it in the pursuit of selfish, egocentric pleasures."

As you can see, the occasional word has been changed - egocentric becoming ego-driven, for instance - but the basic thoughts and sentence structures have been lifted whole-sale.

You can read the original page using the history function on Wikipedia at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wanted_(comics) or by directly going to http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wanted_(comics)&oldid=221709712

I thank you for your attention.

Matt Morrison
Comic Book Historian
starmanmatt@yahoo.com