Wearing a black-brimmed round hat, a black short vest, and yellow clothes, the old man is slender, and the short and fat sweet potato with three hairs on his head is a pair of good friends who have accompanied many generations through their childhoods. good friend.
Wang Ze-Double Service
The comic "Old Master", which was once popular in Hong Kong, mainland China and the Chinese community, is humorous and reflects the current situation, and has brought beautiful childhood memories to countless people. But what is unexpected is that when we look back when we grow up, we actually find that there is a plagiarism scandal hidden in it for nearly half a century.
The beautiful filter of childhood was a bit broken. After understanding the whole story, the feeling is really hard to describe.
The "Old Master" that most people are familiar with was created by a Hong Kong cartoonist whose pen name is "王泽". "Wang Ze" was originally named Wang Jiaxi . This pen name is his son's real name.
Wang Jiaxi was born in Tianjin in 1924. He immigrated to Hong Kong in 1956 and the United States in 1974. He is a Chinese-American. In 1962, Wang Jiaxi began to publish the "Old Master" cartoons in newspapers. The humorous Old Master series was loved by Hong Kong and mainland audiences and became one of the most popular cartoons in the last century.
However, the prototype of "Old Master" is not actually Wang Jiaxi's original work.
Pengdi , formerly known as Feng Di, is a native domestic cartoonist. He was born in Chengdu, Sichuan in 1907. As early as the 1930s, he created the cartoon images of "Old Master" and "Old White Potato", which correspond to Wang Ze's Old Master, Big sweet potato.
If you put Pengdi and Wang Ze's Lao Fuzi together, you will find that the characters are exactly the same, with similar names, appearances, personalities, and some plots.
Writer Feng Jicai is not dissatisfied with plagiarism in the literary world and has spoken out on the matter many times. In 1999, Feng Jicai published "Pengdi's Old Master and Wang Ze's Old Master" in a newspaper; in 2001, he published the book "Cultural Excavation: Unearthed Old Master", revealing the original secret of the popular comic "Old Master".
Feng Jicai believes: "If there were no friends, there would never be Wang Ze's old master."
To be honest, if such a thing were to happen now, there would be an uproar on the Internet immediately. But at that time, there was no Internet and underdeveloped communications often resulted in many similar plagiarism incidents not being discovered in time.
At that time, there was no information between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait. In addition, there were ten well-known events in the 1960s and 1970s, which also caused great damage to literary and artistic creation. Pengdi was once implicated in comics. Because his "Old Master" series focused on satire and was highly critical, it was later classified as inappropriate and stopped creating.
Due to all these reasons, few people know that Pengdi is the one with the best.
Pengdi, style and knowledge: In the 31st year of the Republic of China, Pengdi painted Old Master
It is undeniable that Wang Jiaxi's "Old Master" works are indeed more widely circulated and popular than Pengdi's, and Wang Jiaxi is famous all over the world. . In fact, Pengdi didn’t know about this until his death in 1983, which shows how blocked information was between regions at that time.
At that time, Pengdi was seriously ill in bed and was unable to protect his own rights. According to his grandson, after Pengdi learned about this, he became more depressed and less talkative.
In that era, the awareness of originality and intellectual property rights was actually very weak, and there were no legal regulations. Plagiarism was common. Take some popular songs in the 1980s and 1990s as an example. There were also many suspicions of plagiarizing Japanese songs.
The incident between Pengdi and Wang Jiaxi was also published in newspapers at the time, and some seniors in the comic industry also expressed their attitude. However, despite the facts, Wang Jiaxi did not admit that he had plagiarized.
Wang Jiaxi's son Wang Ze said that he asked his father about this matter. Wang Jiaxi explained to him that he had been to Beijing, Tianjin and other places and saw the Old Master comics circulating on the market, which inspired him. It was not plagiarism.
Wang Ze still doesn’t understand why someone suddenly smeared his father. If Wang Jiaxi only relied on plagiarism, he would never have been able to paint for forty years.
To be fair, Pengdi's works are indeed not as popular and popular as Wang Ze's second creation. Wang Jiaxi has also injected new content into "Old Master", which is more humorous and modern. Of course, such a long-lasting creation cannot be entirely based on plagiarism. .
However, this does not erase the fact that the characters were plagiarized in the early stage. It is indeed unreasonable to claim that Old Master is his original creation. After all, although the 1930s was early, it was not undocumented.
I personally think that my friend's "old master" failed to be passed down and flourished, because to a large extent he was "born at the wrong time". The 1930s was too early, and the publicity at that time was simply not comparable to that of the 1970s and 1980s.
Due to various factors of the times, Pengdi failed to successfully promote his works and left a deep impression on people. Wang Ze met at the right time, seized the business opportunity, and made "Old Master" famous, went abroad, and became a classic.
"Old Master" is a beautiful childhood memory for many people. It is really difficult to go back and overthrow it now. The work is still good.
Although this matter can be regarded as an "old account" of the last century, at a time when infringement and piracy are becoming increasingly rampant, it is even more necessary to cultivate originality and copyright awareness. Those who have meritorious service should be praised, and those who have achieved success should not be selectively ignored just because of their high status.
Speaking of which, in the past few days, Chinese comics have revealed a head comic that plagiarized Japanese comics and Hong Kong comics. The copied comics are relatively old, so they were also found out. After all, the people who read comics back then are just old, not gone. And it is very easy to verify things now. Facts speak louder than words.
