Gundam mecha in American comics? Homage or ripoff?

[ChrisIII]

I've read KINGDOM COME(Drawn by Alex Ross) and ULTIMATE FANTASTIC FOUR (Drawn by Greg Land).


I'm also a fan of Gundam.


Now early in KINGDOM COME, among the new heroes/villains battling we see what appears to be a mech with features resembling these two mechs from Gundam 0080 (Released in 1989):

http://www.mahq.net/mecha/gundam/0080/msm-03c.jpg

The Hy-Gog....


http://www.mahq.net/mecha/gundam/0080/msm-07e.jpg

And the Z-gock-E.


And here's another example. In ULTIMATE FANTASTIC FOUR, at least the Tomb Of Namor storyline, we see H.E.R.B.I.E robots, but these bear little resemblance to the "616" versions. Instead, they're carbon copies of this:



http://www.mahq.net/mecha/gundam/zz/amx-109.jpg

The Kapool, another Gundam mecha this time from ZZ Gundam and Turn A Gundam.



Interestingly, this seems solely limited to Gundam's aquatic mecha (Ripping the more iconic Gundams or Zakus would probably get noticed quicker).

Any thoughts on this? Apparentally Land has a rep as a swiper...

[Inkthinker]

Kingdom Come was full of little homage designs, and a particular theme of the series was "old vs. new", so I can easily see Ross purposefully using a famous Japanese mecha design as the basis for one of the "new" types of superheroes (given that Japan has become such an iconic source for content in the US in the past couple decades).

So in that case, I'd call it an homage. Though to be honest, I'm not entirely sure where the image you refer to in Kingdom Come is... there's a robot on page 21 who's head sorta resembles the images you linked, but that's pretty hard to call either a reference OR an homage.

In the case of Ultimate FF, it might be something else entirely. Greg Land is quite well-known for his use of phototracery, but I don't know how much he's known for homage... I don't read that book, though, so I'm not so familiar with the reference.

Could you post images of the pages in question?

[shanejayell]

Ninja High School did homages to Gundams too.

[Inkthinker]

Well, NHS was (and so far as I know, continues to be) one HUGE collection of homages to EVERYTHING inherent in sereotypical Japanese entertainment. Cat-girls, harems, ninja girls, school uniforms, kung-fu schoolteachers, secret conspiracies, mystic powers, psychic wars, supertechnology, giant robots, intergalactic space opera, crazy inventors, cyborg assassins, martial arts, mecha of ALL types, rivalry, respect, responsibility, sex, virginity, puberty, and chibi. And that's just the stuff from the days when I actually read it.

If it's been popular in anime or manga, NHS has probably done a riff on it.