Japanese manga artist Toyotarou, who first came into prominence as the author of “Dragon Ball” spin-off “Dragon Ball Heroes”, and later was privileged to be selected by “Dragon Ball” author Akira Toriyama himself as his official successor, shared a photo of the cover of VJump he did over social media a few days ago.
However, Japanese Twitter users @Hahihuhegay and @dragonball930 noticed that there was something familiar about Goku’s pose on the cover of VJump. Lo and behold, it appears that Goku’s pose was traced over a panel of Marvel superhero Captain America. As tracing is a Big Deal™ in the Japanese publishing industry, Dragon Ball fans are now clamoring for an official explanation from Toyotarou.
The artist who drew the Captain America comic “referenced” by Toyotarou is Dexter Soy, a Filipino comic artist who has drawn for both Marvel and DC. Instead of being angered, he was claims to be flattered by the “homage”, as well as puzzled as to why a fellow professional artist would trace over his work.
Apparently tagged with this tweet and a part of me feels flattered at the same time I’m scratching my head. pic.twitter.com/szBhdN9DeU
— death_star soy (@dextersoy) May 22, 2018
This is surreal. I grew up as a kid referencing (not tracing) arts of dragonball cards! And now I’m flattered that a dragonball artist is tracing my work! This is weird
— death_star soy (@dextersoy) May 22, 2018
Dexter Soy first came into the scene when Marvel editor Steve Waker saw his work, and offered him the position of illustrator for the 2012 relaunch of Captain Marvel. He has since reacted to the tracing controversy, by posting more samples of his work on Twitter, and offering them as “references”.
