DC's Family Dynamic: "there are a lot of unimaginative people out there..."

So, for some reason I have been following this thread over at Newsarama announcing the new series from J. Torres, The Family Dynamic. I was especially struck by the description of the title, which features a family of heroes:

Sloan, a.k.a. Pyralis the fire elemental, is the dad and leader of the team. He's an army recruiter by day and tries to run the team almost like his own little unit. Gina, a.k.a. Sirocco the air elemental, is the mom and she's a homemaker, the peacekeeper, and the one who keeps the family from becoming too dysfunctional. The kids are Luca (mid-teens), a.k.a. Troylus the water elemental, and Gio (early teens), a.k.a. Terran the earth elemental. The older one is a music lover who takes after his Aunt Maeve (who owns a record company) more than anyone else, while the baby of the family tries to take after his dad and has a love of corn dogs.

Knee jerk, immediate reaction, is that this is very much like a hybrid of the Fantastic Four, Elementals, Noble Causes and the Incredibles. In other words, kinda deriverative.

I was not alone in thinking this, and, this being Newsarama, the post listing the comparisons flew on for about three pages (with, to be fair, a lot of posts of people saying how cool the concept was, and that they looked forward to reading it.)

After the most recent (as of this writing) post was of someone asking if they were the only ones who thought it was just like The Incredibles. Mr. Torres, who was answering the fans all along, posted this:

Probably not, but I suppose some people comment without reading the articles...

Sounds kind of snippy, right?

On one hand, I can see his point. About half of the posts were people (myself included) pointing out the similarities. I can see getting a little sick and tired of the repetition of that. And he did mention this in the article in response to how much FD resembles other works:

While we play with certain archetypes, and not just the Marvel ones, much like Astro City we also try and expand on certain themes and add elements (no pun intended) like the extended family, connections to the previous generation, the "dynamics" between siblings and half-siblings and cousins all within a superhero context. For example, while we have our quartet, there's also a female dynamic duo called Blackbird and Little Wing that's "part of the family." The Dynamics' powers are also tied into myth and magic, and we have some fun those elements.

On the other hand, if Mr. Torres was sick and tired of The Family Dynamic being compared to the FF, Incredibles, et al, then he should not have made it so much like the FF, Incredibles, et al. That kind of similarity cannot be come upon accidentally. Sure, he will probably go in a different direction than Marvel or Pixar did, but he is coming from the same place.

His concept is, flat out, derivirative. I mean, most comics are these days. He is not alone in this. But to get upset at his people pointing out how unoriginal his unoriginal project is show a lack of awareness of what he is doing. He'd be better saying "Listen, yes, it is a family with superpowers, like the FF. But I think I can bring stuff to that concept that no one has done before." Instead we get snippiness.

However, in the immortal words of the rap group ONYX,' B-b-b-b-ut wait it gets worse".

I signed up for e-mail reminders from this thread, So I know if anybody replied. The e-mail actually contains the body of the post in the e-mail, so you don't even have to click back to the website.

When I read Mr. Torres post on Newsarama, something seemed off. I pulled the notification e-mail out of my junk e-mail folder, and found out what was wrong. This is the content of the original e-mail:

Dear GATES71,

J. Torres has just replied to a thread you have subscribed to entitled - J. TORRES: INTRODUCING THE FAMILY DYNAMIC - in the FEATURES forum of NEWSARAMA.

This thread is located at:
http://forum.newsarama.com/showthread.php?t=146338&goto=newpost

Here is the message that has just been posted:
***************
Probably not, but there are a lot of unimaginative people out there...
***************

There may be other replies also, but you will not receive any more notifications until you visit the forum again.

All the best,
NEWSARAMA

There appears to have been editing going on (and not by me either, this is pasted here as I got it). As you can see from the e-mail, what Mr. Torres wrote was some what different.

I wonder why Mr. Torres edited his statement? Was it because it was too harsh? Or was it because he was calling some one unimaginative when he himself was being unimaginative in the work being promoted? Was it because he was respectful of the previous poster's feelings? Or because he didn't want to get called on the carpet for his hypocracy.

Mr. Torres, if you read the thread, has been schilling The Family Dynamic non-stop, even with the cries that it's like other projects. It is creator-owned, so that might mean that Torres gets a higher percentage of money if it does well. But I was hesitant to pick it up even before this latest faux pas. Now, I am definitely not going to pick it up. This comment from Torres sealed that. I guess I have to accept ramant lack of originality in comics these days. That has been a fact of life for over thirty years. But I'd like a little less arrogance out of the people doing the deriverative work. It would make me believe them when they said they were sincerely trying to bring something new to the hackneyed old idea.

This outburst by Torres could have just been an abberation, an out of character moment brought on by frustration. But, being the savvy self-promoter he showed he was earlier in the thread, he should have known what he was trying to sell, it's assets and drawbacks, and not get all pouty when someone points out how derivirative it is.