Cartoonist Challenges Banksy's Intellectual Property Rights

After viewing the recent Toronto exhibition, The Art of Banksy, Cinders McLeod was surprised to discover that the British graffiti artist, Banksy, may have "pinched her ideas" in certain drawings published in The Glasgow Herald in the 1990s.

For instance, Banksy's Bomb Middle England (2003) bears an uncanny resemblance to McLeod's Anarchic Granny (1999) — both works feature crouching middle-aged ladies, on bended knees, bowling with a lit fuse bomb on a bright green lawn. And if you compare Banksy's Think Tank album cover for the English rock band Blur (2003), to McLeod's Deep Sea Lovers (published in 1997), you'll notice that both images feature a couple, wearing old-fashioned deep sea diving helmets, with their arms wrapped around each other in a loving embrace. The resemblance is striking. (To see a side-by-side comparison of McLeod's and Banksy's work, click here.)