Reader CM takes issue with my call for a boycott of Jamba Juice:

I understand that you want to “get back” at Jamba Juice for what they did with your artwork, but it is hardly right to do it the way you are. If you want to get back at them Contact Corporate. Do not tell people to boycott the franchises. If not only hurts the people back at corporate, but it hurts the franchise owners, and even more importantly, THE EMPLOYEES. And I am not talking about the manager. I am talking about the college kid working at the register, making juices to pay his rent next week. Especially in the state of our current economy, this tactic of yours is a horrible one. (My emphasis –ed.)

Okay, in light of the nation’s current economic crisis, I will now SUSPEND my call for a national boycott of Jamba Juice. (Should I wait until Friday prayers to make this announcement?)

All my readers, all my fans: You are hereby authorized to spend money at Jamba Juice again. I don’t want my personal kerfuffle with Jamba Juice to further derail America’s economic recovery.

(Personal message to reader CM: Thank you for briefly making me feel like I actually have influence and power beyond my front yard.)

All across America, people will spend the day praying for the humiliation / decreased 4Q earnings of Jamba Juice.

Reader RdC lives in Emeryville CA, home of Jamba Juice. She organized a prayer vigil at Jamba Juice corporate headquarters:

It all went down a few hours ago. We got some Jamba Juices from down the actual store down the street, and set up right in front of the HQ’s main entrance. After about five – seven minutes of noodling around and taking our pictures, a gentleman came out and introduced himself as the corporate council. Whatt??? They sent lawyers out after us! Not even a security guard! …. He lectured at me a bit and let us go.

Corporate Counsel? LOL, Joimba Juice doesn’t hesitate to send out the lawyers, huh? I never had any intention of getting lawyers involved in this kerfuffle, but if Jarhead Juice is gonna sic lawyers on nonviolent, god-fearing prayer warriors, maybe I will hire one of the attorneys who contacted me this week … or maybe I’ll just buy one of those weird white wigs that British politicians wear and sue ’em myself!

“Objection, your honor! My wig is too tight!”

Send in your photos of prayer vigils in front of Jarmbeh Juice franchises; I’ll post them here.

Know hope.

I was interviewed for this article:

“Has Jamba Juice’s Controversial Ad Just Pureed Its Billion-Dollar Dreams?”

It’s hard to see how Jamba is going to execute its strategy to become more a part of its customers’ lives when it can’t handle an online viral ad. Jamba wants to use its new locations and loyal fans to transform Jamba into a breakfast and lunch destination.

Earlier this year, (CEO James) White launched oatmeal for breakfast, and just last month, he started testing lunch– salads, sandwiches, and pizza-type “California Flatbreads.”

“Previously, Jamba food was more of a hobby,” White says of the soft pretzels and baked goods that made up the menu before his makeover. “We want people to have a passion for it.”

Mission Accomplished, I have passion for Jamba! I have so much Jamba passion, give me all your flatbreads and oatmeals! Please let me try the new 90 oz. Jungle-dingle-dongle Boysenberry Blend with Wheatgrass Sidecar!

LOL, this is absurd. You know what? Just sell juice to old people. There’s no shame in it. Stop trying to capture the “ironic disaffected under-30-y.o. internet-addict” demographic.

After all, they will abandon you as soon as a rival juice company bases their online viral strategy on re-appropriating “Two Girls One Cup.”

This funny article on Mediabane picks up on something I totally overlooked:

The people who made the Jamma Juice ad didn’t proofread their own copy. They mix up the character names!

Damn, I’m starting to have grudging respect for the sheer audacity of how hard the ad company was slacking when they made this!

A reader ain’t having it:

You’ve made it clear you don’t want to sue anyone, and that’s because you can’t. If you want to get pissed off, save it for a time when you learn how to draw and are actually protecting original work.

Listen to yourself, “The clip art is public domain, of course, anyone can do anything with it … but check out the word balloons! JAMBA JUICE TOTALLY BIT MY GYWO WORD BALLOON STYLE!”

David, it’s a balloon with words in it. It’s about as original as a wheel or a hammer, you should sue Family Circus. You didn’t invent the concept and I find it hilarious that you want to protect anything other than your words.

You should be flattered, and it’s shocking that it took so long for someone else to do this.

This is why I was initially reluctant to comment on the Jawa Juice ad. Because as soon as I start explaining why I think they bit my style, I have to mention the word balloons, and as soon as I start talking about how their word balloons look like my word balloons, I sound like a crazy man in a bathrobe.

And I don’t want to be that man.

But you know what? I have to speak truth to power. They totally bit my word-balloon style. And, yes, I may sound like a complete maniac saying this, but: I was proud of my GYWO balloon style! Are you kidding? Rounded-edge rectangle with single line going to the character’s mouth? That looked totally fresh! I pushed Quark XPress 4 to its very limits developing that word balloon style!

Anyway, this all speaks to the broader point: How can I use royalty-free clip art and then turn around and complain when somebody else does? I’ve seen a lot of people on the internet make this point.

Let’s make one thing clear: I LOVE CLIP ART. I love that anyone can use it. I love that the same piece of clip art can be used in hundreds of ways, and in each case the context affects how you view the image. I’m totally into that. I love sampling, remixing– all that culture stuff that WIRED magazine writers publish books about.

I’ve got nothing but love for someecards (ironic clip art greeting card company), wondermark (clip art comic), or any of the other 10,000 webcomics that use the same Dover clip art I use.

But the Jarmbur Juice ad campaign looks so totally, exactly like GYWO that I feel they crossed some kind of line. I don’t know if that line is based on legal precedent, or aesthetic judgment, or just a general, common-sense “no biting allowed” reality, but I feel like it exists, and the juice-people crossed it.

From Andy on the Road:

Within the field of trademark law is a term of art – trade dress – to reference protections provided over layout, packaging, and other unique characteristics of a product which, if copied, can cause confusion in the marketplace even if the copier didn’t use the name directly. In other words, trade dress is why I can’t go into my kitchen, develop a new soda, put it in a red can with cursive white script in the same layout as a Coke can, and start selling it in stores.

Exactly. I don’t want people to think I made the stupid Jawa Juice ad campaign! I don’t want people to think I took my beloved Accounts Payable and Accounts Receivable dudes and pimped them out for some overpriced juice franchise.

Because when you look at “Cubicle Picnic” (uggh, I shudder to type those words), don’t you kinda wonder, “Hmm, did the GYWO dude make this ad campaign?”

Shit, even I wondered that. And I’m me.

Who was it who said, “The arc of history is long, but it bends towards juice?”

This whole sad affair has got me thinking about an old friend, someone I haven’t spent much time with in the past few years.

I’m talking about my JuiceMan Pro 410 juicer, of course.

I bought it as a Christmas gift for myself in 1996(?). My parents chipped in $50 to help me buy it, I remember.

Man, I went crazy with that juicer! I would buy, like, 80 pounds of carrots and run ’em through my juicer and then my housemates and I would sit around drinking juice– drinking juice until we felt sick– and then I would take the leftover vegetable gunk and bake it into bread! (Yes, I went to a hippie college.)

Anyway, my good ol’ juice machine ended up where all juice machines end up– in my basement. BUT SOMETHING TELLS ME IT SHALL SOON RISE AGAIN!!!

Maybe later this week I will post an instructional video about how to make your own juice! EMPOWER YOURSELF!

ROLL YOUR OWN JUICE!

Readers chime in on my war against Jemaah Islamiyah Juice:

From reader SD:

I teach college and my silkscreen class just began our section of copyright issues. I cannot wait to show them my vintage signed copy of MNFTIU from a reading at Quimby’s in chicago back in my zine days. Then i’ll show them the juice ads. Then we will have a big discussion about what sucks and what is awesome…

Nothing makes college kids happier than siding with art.

Free message to all college kids: ALWAYS side with art.

From reader AM:

I’m as outraged as anyone over Jarba Juice’s style biting, but there are no Jarba Juice locations in Canada for me to boycott. What can I do to help?

Answer: Pray. Pray for the destruction of the Temple of Juice. No, seriously? Just remember that most corporations are lame, and most advertising/marketing agencies are lame, and this kind of lame, dispiriting appropriation happens all the time. Just always keep that thought somewhere in your head. And drink wine instead of juice.

From reader PB:

First of all I laughed out loud at “Jhumpa Lahiri Juice.” Second of all your effort is picking up steam – a search for “jamba juice david rees” is yielding lots of relevant hits. Keep it up! I have never had Jumba Juice and because of this I promise you I NEVER WILL.

Yes! Our movement is growing! Next step: Figure out what color to change our twitter avatars to. What color represents the exact opposite of juice? Maybe… brown? Or does Jockle Juice sell a brown “Choco-berry Cocoa Quinoa Bomb” juice for $14.99?

From reader MR:

Please rate different brands of gin from best to least best.

We’re having a heated discussion….but no need to phone.

How’s the car?

Whoops! That one’s from my Mom. (My car overheated this weekend in Philly and I called my Mom to complain about it.)

Know hope.

This modern-day David vs. Goliath tale has captured the imagination of the blogosphere!

ComicsAlliance.com:

David Rees, who created the scathing post-9/11 clip art webcomic “Get Your War On,” recently brought our attention to a Jamba Juice advertising campaign that totally, totally rips off the strip. I don’t just mean it uses stock images in a similarly ironic fashion, I mean that it uses exactly the same clip art in exactly the same way…. Rees has called for a boycott of Jamba Juice, so you can do your part by putting down the smoothie and instead of giving them money, give them the mockery that they so richly deserve. (My emphasis)

Timothy Buckwalter:

Yeah, I’m an appropriationist. I take other people’s drawings and twist them into my paintings…. Shepard Fairey, Richard Prince and Jeff Koons have been involved with the legal or court systems over their appropriation….

I’m all for appropriation. 

Except when this happens: a corporation hires a snappy ad agency that makes something in the style of a cool artist.

In this case, Emeryville’s Jamba Juice has aped the hilariously drowl work of David Rees. Actually, “aped” is an under-exaggeration, they have copied (down to the speech bubbles) Rees’s “Get Your War On” comic series. Loads of companies do something similar. refering to something cooler than themselves raises their hip-ness factor….

But is it okay to just take the work of an artist, without asking, and use it to sell your product? Fck no. (My emphasis)

Andy on the Road:

I’m rarely (maybe never) one to advocate an expansion of intellectual property law, and I’m trying very hard to imagine how I would feel if Rees ripped on Jamba Juice instead of the other way around, but I feel as though the law should provide remedy for this sort of shameless ripoff.

(By the way, the Andy on the Road link is a must-read. It’s a very thoughtful post, with a good discussion in the comments about how annoyed I have a right to be re: Jooby Juice.)

More soon! Including a totally serious post from me about all of this.

Juice sucks, drink wine.

Know Hope.

Okay, so I was talking a big game about a National Day of Prayer against Jurmbah Juice, and then I realized I don’t really know how to organize an event like that.

Do we all have to be praying in the space place, or can we pray in the privacy of our own homes? Should we all converge on a Jlobby Juice franchise in Manhattan, and pray at the top of our lungs– and pray and pray until the whole place is empty because of how fervently we’re praying? And then move on to the next one…?

… and just pray our way across America, destroying Jumby Juice franchises left and right, leaving a trail of prayerful destruction in our wake?

SOUNDS GOOD TO ME. I’ll rent a big bus and be in touch …

(NOTE: I’m going to stop typing out J-A-M-B-A Juice because I don’t want to drive their “google hit-ranking,” or “technorati page count,” or “twitter-hit buzz #surging,” or whatever popularity algorithm their online marketing consultants use to justify their outrageous fees.)

I’ve received some nice emails from readers about the intellectual crimes of Jarpa Juice. Thought I’d share them with you, to keep you FIRED UP and MOTIVATED for the upcoming war! (Because this war will not be quick, and it will not be fun, and it will not even be ironically amusing. We are in for a long slog. We are taking down a national juice company, i.e. Jhumpa Lahiri Juice.)

From reader NL:

I can understand that you’re displeased with [REDACTED JUICE COMPANY], but I don’t see why you have to call for suing them. The way I see it, you’ve been loaning your site’s bandwidth to Karate Snoopy for YEARS. I say, hit the dude up for a favor. Have him whoosh over to [REDACTED JUICE COMPANY] corporate and start kicking people in the face. Just let me know if he agrees to do it, please; it’d be an excellent time to invest heavily in ambulance futures. (People who understand this reference are my kind of people –ed.)

From reader DD:

I’m sure you get this all the time, but I’ve been literally reading your shit since mnftiu.cc was just a pink picture of the skewed-ass dude at the computer, and you could only choose fighting or filing. Maybe it was only fighting at the time. (this was back in 2000 –ed.) ALL IM sayin is that i remember when the normal man feat. karate snoopy strip (“Karate Klassic”) was the FRESH SHIT…. I also was finally moved to write to you after all these years ever since I logged on at work today to find this FUCKING TRAVESTY OF JUSTICE aka [REDACTED JUICE COMPANY] appropriation/rip off extravaganza 2k9 edition. I know how fucked that shit is. And I also know who the real OG is. Never give up.

I will never give up! As long as I have breath, I will complain to everyone I meet about the lazy, disingenuous appropriation of my cartooning style by the goofballs over at Jabba Juice!!!

KNOW HOPE.