Max Allan Collins on imitating other artists

COLLINS: ...As I said before, not all of these artists are entirely at fault, and what I see in some of those pages-not to set myself up as some kind of expert: I'm a writer, not an artist-but what I see is talent gone down the wrong road, which may come out of what you said before, about not having the influences. You have somebody imitating somebody who's imitating Alex Raymond, and the person who's imitating the guy who's imitating Alex Raymond doesn't know who Alex Raymond is. That's a problem. And Alex Raymond was imitating other people. How much water can you add to the lemonade until there's no more lemon left? It goes away eventually, and there's no point. There's just water.