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The Return of Josh Hoopes to DeviantArt – Be Warned

Josh Hoopes calls himself a Targeted Individual, and you can read his complaints about being such on his Facebook page. But this may have something to do with his repeated attempts to scam upcoming comic creators and smaller publishers, many of which have been successful.

He usually does so by recruiting artists pretending to be a high-paying publisher — including Wizard or Image Comics — using many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many pseudonyms. He then sells those art services to small publishers at low page rates, using his recruited artists to fill those jobs. And then he disappears with the money, leaving unpaid creators who are rather annoyed when they find their work published in print and a publisher not knowing anything was wrong — and he's even tried to double dip.

He has also masqueraded selling fake art by Todd McFarlane and Frank Miller, even pretending to be Lalit Kamar or Arthur Adams, and was successfully employed by Com.x, Tokyo Pop, and Penny Farthing Press by people willing to believe he was Adams working for a discount. He even tried it on with another famous comics scamster Rob Granito.

Yes, there's lots to love about Josh Hoopes.

But now, at least, he is using his own work to try to get work.

He has just joined DeviantArt under the name phoenixdown101 and is touting for work. But surprise, surprise, that actually includes his own work this time. Here's a look.

London film writer/director/producer Marius Smuts, the man behind Comic Book Kingdom in film festivals now, enquired about the artist and their availability and then recognised the real name when it came through. And then he thought to tell Bleeding Cool.

Josh Hoopes has posed on DeviantArt a fair few times before using art that was not his own, and with fake identities, and has cammed a number of people. I am not sure what his game is now, but I would be very careful.

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