Starcke naked Superman

Philippe Starcke is in the news for announcing his retirement by denouncing design. Core77 has more on that; for our purposes, the accompanying photo exemplifies how the art world freely exploits pop culture trademarks.

It's a symbiotic relationship, extending beyond the art world to include charities and churches, whose appropriation of others' trademarks in the name of higher values is notorious. For the comics community, such appropriation has served in part to legitimize what had for decades been dismissed as a junk medium.

Now that sequential art has gone mainstream (insert obligatory pows, bams, etc.)--and the commodification of marks in the art and charity worlds is increasingly conspicuous beyond the narrow confines of high art--the issue of design dilution is growing more acute.