Imitation is said to be the sincerest form of flattery and that’s all very well and good until someone actually copies you and then you reconsider how flattered you are that someone would out and out copy you.
Of course if the effort is made to at least differentiate a little, deviate enough to show your mark then maybe it’s a little easier to swallow.
Such is fact of life in the popular culture universe. If you are popular then there will be similar material produced in order to try and catch some of the overspill. Currently Twilight is probably a good example in the book world, with their distinctive covers I’ve lost count of the number of knock off covers trying to cash in on the chances that your dodgy great aunt might pick up the wrong book by mistake.
Then others argue that Twilight itself is derivative of its own predecessors and I am of course in no argument there although I don’t condemn on this basis either. One of those predecessors was Buffy the Vampire Slayer which was a trailblazer most certainly, now take a look at these two covers:
The first is from Buffy the Vampire Slayer and features an iconic publicity shot from either season one or two, the second is from the Vampire Academy series:
All I’m saying is that they could have tried not going down that path. OR are we going to call “homage” in this case?
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