Mediocrity can only be so profitable.
Well, that wipes out most pop culture. And as someone who deals in stolen ideas for a living, it strikes me that most commercial success is built on the back of a tried and true method. (Which is why when Gaiman did Sandman it was a crashing success - "crashing" as in the noise, because it was genuinely original and no one had really thought of doing a moody fantasy piece aimed at literati and, by accident, broadening the genre.)
William Gibson's Neuromancer is leaps to mind in this regard. Cyberpunk? Already well explored even by 1983. Bad girl with knives? Done since Hitchcock's Vertigo, and the aforementioned Red Sonja, if not before (gun molls in the 1930s?). AIs? Really well explored in the Golden Age of Science Fiction with Asimov. But Gibson used some snappy writing, fused some well explored concepts together, blatantly stole themes form his friend Bruce Sterling, and as a result won two big literary prizes, made millions of dollars, and fueled his career for the next 30 years with one of the most well-known science fiction novels ever. There's not much originality in it though.
Curiously enough, Gail Simone is doing signings at my local comic shop this Sunday. She's travelled a long way to get here for 90 minutes of signatures.
