Coincidence?

I suppose that there are certain ideas that are bound to be repeated in the course of imagination and creativity. For example, I wonder how many other people who hadn't heard of Edison came up with the idea for the light bulb. Once in a while I'll get an idea for something, only to find out later on that someone else either thought of it first or marketed it first. I once had the idea that using the same technology that makes Transition lenses go dark when you go outside could be applied to contact lenses, so that you wouldn't have to put anything on in order to have shaded vision. But someone told me it was already done somewhere, so I chalked it up to coincidence.

Then I was reading the comics in yesterday's paper, and I came across one of my favorites, Foxtrot. When I got to the punchline, I knew that another one of my ideas had been imagined by somebody else. Take a look for yourself.

Foxtrot, July 10, 2005

My short-lived comic, The Green Sheet Chronicles,
drawn and posted May 26, 2003

Strange, eh?