^ I have something similar to this with my published series. My published series is about wolves so it gets compared to Wolf's Rain and Off-White a lot. And it's so aggravating because then they look at me like I'm stealing content. When the ONLY thing that my comic has in common with those is that it's about wolves, otherwise, story, characters, mythos--are all completely different.
But professionally made, published wolf comics are extremely rare, so until the genre grows there's just a handful of us and we all get compared to the big, popular ones.
Most of the time, people say it without thinking about it. It's a reflex for a lot of people and I know they don't mean it maliciously. But it just gets annoying having to hear it constantly; conventions are the worst about it...I do get the few rotten eggs who try to break me down with my wolf comic, but in all honesty that drives me more. Hatred propels me to defend my comic more and push it more out there to show it's not like Wolf's Rain or Off-White at all.
But all of that is in small cases. For the most part, my wolf comic and my webcomic Between the Realms, have had more love than hate to which I've been extremely grateful.