“Comics, Creators, and Copyright: On the Ownership of Serial Narratives by Multiple Authors” (original) (raw)

2013, A Companion to Media Authorship, eds. Jonathan Gray and Derek Johnson (Malden, MA: Blackwell).

In their seminal 1987 work Bond and Beyond Tony Bennett and Janet Woollacott quote from Antonio Gramsci as a front-piece. Gramsci wrote: ''One of the most characteristic attitudes of the popular public towards its literature is this: the writer's name and personality do not matter, but the personality of the protagonist does. When they have entered into the intellectual life of the people, the heroes of popular literature are separated from their ''literary'' origin and acquire the validity of historical figures.'' 1 The beauty of Bennett and Woollacott's work is that they unpack the manner in which the popular hero secret agent James Bond acquired the validity of an historical figure, and much work has been done since on Bond and other protagonists of long-term serial narratives such as Doctor Who, Superman, and Batman that have attained a similar stature. Perhaps in 1937, when he died, Gramsci may have been right about the disinterest in creators of popular literature or at least some popular literature. But comic book authors, or at least those of very popular characters like Superman and Batman, were in the late 1930s and into the 1940s often acclaimed. In the 1950s, though, most work lacked attribution. In the 1960s, the relentless self-promotion of figures such as Stan Lee, who sold comic books on the back of his own personality, shifted the equation somewhat back in favor of creators, writers, and artists, all of whom for the purposes of this chapter I will simply call authors. The rise of fan culture in the 1960s likewise contributed to a growing awareness of creators, albeit with artists like Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, and Neal Adams being more familiar figures than most writers save for Lee. The authorship of comics created jointly is often a point of contention, with debate raging over, for instance, the extent and nature of collaborations between Stan Lee and Jack A Companion to Media Authorship, First Edition. Edited by Jonathan Gray and Derek Johnson.