Marvel just issued a book called Captain America: The End written and drawn by Erik Larsen. I haven't read it yet but Erik always does fine work and that's not why I'm writing about it and it's not (yet) why folks on the 'net are talking about it. The discussion is all about how on the title page, it says "Captain America created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby."
For the enlightenment of anyone reading this who doesn't know what's wrong with that: Captain America was created by the team of Joe Simon and Jack Kirby. Stan Lee didn't even write anything for the company until the third issue of the Captain America comic book.
A credit like this is a very sensitive issue. There have been times when creators were denied such credits…and I don't mean because there was any dispute as to who had created a given comic book or character. There were publishers who flatly refused to identify anyone as the creator(s) of one of their books. Sometimes, since the company usually claimed ownership of the property, they didn't want to give the actual creator any help should he decide to get a lawyer and contest that ownership.
Sometimes, it was more a matter of not wanting to admit a debt to the creator or to admit that the company had not created the comic. And there were publishers and editors who wanted to claim that prestigious (and perhaps valuable) creator credit for themselves, even though they had minimal — perhaps zero — input into the birth of the idea.
For a time when Joe Simon was suing Marvel for the ownership of Captain America, he ceased to exist. When they reprinted a story that said "by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby" on it, they removed both names and it was forbidden to mention Joe anywhere. During that time, the science-fiction writer Ted White was engaged to write a Captain America prose novel and the dedication in it read, "To Jack Kirby and Stan Lee, without whom there would be no Captain America."
This kind of thing happened a lot in comics. Kirby probably would not have left Marvel in 1970 if they'd been willing to put "Created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby" on books like Fantastic Four and Hulk, as they do now. But they refused back then and I witnessed first hand how nasty they could be about it. Jack in his lifetime endured a lot of such nastiness…and of seeing Stan credited so often as sole creator of all the properties they launched together and even, on occasion, Captain America.
But before anyone gets outraged about this latest miscredit — well, it's too late for that but before it gets to be too widespread — let's remember a very useful aphorism: Never attribute to deviousness that which can be explained by incompetence. I usually change it a bit to "Don't automatically attribute to deviousness…" but the point is basically the same. There is such a thing as an accident. There are things done that shouldn't be done but are because someone screwed-up or just didn't know any better.
Some of the wronging of creators in the past was, it's clear to me, in the "accident" category or at least the "didn't know any better" one. Some, but certainly not all. A lot of folks who worked in comics had such limited experience in other forms of publishing or creative fields that they just assumed that was the way things were done. There were also creative folks who, due to ego or because they felt undercompensated for what they were doing, grabbed credits they didn't deserve from their colleagues. That's another topic for another time.
For now, it's pretty clear to me that crediting Stan instead of Joe in this new Captain America book is an accident. And in the current world of comics where many are trying to right a lot of past wrongs, including credit denials, it's a pretty embarrassing accident. Joe gets his proper credit almost everywhere else now. There's no reason to intentionally do him wrong in this one publication.
If you went to work for a comic book company today, you would find yourself paying for a great many sins of past owners and employees. I have worked in comics for half-a-century and met more people in the field than you can imagine. Leaving aside a few holdovers from the old days who are dead and buried, I don't think I've met anyone at DC or Marvel who defended all past dealings. They all condemn — in private if not in public — some of the shitty things that their predecessors did to the men and women who created the material and worked so hard on it, often for parsimonious fees. Many of the newer people have heroically done and continue to do whatever they could or can to make up for bad pay of the past and other mistreatment.
I am not suggesting the scales are properly balanced or ever can be. But some effort to undo past sins is a whole lot better than no effort. And the bad motives of the past should not instantly be ascribed to those who now work for a company of the same name. Most of them these days are at least trying to do the right thing.