Robert Forman wrote to ask…
I looked up a few of my favorite TV shows from childhood in Wikipedia and noticed creator credit given to William Hanna and Joe Barbera. I guess I doubt that they came up with all of those characters. The Wikipedia entry for Quick Draw McGraw indicates Michael Maltese wrote all of the shows, and I'll guess he was the person responsible for the characters in that show. Is there a different standard for credits in animated shows?
Yes…and the different standard is often No Standard. There have been some cartoon shows in the last decade or two that were created under a Writers Guild contract and the creator credit on those (and writer credits) flow from the contract and the rules it lays down. But a lot of cartoon shows in recent years weren't done under that contract and not all that long ago, none were. So we were in that jungle where you could create a cartoon show and the guy who ran the studio could put on a "Created by…" credit for himself or his grandson or his Lhasa Apso.
Now — and from here on, we're in the land of Grand Generalizations — animation is more likely to lead to team creation work with writers and artists sitting around a conference table and tossing out ideas and maybe sketching. It might be hard to nail down the point in the process where a given character was officially "created." Bugs Bunny went through a couple of cartoons with changes to his voice, attitude and looks before he solidified more or less into the Bugs we know today. There are even disputes as to which cartoon exactly was the first Bugs Bunny cartoon.
That kind of "gang" creation has been the rationale for the claim that a given cartoon series was the creation of the team, not one or two individuals; ergo, crediting (for example) Hanna and Barbera as creators of everything their studio did for a period. I don't think that was usually fair, I think a lot of cartoons were the creations of one person or one team and I think almost all live-action films or shows have one or two creators.
But anyway: The answer to your question, Robert, is that Quick Draw McGraw is said to have been created by Hanna and Barbera because they owned the studio then.
