Stan Lee or Bob Kane?

Stan Lee or Bob Kane?

  • Total voters
    4
Great question. And welcome!

I'd have to go with Stan Lee. Bob Kane co-created Batman, but as far as I know, that was his only major contribution. And it's a huge one, for sure. No doubt about it. But with Stan Lee, he co-created pretty much an entire universe for Marvel. Marvel wouldn't be who they are without him.


Edit:

Added a poll and moved to the Polls forum because it's a perfect thread to have there.
 
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Is this a question of which one is a bigger thief and douche?

That would be Kane, but Lee is almost as bad.
 
E said:
Is this a question of which one is a bigger thief and douche?

That would be Kane, but Lee is almost as bad.
Click to expand...

I was about to post more or less the same thing.

Bob Kane muscled Bill Finger out of credit and royalties for the creation of Batman.

Stan Lee had a reputation for screwing over his collaborators and taking credit for works that were almost entirely the product of the artists (Ditko and Kirby in particular). "Marvel Style" script-writing is more or less an excuse for Stan Lee to getting writing credits on a whole bunch of stories without doing much storytelling at all. Lee's major contribution to Marvel was by letting Jack Kirby be Jack Kirby, and then he treated him like ****.

Kane's was more blatant, Lee's had a wider scope.

Both are lionized creators who's contributions were more the product of their collaborators than themselves.

Edit: To clarify, these are both situations where a creator got screwed out of creator credits and royalties by getting locked into work-for-hire contracts.
 
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Zombipanda said:
I was about to post more or less the same thing.

Bob Kane muscled Bill Finger out of credit and royalties for the creation of Batman.

Stan Lee had a reputation for screwing over his collaborators and taking credit for works that were almost entirely the product of the artists (Ditko and Kirby in particular). "Marvel Style" script-writing is more or less an excuse for Stan Lee to getting writing credits on a whole bunch of stories without doing much storytelling at all. Lee's major contribution to Marvel was by letting Jack Kirby be Jack Kirby, and then he treated him like ****.

Kane's was more blatant, Lee's had a wider scope.

Both are lionized creators who's contributions were more the product of their collaborators than themselves.

Edit: To clarify, these are both situations where a creator got screwed out of creator credits and royalties by getting locked into work-for-hire contracts.
Click to expand...

Yes. That's exactly it.

To elaborate on Kane/Finger: my understanding is that while Kane created Batman, the character bore little resemblance to the Batman we know. Bill Finger made the character what he is now. But he gets squeezed out of credits.
 
E said:
Yes. That's exactly it.

To elaborate on Kane/Finger: my understanding is that while Kane created Batman, the character bore little resemblance to the Batman we know. Bill Finger made the character what he is now. But he gets squeezed out of credits.
Click to expand...

According to most accounts, Kane's Batman more or less looked like Superman with a red costume, a wing harness modeled on Davinci's flying machine and a little mask that only covered his eyes. Finger pulled out a book with pictures of bats and suggested "Hey, let's actually make the costume look like a bat and also give him a bat-eared cowl!". He also did all of the writing and character building which established Batman as a crime-fighting detective.

At that point in time, writers often went uncredited, and since Bob Kane's name was signed on the cover when the book was issued, National Comics gave the creator credit to Kane. Kane then signed Finger (who worked for Kane's studio) to a work-for-hire contract to do the scripting.

So......... yeeeeeeah.
 
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