Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2024/04/03/marvel-retroactively-changes-wolverines-creators-50-years-after-characters-debut.html
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Why?
Ah.
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Typically a retcon means changing something to correct an inconsistency in what came before, This doesn’t establish continuity AFAIK, it just creates a new discontinuity.
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Wondering if Deadpool will bring this up in the movie
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Apparently corporate copyright ownership of the creative “work-for-hire” of employees is no longer enough. Now they want attribution for managers as well.
“I had the brilliant idea of creating a character that would sell lots of books. All they did was design the character, write a bunch of words and draw a bunch of pictures.”
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I’m like a genius prompt engineer and like they are just stochastic parrots and bring me work and when the right random combination comes up I say yes and everything flows from that.
Only problem is the actual writers and drawers and all that but we can automate that and everything will be fine.
Fucking arseholes.
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This is the kind of BS move I’ve come to expect in late-stage capitalist America.
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There’s a large stable of characters Roy Thomas did actually create, I wonder if there was some horse trading on rights/credits/acknowledgements behind the scenes. “We can’t pay you cash for WandaVision, even though you co-created Vision, but how about you get non-financially binding co-creating “credit” for Wolverine. It’ll be part of your legacy, isn’t that better than money?”
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AI-generated art in a nutshell.
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This kinda reminds me of the episode of the Simpson’s where Mr. Burns takes over management of the company softball team; hires a bunch of MLB stars; then takes credit for Wade Boggs homerun because he told him to do that.
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More Marvel bullshit - quick, bc I’m stuck at work, somebody go edit Roy Thomas’ Wikipedia page to truly reflect how marginal he was to the creation of the Wolverine
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Fundamentally the character that debuted in Incredible Hulk 180-182 is nothing like the character that exists now - if we really want to credit the people the helped develop the property into what he is now - you have to credit Claremont for his X-Men run (X-Men 133 in particular, the Wolverine 1982 mini-series); the idea that someone saying, hey go make me a Canadian super-hero that’s mean and small deserves credit is ridiculous.
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. But even within that context, this is a uniquely strange move, in that retroactively bestows creative credit for a successful character…
That isn’t so uncommon, and honestly probably needs to be MORE common. See the fight to get Bill Finger credited as a co-creator of Batman.
upon a salaried member of the managerial staff.
That isn’t common - other than maybe Stan Lee being given credit for a ton of things that he maybe had a hand in the original idea prompt, but didn’t flesh anything out.
I thought it was fairly common knowledge Roy Thomas was involved in Wolverine’s creation. Heck I saw him 2 years ago and got a signed print reproducing the Hulk 181 cover with foil logo!
I guess being alive helps in advocating your contributions. I have a bit of a hard time seeing Marvel giving the credit if there wasn’t any truth to the matter. Comics is usually a team effort in character creation, but I can’t definitively say whether this is accurate one way or the other.
I will say I don’t think this takes anything away from Len Wein. His contributions to comics reaches far and wide.
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Just occurred to me - by their own logic, Ryan Reynolds should now get co-creator credit since no one will ever be able to think about Deadpool without also thinking about Ryan 
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OK but will the creators of Deathstroke be given credit for Deadpool now?
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When I think of how many bosses I had taking credit for design work because they said something like “make a design to wow the buyers”. That’s 99% of the work right there /s
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Ok, I clicked on and read the second link here, and Wein directly acknowledges that Thomas came up with the name Wolverine. I’m not sure I have a problem crediting him as a co-creator if that’s the case. I understand it’s more important for the actual writers and artists to get credit than for management, but if he came up with the name, he came up with the name. Maybe this changes the financial distribution of who gets paid licensing fees, I don’t know, but I don’t have a problem, in theory, with giving him credit here.
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Coming up with the name should require more effort than listing some Canadian predators. “Let’s see, what is small and mean and from Canada?” Isn’t very creative, if you see what I mean.
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Yeah, it sounds like “Wolverine” was not the only name he recommended. “The Badger” would not have been as iconic (although there is a clone of a clone of Wolverine named Honey Badger now…)
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