Thursday, April 25, 2013

Well that's interesting.

The title page of the latest (and, sadly, last) issue of DC's Superman Family Adventures not only contains the credits of the folks who made this issue and the traditional "Superman created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster" credits but, if you read between the panels, you'll also see these new credits:
Superboy created by Jerry Siegel.

Supergirl based on characters created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster.

By special arrangement with the Jerry Siegel family.
That's a lot of creation credits. I guess I'll wait for someone like Jeff Trexler to explain what this means and why it's happening now at The Beat.

That last bit about Supergirl being based on Superman (and, I suppose, 'boy) is particularly interesting though, because that character is singled out by name, whereas this particularly issue is filled to bursting with Superman characters (Both sets of his parents, Lex Luthor, Jimmy Olsen, Lois Lane) and characters based on Superman in the same way Supergirl is (that is, wearing red capes and Superman logos, and, in some cases, coming from Krypton and having his powers, like Steel, Krypto, Streaky, Squeaky and, um, is that Super Turtle...?)

The issue also contains plenty of other characters who generally earn "created by" credits, like Batman and Wonder Woman and, to much more occasionally, Aquaman (Darkseid, the Justice League and a handful of Super Pets also appear).

I've always been curious about the whys and hows of creation credits, as, from a reader's perspective, they seem quite arbitrary. The last DC trade I read, for example, was Secret Six: The Darkest House, and I noticed it had a "Doom Patrol created by Arnold Drake and Bruno Premiani" credit on the title page, as the Doom Patrol appear in two of the seven issues collected in the trade. Other guest stars, like, Jack Kirby's Etrigan the Demon or Keith Giffen's Ambush Bug didn't have "created by" credits, nor did the Secret Six (which may be understandable, as it's basically just a repurposed name from a completely unrelated comic book concept), nor did any of their more prominent individual members, like Bane, Catman or Deadshot.

Should be interesting to keep an eye on the credits pages of DC comics, particularly the ones starring characters who wears capes and S-shields, in the near future...

1 comment:

Aki Alaraatikka said...

Look at how cool one of the gods of evil looks like!
Why not just write Darkseid? Because it`s obvious who he is...
As for the topic, soon one will need a whole page solely for all the credits...