Let me express appreciation to those who wrote their opinion on this matter in a civilized and intelligent way. I understand a few people had trouble accessing this site trying to respond and got to me off list. While some people did not agree with me most people were polite and courteous. To all those people I express my gratitude.
As I established earlier, the auteur distinction really only existed in movies. While the word had been previously used for a composer, it was first used for film in 1959, with the term films d’auteurs. It is derived from the word for “authorship.” A composer could be fully responsible for the piece that is created but a movie director always has to rely on other people. So maybe we should make up a new word for a comic book creator who, within the boundaries of the media, creates a story. Maybe the word, “COMICTEUR.” This would include Milton Caniff, Hal Foster and even Charles Schultz! Well that’s my nomination for the new word but if you have a better one please let me know! A no prize will be awarded!
I believe that AUTEUR was a back door approach, by many advocates, to limit Stan Lee’s accomplishments and continue with the canonization of Jack Kirby. Sadly, some e-mails called Stan names and a few called me names too. Let’s never do that here. Let’s disagree, but remain civil and even friendly. We won’t post those sorts of e-mail.
While many people talk about giving Kirby the right amount the credit, which we can all agree with, some feel to do so they must take away credits from such people like Steve Ditko, who created the Spiderman we know. They would also take away from Don Heck and Larry Lieber who worked on Iron Man. (Larry worked on Thor also.) That is the part I can’t go along with. And of course, Stan worked at Marvel nearly 60 years without Jack Kirby.
I need to clear up an important point. I was not referring to anyone specific person in writing this. Some people have tried to take ownership of the term, “AUTEUR”, perhaps because they have written about that in their blogs. They felt that I was specifically writing about them. This is totally not true. I know that the term AUTEUR goes back to at least 2010 for comic books, but for me it goes back earlier than that.