The Oxford English Dictionary defines “auteur” as:
A film director whose personal influence and artistic control over his or her films are so great that he or she may be regarded as their author, and whose films may be regarded collectively as a body of work sharing common themes or techniques and expressing an individual style or vision.
Comic book fans agree that Jack Kirby was a great comic book artist and storyteller. His accomplishments will not be diminished here. Having failed in their legal efforts to have him declared the creator and original copyright holder of most Marvel Comics, many Kirby activists are now trying to modify or remove the writing and editing credits of Stan Lee and marginalize his work, without providing any evidence for doing so. Much of this seems to come from the fact that Stan was a Marvel employee for 70 years and as a result ended up financially better off than Kirby, who was a freelancer. It also annoys the Kirby advocates that Lee is still alive and gets attention and publicity from the movies. Currently, they are advocating the view that Kirby was the auteur, the actual and sole creator of the core characters of Marvel Comics.
Hypocritically, the “Kirby as auteur” theory takes credit away from other creators, something the advocates claim happened to Kirby. Spider-Man, Marvel’s most successful creation, is by Lee and Steve Ditko. It is not the unseen variant of the “Fly” version that Kirby suggested. The X-Men only came into their own years after Kirby left it, after the title had been restocked with new characters. Rather than supporting the concept that all creators should receive recognition for the actual work they did, here they say only Kirby—not Ditko, not John Buscema, not John Romita, certainly not Stan Lee was the sole auteur of Marvel.
In Marvel’s formative years, the late fifties, which included the monster era, and early sixties, Stan Lee did a lot of the plotting, maybe most of it. We have evidence of this in his giving the plots to his brother, Larry, to script. And there are some written plot outlines. Even Kirby’s early interviews have him stating how much input Stan had in plotting the stories. But those interviews are often ignored by the “Kirby did everything” campaigners. Yes, as time went on there is evidence that Kirby did more plotting. But there is no evidence to show he did it all by himself.
To compare a comic book artist to a director, is a huge fallacy. Often, when people try to make such analogies, they jump to incredible conclusions. For example, football fans will often compare a game to a “war” and the game becomes an actual battle. Therefore, they believe, anything is fair. Your opposition becomes the enemy and there are no rules. They’ll want to kill the opposing team. Well no, there are rules and a sporting event is not a war, but people use that analogy all the time.
Comic book artists come into a situation with much less freedom than auteur movie directors. Artists are dealing with established characters, necessary formulas (there has to be a five-page fight scene, you have certain characters, Superman’s face must always look the same) and a great deal of continuity. They are not creating a separate, unique and personal project; they are creating another installment in a series.
It is more appropriate to compare comic book creation to a TV series, where it is a producer’s medium, not a director’s. Yes, a director makes a difference, but all episodes of a TV series look very much alike. There may be ten different directors in a year, but the series intentionally looks like it had just one. Like a TV show, comics have a “story editor.” The TV director/comic book artist has some creative input, but does not have creative control.
The comic book penciller is more analogous to to a TV Director, whose principal job is director of photography. The inker is the lighting director and often shares the make-up, set design and costume design with the penciller. While both the penciller and writer determine what goes into the panels, it is the penciller that often determines how the panel is staged. If the artist is both the writer and the artist, his control is greater, but the directions of the publisher and story editor remain. And we know that all editors have often make changes in the submitted pencils.
The auteur may make permanent changes in the cast and have his choice of endings. Comic book artists and TV show directors traditionally must leave characters the way the found them.
On TV and in comics, someone oversees the storylines and scripts, and hires the writers. On TV that job might fall to the producer or showrunner; in comics, to the editor. On TV the director turns his work over to the producer, who has the final cut. In comics, editors, like the TV producer, make changes and is in charge of the final product, including the scoring.
In comics, the penciller has the latitude to make some changes in what he draws, but really has no choice in choosing the writer or inker or colorist. The auteur will be in control of the creative process from its beginning all the way to its end: on TV, in the editing room, making cuts and creating scenes and the “final cut”; in comics, choosing the writer, inker, letterer, colorist and overseeing all of the creative decisions. Both the TV director and the comic book artist must leave the project in the hands of others to finish so that they may start the next episode.
Jack Kirby said on many occasions that once his finished pencils were handed in, he never even saw the finished product. So what impact could he have had on the dialogue?
Even at DC, where Kirby was both writer and editor, Kirby didn’t have creative control. Publisher Carmine Infantino altered not only Kirby’s scripts, but also the faces of characters in his “ultimate” New Gods saga, which was cancelled pretty quickly. Yet Kirby’s advocates only criticize Stan Lee for his “interference” with Kirby’s vision.
So, while there may be similarities, the medium of comics is less like movies–where an auteur can exist–than it is the medium of television.
In collaborative media, auteurs need not apply.