Today in Comics History, January 2: Happy birthday, Don Heck!

Born on this day in 1929: Dashing Don Heck, longtime Golden Age and Marvel artist! He molded the backbone of the MCU (and thus should have been swimming in cash dollars, alas) by co-creating Iron Man, the Wasp, Black Widow, Hawkeye, The Swordsman, Mantis, Wonder Man, Polaris, and Havok, as well as drawing The Avengers, The X-Men, Amazing Spider-Man, Strange Tales, Tales to Astonish, Strange Worlds, World of Fantasy, Journey into Mystery and more, and stints on the comic strips The Phantom and Terry and the Pirates. Plus work on DC's Wonder Woman, Justice League of America, Lois Lane, The Flash, and lots of others. And the proverbial, much, much, more! Whew! Busy Don!


from The Mighty Marvel Calendar 1976 (Marvel, 1975) and Marvel Age#97 (Marvel, February 1991)

Where the Heck? IV: The Quest for Credit Where Credit Is Due

So, Iron Man #1 be creditin' the original creators of Shellhead like this:


Credits page from Invincible Iron Man (2015 series) #1 (December 2015)
Which is to say, as I've been complaining about quite a bit in the recent past (1, 2, 3), not at all)…(sigh)

But Iron Man #2 be creditin' the creators like this:


Credits page from Invincible Iron Man (2015 series) #2 (December 2015)
Hey, let's take a closer look:


Hooray! Thank you, Marvel, for properly crediting Larry Lieber and Don Heck as co-creators of Iron Man for the first time since Secret Wars began this summer.

Also, for the first time ever this week:


Credits from Batman and Robin Eternal #3 (December 2015)
I might quibble about using the word "with" instead of "and," but after 75+ years, this is a good step.

Next up: getting proper credit for the most essential Star Wars character of them all in each and every Star Wars comic book:

Jaxxon the Giant Green Star Wars Rabbit created by Roy Thomas and Howard Chaykin

Where the Heck III: What should have been our armor becomes a sharp and angry sword (Still No Credit Where Credit Is Due)

Well, Armor Wars, the five-issue Secret Wars miniseries is done and dusted (and bagged and boarded and marked down for the quarter issue bin at your local comic book store). Yep, quite a few of of the 49 Secret Wars miniseries are starting to wrap up, leaving us looking longfully at the finish line a few miles ahead and hoping everybody remembers that to get Johnny Storm down from hanging on the firmament where he's been stuck since Doom hung him up there like some Doomsmas tree ornament made out of flamy unstable molecules. As for Armor Wars, it's as good a time as any to tally up and point out that Marvel went and unbroken 0-5 on giving Don Heck and Larry Lieber proper credit for co-co-creating Iron Man. As you may remember (go ahead! remember!) I pointed out here that Marvel gave incorrect creator credits in the first two issues here, and that they deleted the creator credits entirely in the following two following issues here. For the record, here's the page of Armor Wars #5 where they managed to squeeze in practically everybody's name short of Robert Downey Jr. and Irving Forbush:


Credits page of Armor Wars #5 (November 2015)
Let me just show you what ya shoulda added there, Marvel:

Iron Man created by Stan Lee, Don Heck,
Larry Lieber, and Jack Kirby

Well, let's see if it gets fixed in the inevitable trade paperback (I'll be checking!) or on the credits page for October 7th's Invisible Iron Man volume 7, #1. Or is that volume 8? Doesn't matter. I'll be checking. (shaking my hoof warningly at Marvel)

As for Armor Wars itself, it died pretty much as it lived: big and explodey. It's far from one of my favorite Secret Wars tie-ins at all, and issue #5 didn't redeem it, being pretty much a couple dozen pages of exposition shouted over a big-ass fight sequence. F'r example:


Panels from Armor Wars #5 (November 2015), script by James Robinson, pencils and inks by Marcio Takara,colors by Esther Sanz, letters by Travels Lanham
Followed by more explosions and explanations...


And then even more destruction and deconstruction...


Before everybody gets back on stage for the big-summing up, hosted, as far as I can tell, by the Earth-Battleworld's dimensional counterpart of Natasha Irons:


…and a coda mock-flooded with the promise for adventures and excitement to come in that crazy little world of Armor Wars City, until of course Marvel-Earth gets put back together next month, like a hastily-assembled jigsaw puzzle, just to get it off the table so you've got room for dinner.


Armor Wars, everyone! Armor Wars. Armor Wars, won't you?

(BTW:)

Iron Man created by Stan Lee, Don Heck,
Larry Lieber, and Jack Kirby

Where the Heck II: Veteran of the Secret Wars (Continuing Credit Where Credit Is Due)

We're about halfway through Marvel's gynormous Secret Wars mega-event, or as I prefer to call it "You liked the Age of Apocalypse? Well, here's fifty of 'em!". Although they're kind of using up their "What If?" quota for the 2010s pretty fast, I'm enjoying a lot of the series, especially Planet Hulk, X-Men '92, Runaways, Amazing Spider-Man: Renew Your Vows, Ghost Racers, Giant-Size Little Marvel, Captain Marvel & the Carol Corps, and the "nontinuity" of Deadpool's Secret Secret Wars flashing back to the original Secret Wars. And last week's Howard the Human was as delightfully surreal as I had hoped, with glorious art by Jim Mahood, reminding me of Mark Martin's Gnatrat from the 1990s. (And yes, that's a big compliment from yours little stuffed truly.)

But you may remember when I recently chided Marvel Comics for listing the creators of Iron Man incorrectly in Armor Wars #1. To sum up briefly, the "created by" line reads


when it should read

Iron Man created by Stan Lee, Don Heck,
Larry Lieber, and Jack Kirby

Yeah! Don't forget Heck and Lieber, guys!

Sadly, though, the credits pages of Armor Wars #2 continued to insist


And #3 and 4 averted redressing the problem by avoiding any "created by" credit whatsoever:


C'mon, Marvel! You've got one issue of Armor Wars left in the miniseries to give Heck 'n' Lieber their due. especially since you'd gotten it right up until that point, as seen in tehthecredits of Superior Iron Man #9:


Heck, if you can get this guy's credit right...


That's about all I need to say right now about Secret Wars: Fight for the Right to Party, except for this...


Panel from "Misty and Danny Forever" in Secret Wars: Secret Love #1 (October 2015); script by Jeremy Whitley; pencils, inks, and colors by Gurihiru; letters by Clayton Cowles
…which is set on a realm of Battleworld so bizarre that Colleen Wing's apartment door opens outwards (even though its hinges aren't on the outside). Are they on the same world as Mystery Science Theater 3000's "Gunslinger?"


If so, I so wanna see the Daughters of the Dragon fight Roger Corman!

(And remember:)

Iron Man created by Stan Lee, Don Heck,
Larry Lieber, and Jack Kirby

Where the Heck? (Credit Where Credit Is Due)

So, I'm really pleased...more pleased than punch, tickled beyond pink...that at last Marvel has begun properly crediting (some of) its character's creators. And long past time too. I do understand the tricky legal precedent of Marvel's putting this in published writing on work-for-hire characters, which is probably why we're not seeing it on characters created after the sixties. (This lucrative movie mania may have something to do with it as well.) I'm not privy to whether Marvel is compensating creators who did work prior to the royalty programs (I'm going to guess, sadly, no). I don't know whether creators are getting proper royalties on trade paperback or digital comics sales — publishing platforms that were pretty much inconceivable at the time of paychecks stamped with a "legally binding" work for hire shorthand (endorse the check to get your money and you've signed the contract). (Again, gonna guess maybe no.) I'm hoping these credits are just the beginning of more proper recognition for and compensation to Marvel's creators. (Anyway, it sure beats the days when all you got was "Stan Lee Presents…") Here's some recently published credits from Marvel mags:


Take note of that last one, which is (properly) credited on every book entitled "X-Men," from Uncanny to Amazing to Adjectiveless, even though the books don't, in most cases, star any of the characters from that very first issue of X-Men back in 1963. (Except for the increasingly inaccurately titled All-New X-Men.) So, too, you get proper credits for the first creation of the characters even if they're not exactly the ones created back in the Silver Age. F'r 'bother example, I'm pretty sure Joe 'n' Jack, and Stan 'n' Larry 'n' Jack , never foresaw a cool flying black Captain America, a kick-ass female Thor, or a soon-to-star in his own major motion picture ex-con Ant-Man. And it sets a particular precedent: Joe Simon and Jack Kirby are the creators of Captain America, even tho' Stan Lee and Gene Colan created Sam Wilson, the new Captain America.


Pay special attention to those last couple: they set up a precedent I'll be talking about later.

Now, I happen to think that this following created by credit oughta be in reverse, seeing as Kirby drew the Silver Surfer into Fantastic Four with Stan Lee having no idea at the time who or what he was. But it fits the template: scripted goes first. Eh, close enough.


There's a small handful of more recent characters who get creator credit, but it seems to be mostly those creators who have (justly) raised their voices about it.


Still, no in-magazine creator credit for characters headlining modern-day series like Black Widow (created by Stan Lee, Don Rico, and Don Heck), The Punisher (created by Gerry Conway and Ross Andru), or Rocket Raccoon (created by Bill Mantlo and Keith Giffen), for instance. I hope they are soon. Like I said, it's a darn sight better than "Stan Lee Presents..." and a good improvement on Marvel's hesitant and halting attempts only about five years ago to be cloyingly clever about it without spelling out anything that might sound legal, as in these credits-page "salutes" to Stan and Jack in Fantastic Four circa #571-575:


The "cutesy" (and yeah, I put that in quotes, Marvel!) credits are generally joking or punning nods to the story titles, a process which, on a story called "Solve Everything," gives us FF #570's most tone-deaf clueless credit of them all:


OH FOR PETE'S SAKE MARVEL WHO THE HECK THOUGHT THAT WAS A GOOD IDEA probably the same guy at DC who okayed "Triumph of the Will" as an appropriate Green Lantern story title

Anyway, my point...and I do have one...is that we get these credits on this week's Secret Wars: Armor Wars book:


Um.


I bow to very few in my sheer love of and admiration for Jack Kirby, but...while he did pencil the iconic cover of the first appearance of ol' Shellhead (hey! how come nobody calls him that anymore? Get on that, Marvel)...


Cover of Tales of Suspense #39 (March 1963), pencils by Jack Kirby, inks by Don Heck
But take a big Silver Age Gander (worst duck-based superhero ever) at the credits page for Mister I. Man's origin:


Yep:


Much in the way Larry, brother of Stan but with added "ber," got credit (see above!) for co-creating Thor and Ant-Man (writing scripts for Stan's plots), so too should he get credit here. And definitely it's a big mistake to leave Don Heck off the list. So, Marvel, I humbly suggest you have these credits wrong and I hope to see them corrected by Armor Wars #2 to "Iron Man created by Stan Lee, Larry Lieber, Don Heck, and Jack Kirby."

Mind you, I'm a little sensitive on the subject of Don Heck. As far as I'm concerned, Don's Silver Age Marvel stuff is pretty powerful. For example: despite the iconic portrayals of the Prince of Power by Jack Kirby and Bob Layton, for my money Don Heck portrayed the definitive Hercules:


Pin-up from Avengers King-Size Special [Annual] (1967 series) #1 (September 1967), script by Roy Thomas, pencils by Don Heck, inks by George Roussos, colors by Stan Goldberg, letters by Artie Simek
Part of the reason I get my back up when Heck's work is passed over or disparaged is the infamous interview with Harlan Ellison (a man whose writing I can respect but never his personality) by Gary Groth (a man I've worked with personally and like and respect, but whose tolerance for superhero comics is thin) in the pages of The Comics Journal, in which they run Heck through the wringer, calling him "the worst artist in the field." And then Ellison goes on to slam Dick Ayers, who he has mistakenly credited with the Nova work of Sal Buscema. Geez.


Portion of Harlan Ellison interview by Gary Groth from The Comics Journal #52 (January 1980)
"Five thousand Don Hecks are not worth one Neal Adams." Cold. Bitchy. And for my money, the beginning of my respect for Don Heck and my complete loss of interest in the opinions of Harlan Ellison. (Gary, you didn't help matters here.)

Ahem. Anyway. Don Heck. Know him, love him, credit him.

Iron Man created by Stan Lee, Larry Lieber,
Don Heck, and Jack Kirby