User blog:Byfield/Creation vs Adaptation

(Just keep in mind these are my own musings and my own thoughts on the matter...)

While it is clear that characters, items, and settings are created for comic book stories, it seems incorrect to say they are created fresh each time a new writer comes in or the property is brought to a new media. Taking a well used example like Batman, this can easily be seen. This character was created in 1939 by Bob Kane and Bill Finger. Over time, more writers added to the body of comic book stories, but no are argued to have "created" the character, just added to it. Even as the setting noticeably changed over the decades, the character has still credited to Kane and Finger.

When Batman was adapted for a serial in the early 1940s, the scriptwriters adapted what was already there. They did add elements, but they did not create a new character. This happened again with radio plays, television programs, later films, and games. In each case Kane, based on his original contract, is credited with the creation of the character and Finger is acknowledged, if contractually un-credited, as the co-creator at this point. At best, the writers, directors, producers, and actors that had input on these variations of the character can be credited with adapting the original, not creating a new character.

This is also the case with the character appearing in comics such as Batman: The Dark Knight or Justice League: The Nail. Frank Miller and Alan Davis adapted Batman, they did not create him anew. Listing them as creators deminishes the term and misrepresents what was done. The same holds for the multiversal iterations of the character. At the core, the Earth-One, Earth-Two, New Earth, Prime Earth, and so on are just extentions of what was created in 1938. Even when there is a clear "1st appearance" of the variation, those writers and artists did not create a new character.

With this in mind, it might be better if we were to list the people who adapted the characters, either to new settings or new media, as that - adapters. It would be clearer and more accurate for the vast majority of the character articles.