| Posted: 11 May 2021 at 3:51am | IP Logged | 3
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"Credit where credit is due"
Speaking as a reader, I have always hoped for proper attribution in the credits, simply because I genuinely was interested in knowing who did what. I do understand that the practice of having uncredited assistants goes all the way back to newspaper comic strips, and to the "Shops" of the Golden Age where numerous people would be working on a single issue in order to make sure that all the work got done.
(It's been interesting to read the entries on https://kirbymuseum.org which attempt to deduce, story by story and page by page, the various uncredited artists employed by Simon & Kirby to do finished pencils and inking.)
However, by the 1980s I feel like creators should have been sufficiently aware of the numerous omissions in credits in the past to try to have credits that are as accurate as possible. Considering how blatantly unfair publishers as well as some creators (Bob Kane, to give a particular glaring example) had often been in assigning credit, one would hope that by the 1980s creators themselves would make more of an effort to be as accurate as possible in crediting those who assisted them.
Going back to something John Byrne touched upon elsewhere, I know he was disappointed that some (most?) of the inking Dick Giordano did over his pencils on the Superman books were done by an uncredited Frank McLaughlin. Personally speaking, I liked McLaughlin's work a lot, but at the very least he should have gotten credit for his efforts, especially as these were high profile books at the time.
That said, looking at comics from that decide, you do gradually start to see credits for inking assistants start to appear. And instead of "M. Hands" or "D. Hands" or whatever appearing in the credits you begin to actually see the actual names of the various artists. (I realize listing five or six inkers can be unwieldy, but it just seems like the most equitable way of handling things.)
So to make a long story short -- TOO LATE -- as a reader I was definite appreciative that John Bynre credited Keith Williams for his contributions.
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