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Do Clothes Make the Character

Do Clothes Make the Character

As some of you may know, David Michelinie and Todd McFarlane had a dispute about 12 years ago or so, over whether McFarlane was the "co-creator" of the character Venom. Michelinie came up with the idea of a bad guy who used the alien symbiote to try to kill Spider-Man. McFarlane took the design idea of "a big guy in the alien costume" and turned out Venom - basically a monster with the alien costume look, rather than a person wearing the alien costume, complete with a grotesque tongue and giant teeth.

The question remains, then, IS McFarlane the co-creator of Venom?

I think it goes back to the basic question - does the character design of a character define a character? DO clothes make the character?

For a time in the 1970s, John Romita would design pretty much any new character (if an artist didnt already have a design in place, like Dave Cockrum with the All-New, All-Different X-Men) that a Marvel writer came up with. For example, Romita designed the costume for the Punisher.

Is Romita, therefore, the co-creator of the Punisher?

Is Romita the co-creator of Wolverine?

Is designing the character the same thing as "creating" them?

Peter David famously came up with the WACKO theory, which stands for "Writer As Creative King/Overlord," which posits that, unless we are given specific reasons otherwise (like someone saying, "We created it together" or the Silver Surfer, which Jack Kirby came up with out of whole cloth), the writer should be considered the creator of the character, not the artist.

Comics are clearly a visual medium first and foremost, so the LOOK of a character is extremely important.

Enough, though, so as to consider the DESIGN of a character to be co-creation? Even if the background/history/motivation of the character has already been planned out by the writer?

In other words, is character design a necessary component of comic character creation?

Im thinking yes.

Anyone think otherwise?

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