8 Times Marvel And DC Screwed Over Comic Book Creators

7. Jack Kirby Had To Fight Marvel For Ownership Of His Own Art

Jack Kirby is the single-most important figure in American comics past or present. He created Captain America in World War II alongside Joe Simon, and fashioned the modern Marvel mythos in the 1960s alongside the likes of Stan Lee, Steve Ditko, John Romita and others. Afterwards, he embarked on a new opus, the Fourth World Saga, which changed the landscape of the DC universe and provided yet another cause for Kirby's legend - as if he needed anymore at that point anyway.

And yet, if you can believe it, Kirby was repeatedly screwed over by the powers that be throughout his career. There was a long-running battle with Stan Lee over who was instrumental for what in the creation of the Marvel Universe (as Kirby said to the Comics Journal, "If he says he created things all that easily, what did he create after I left?"), but aside from the disputes with his old partner regarding credit, the saddest battle the creator had in the comics industry came towards the end of his life.

During the late eighties and early nineties, Kirby was involved in a long-running dispute with Marvel regarding ownership of the original page boards he'd constructed during the company's bullpen era. Dozens were lost or stolen, and before Kirby went public with the dispute, decrying his former employers as "thugs", Marvel had offered him the paltry amount of reclaiming 88 pages of art - a fraction of the thousands of boards he'd made at the company.

Marvel eventually relented and returned up to 2,100 pages to the King, but that was still only a fifth of the estimated amount he created.