When "Nobody" Creates a Comic Book Character
Gerry Conway, a comic book writer whose extensive career includes creating many characters for DC Comics--some of whom currently appear, in altered form, on television series based on DC superheroes--posted "Who Created Caitlin Snow on #TheFlash? According to @DCComics, Nobody" this week on his Tumblr.
Conway details how DC Comics first developed a system of "creator equity participation" to compensate creators when their characters are adapted into other media, only to have the more recently-formed DC Entertainment devise a loophole to avoid payments by describing some characters based on pre-existing analogues (e.g. Caitlin Snow, a revised version of Killer Frost, created by Conway and Al Milgrom) as "derivative" of those analogues while also not crediting (and thus, not paying) the creators of the original characters from which they were "derived."
DC Entertainment has used this move to stop paying Conway for adapting characters he created or co-created (such as Power Girl and Jason Todd) and to never start doing so for characters such as Felicity Smoak.
You can read more about DC's definitional shenanigans at the link.
Conway details how DC Comics first developed a system of "creator equity participation" to compensate creators when their characters are adapted into other media, only to have the more recently-formed DC Entertainment devise a loophole to avoid payments by describing some characters based on pre-existing analogues (e.g. Caitlin Snow, a revised version of Killer Frost, created by Conway and Al Milgrom) as "derivative" of those analogues while also not crediting (and thus, not paying) the creators of the original characters from which they were "derived."
DC Entertainment has used this move to stop paying Conway for adapting characters he created or co-created (such as Power Girl and Jason Todd) and to never start doing so for characters such as Felicity Smoak.
You can read more about DC's definitional shenanigans at the link.