Ogon Batto
Many in the west are probably familiar with the sordid past related to the creation of Mickey Mouse. If you're not, here's a quick refresher. It began with a Rabbit named Oswald (Trolley Troubles 1927). This piece was a hit, but all rights to the character were sold in the distribution contract to producer Charles Mintz. It is said that Walt Disney felt burned and vowed to create a character he actually owned, sketching the first rough version of Mickey Mouse (probably on a napkin). Just gotta mention the odd similarity to stories of founding tech companies... Anyway, Disney's little-known partner Ub Iwerks actually designed and animated his initial incarnations in media. He and Disney parted ways not long after his work was released, and his name is largely lost to history. Shrewd business acumen translated into one of, if not, the biggest intellectual property franchises in history. Not art, not creativity, ownership to control the distribution mechanisms wholly.
It's a good bet you've probably not heard of: "Ogon Batto", known as "The Golden Bat" in English. This character is widely attributed to be the very first super hero, and he was born in Japan. His origin story takes place only a couple of years after Mickey's during the Great Depression. Takeo Nagamatsu, a design student from Oita Prefecture, was living through rough times. He kicked around various 'regular' jobs, but couldn't stay away from art. Accounts are unclear — somewhere between the ages of 16 & 18, he started doing "kamishibai" work. This form of medium was a strange hybrid between puppetry and Manga / Comics. Art production houses would produce hand-painted cards, for various serial stories of the time. The cards were used by single performers on bicycles packing a whole theater known as a "butai", a small wooden frame built like a miniature proscenium, with little shuttered doors that opened to reveal the "screen." The cards had each story beat written on the back of the card, so they could be read as the card was shown. The performer would improvise the story and reveal each card in movements to add life to the story.
Work in these production houses was said to be grueling, artists were expected to produce 10 to 12 original paintings a day. The story lines were in constant flux as well. Ogon Batto is said to have been an amalgamation of converging stories. Inspired by the skull-faced character in the Phantom of the Opera. A spin-off hero version of "The Black Bat," a popular villain in another serial. Even speculation that the name came from "The Golden Bat" cigarette brand. The character was said to have become a hit around the year 1931. Nagamatsu, being a meticulous craftsman, couldn't meet demand. It's widely told that Nagamatsu was heavily pressured to produce more, even at the point of a knife at some point. He wasn't able to capitalize on the success of the character at this point in his life, since in the end Ogon Batto was a creation of the kamishibai production house.
After his stint as a kamishibai artist, Nagamatsu quit art more than once. Continually pressured by his father to do 'respectable' work. During the war, he found work doing military propaganda for the government. He was able to finally capitalize on the character around 20 years later, after a world war, in the 1947–1956 best-selling illustrated-book remakes of Golden Bat. It's here that he's "commonly acknowledged as the character's true creator." His story is one of struggle and then ultimately triumph. In both stories, though, the person who made the thing isn't the person who kept it — Iwerks is a footnote, and Nagamatsu didn't own a single frame of the character he drew. I find it vastly more interesting than Mickey's origin story, as it resonates as closer to my own experiences as a production artist. As archaic as the kamishibai business model sounds, it's not too far off from how any modern corporation operates.
We can try to sugarcoat it or romanticize it, but Nagamatsu and his fellow artists operated as machines in creating the cards for the kamishibai production. They worked grueling hours to meet the demand for the product they were producing. Artists do this because they love their craft, many times even more than they love themselves. This love may be what seeps through into something that is endeared by the collective consciousness, as with the early Ogon Batto character. Or it may be the result of shrewd business acumen, as with Mickey. But love alone didn't save the Golden Bat — most of those early cards are gone now, lost to time. He endured only because Nagamatsu came back, twenty years later, and claimed him. Love made him beloved; it took a belated act of ownership to make him last.