Brutally Honest: Comic Creator Cameos

One thing that Marvel has consistently done in many of their films is give their comic creators small cameos- most notably, Stan Lee. The man who basically shaped the comic book industry in the 20th Century, giving two dimensional characters depth and problems that the average reader could relate to, has probably made the most cameo appearances in TV and film than any other comic creator, period. He has appeared in almost all of Marvel's films at least once- from his cameo in Daredevil, to all three Spider-Man movies- and now he won't be the only one to appear on the big screen alongside his projects. Former Thor writer J. Michael Straczynski will be making a cameo appearance in the Thor movie, according to comicbookmovie. According to Straczynski, Director Kenneth Branagh found him to be a pretty good actor and gave the writer a speaking part.

The role involves a man driving down the road. He see Thor’s hammer land and goes to check it, trying to pull it from the earth. When he can’t lift it, he calls his buddies and gets them all to come help him try to wench it out, similar to what happened at the start of Straczynski’s “Thor” run. He then declares, “I’ve vanished into my own narrative!”

You have to admit, it must be pretty incredible to have a movie director take narrative from a book you contributed to, and then have you, the writer, act it out in a movie. Kind of surreal. It's too bad though that there aren't more comic creators getting in on making cameos in movies. Walter Simonson, for example, took complete creative control of Thor in the 1980's, and even turned the character into a Frog for three issues. How do you get away with turning the God of Thunder into an amphibian for three issues? That seems crazy to me. In fact, Simonson was on the Thor book from #337 (1983) to #382 (1987), which is a long time for anyone to be writing one book and once he was finished, he had contributed to approximately 52 issues of Thor! So why isn't he making a cameo in the Thor movie?
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Now, I know that J. Michael Stracyznski has written some really great comics, and he was responsible for the relaunch of Thor's character back into the mainstream in 2007, but he only wrote 16 issues of Thor. 
That's less than a third of Simonson's contribution to the character. So, if we're going to have JMS in the movie, then why not throw Kieron Gillen ( who wrote 11 issues) in it as well? Also, it's not as though fans will recognize JMS in the film- and that's nothing against him, it's just that the average fan doesn't know what comic creators look like, they just know their names. Stan Lee of course, is the exception. So, why bother with cameos at all?

Unless you are as recognizable and iconic as "Stan The Man," I'd say the best cameo for a creator is probably the kind that were given to John Romita Jr., Joe Quesada and Brian Michael Bendis in the Daredevil movie (2003). During the back-flash scene with Murdock as a child, screenwriters lent the names of these creators to various characters in the film I personally thought that was pretty cool.

What do you think of creators making cameo appearances? Do you feel that the more a creator contributes to a comic or to shaping a specific character, then the more likely he should be the one to make the cameo on screen?