Paper Marvel covers argued in public about who inked a city. The credits box was crowded, sometimes ugly, and essential. A marketplace username is not a credits box. When a Marvel NFT comic variant cover circulates with only a drop title, the labour of the painting is laundered into a platform identity.
Restoring credits is slow looking. Signatures hide in fire escapes. Colourists leave a temperature in brick that does not match the line artist’s usual partner. Solicitation text from the paper analogue remains the fastest primary source, provided the digital file is actually that analogue and not a later homage.
We refuse to complete a box with a famous name because the pose feels familiar. Familiar poses travel. What does not travel as easily is a particular way of ruling window highlights. That is the sort of small tell a credit brief should quote.
Collectors who caption personal indexes with restored names are not claiming ownership of the characters. They are refusing to let a tile become anonymous clip-art. That refusal is the whole point of the research desk.