it'd be potentially all of them. for instance, ditko might own the rights to the character itself, whereas lee and kirby might own the rights to particular issues they wrote or particular ways spiderman was drawn. copyrights can be shared between multiple individuals: for instance, if there's a music band like the beatles, *all* of them, collectively, should own the copyright to their music, not one individual beatle. i don't see why it couldn't work the same for collaborative projects like comic books, games, etc.
You can negotiate rights in that way, but it's very complicated. Specific professions tend to have their own way of dealing with what's considered fair and practical (e.g. the way songwriting credits work). Having a general law that made relatively simple arrangements for payment illegal would be a nightmare.
It would lead to the legal overhead and risks associated with creative projects being much larger, especially from large, long term IP with many people who could potentially make a claim that their work has been used without them getting a large enough cut, making financiers less likely fund work. Rather than giving more power and better pay to people who produce work subject to copyright, it could instead just destroy their opportunities to do the work they want to do.
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