Batman remains one of the two or three most popular properties to ever be introduced in comic books…and I don't want to get into a debate about whether he's Number Uno or Superman is more famous or anything of that nature. If you want to say Batman is one of the ten-or-so most popular, fine. At least we all agree he's pretty popular. There is more room for debate about exactly who deserves how much credit for his creation.
For way too long, the official credit was that Batman was created by Bob Kane. This was not because anyone spent any time trying to determine who deserved that credit. It was because Bob made the deal whereby the firm we now know as DC Comics began publishing Batman. With (reportedly) the help of his father, who had more business-savvy than your average young kid who wrote or drew comics then, Kane got a deal that guaranteed him sole credit. There was no accommodation for or recognition of his friend, Bill Finger.
And now that I've mentioned Bill Finger, I should repost this, which I really ought to post here every few months to get it into the search engines…
Bill Finger was wronged by a system that gave him zero credit during his lifetime for his contributions to the very successful property we're discussing here…and to a few others, as well. Some credit might have at times translated into more money and a better life for the man.
Finger continues to be wronged by a spectacular amount of misinformation about who he was, what he did…even how he was excluded from rewards for all he contributed to the Caped Crusader and the world in which that character dwelled. Recently, at the request of someone who's working on a project about the late Mr. Finger, I watched a number of YouTube videos that purported to tell his story or give the inside scoop on What Really Happened. There was some solid info in some of them but I was appalled at how many of them got every friggin' thing wrong.
I was also bothered by some of the things said to demean Bob Kane…and I say that as someone who knew Bob Kane (a little) and thought he was way overcredited as the creator of Batman.
I'm not going to link to any of the offending videos because I don't want to drive traffic and clicks their way…but if you don't believe me, you can find them. A few were clearly constructed by Artificial Intelligence with emphasis on the "artificial" part…but the data they're garbling was probably put online (or somewhere) by human beings who didn't know what the heck they were writing about. An awful lot of both kinds can't even properly identify a photo of Bill Finger. See above.
Here is a statement which I don't think anyone would dispute: The character of Batman was initially conceived by Kane. He was looking (understandably) for a place in comics that would give him steady, good-paying work. One day, a man named Vince Sullivan — then the editor of a company that evolved into DC Comics — told him the company wanted a new super-hero since Superman was looking like a lucrative idea.
And yes, I heard that from Vince Sullivan himself and since it matches what Kane told me, I see no reason to doubt it. Still, some folks out there who never met either man have cobbled up tales of Kane and Finger as a duo creating Batman and shlepping their idea around to publisher after publisher with no success. Or maybe it's A.I. inventing some or all of that.
Sullivan told Kane what he wanted. Kane went home and sketched something which eventually turned into the Batman we know and that refinement involved a lot of input from his friend, Bill Finger. Kane then sold the idea to Sullivan and the first story — which appeared in Detective Comics #27 — was written by Finger and drawn by Kane with much help.
A lot of that help came from other comics and sources from which Kane copied poses and compositions. Some help may have come from unknown assistants but that part is arguable and argued. Kane was not a very good artist and his other work back then suggests that if he had any talent for drawing, it was for drawing broader, comedic material.
Finger's script was not wholly original either. Much of it duplicated "Partners of Peril," a story that appeared in the pulp magazine adventures of The Shadow. It was written by Theodore Tinsley, though credited — as were all the tales of The Shadow in that magazine — to "Maxwell Grant." It came out in November of 1936.
Detective Comics #27 came out in late March of 1939 and that first Batman story had but one name on it…that of Bob Kane. Subsequent Batman stories — hundreds upon hundreds of them — would be credited only to Kane, whether he did anything on them or not. It was even the sole credit on stories he probably never read. We'll talk more about that in the next part of this series.
