I occasionally get asked about a Bill Finger article I wrote back in (that long already?) 2002 when I was at
Wizard magazine. As thems was the days of print and there's no easily accessible Web version, well…here you go. Enjoy.
Bill is often referred to as "Batman's uncredited co-creator," a label that I think fits. Since this article was published, Shelly Moldoff, Martin Nodell and Jerry Robinson have all left us. I'm glad we were able to get their comments on the record before they passed away.
TITLE: THE MAN BEHIND
BATMAN’S MASK
Sub: The comics all say
‘Batman created by Bob Kane.’ So why do so many people think Batman’s
uncredited father was Bill Finger?
By Jim McLauchlin
The one mystery the Dark
Knight Detective can’t solve? The riddle of his own creation.
Crack open the cover to any Batman comic—Batman, Detective Comics, World’s
Finest, whatever—and you’ll find one
commonality: The phrase “Batman created by Bob Kane.”
But there are those who
will tell you that this simple statement of seeming fact is every bit as
fictional as Bat-tale it introduces. At the very least, they’ll tell you the
statement is incomplete. Oh, they’ll admit, sometimes grudgingly, that Kane
should be there. But they’ll also tell you that you wouldn’t be reading the book
today—Hell, you probably even wouldn’t have heard of Batman—were it not for the contributions of another man.
Bill Finger.
Haven’t heard of him?
You’re not alone. Bill Finger’s cautionary tale is not well known, but it’s
every bit as compelling as that of Batman himself.
“We’re all attracted to
tragedy, and he’s a tragic figure,” says current Detective Comics writer Ed Brubaker. “He did so much so well for so
long! He was the most inventive guy on the book, worked on it for decades, and
in the end, it got him nothing.”
Just what did Finger do?
At the very least, he wrote Batman tales for over 20 years, introducing the
character in Detective Comics #27,
penning the first Robin story in Detective
#38, and introducing the Joker, Penguin, Catwoman, Bat-Mite, and the very
Batcave itself. At the most, he may have insured that Batman existed at all.
THE VOICE OF REASON
DC Comics (then called
National Periodical Publications) saw
it had a hit on its hands when Superman debuted in 1938. The order came down to
editors Whitney Ellsworth and Vin Sullivan: Bring us another long
underwear-type. Bob Kane, a 22-year-old cartoonist doing some humor strips for
the publisher at the time, drew up something called “The Batman.” Kane’s design
was influenced by Superman, Zorro, a silent film called “The Bat,” and a
Leonardo da Vinci design of a flying machine. Kane’s original Batman wore red
tights with a Zorro-styled mask, and had two stiff-looking wings mounted to the
back of the costume. The mish-mashed combination didn’t wow anyone, Kane
included.
Kane wasn’t sure if his
design would pass muster, so he decided to call an old high school classmate
for a friendly chat and a second opinion, a man he knew to be a creative sort.
He called Bill Finger.
The 25-year-old Finger
came over to Kane’s apartment and agreed the design needed work. He set to that
work immediately. Pulling a dictionary off Kane’s shelf, he opened to a picture
of a bat. “Bill said, ‘Why not make him look more like a bat and put a hood on
him, and take the eyeballs out and just put slits for eyes to make him look
more mysterious?’” Kane recounts in his 1989 autobiography, Batman &
Me.
Batman’s domino mask
changed into a full cowl. Finger also suggested making the color scheme darker.
“Color it dark gray to make it look more ominous,” Kane recalls him saying.
Finger also got rid of the wings, evolving them into Batman’s now-famous cape.
In mere hours, the Batman we all know today was born of Finger’s tinkering with
Kane’s awkward design. If Kane was indeed Batman’s father, Finger was at least
the doctor who delivered the baby—and probably prevented a stillbirth.
THE FATEFUL CONTRACT
DC loved Batman and
immediately commissioned Kane to produce it. Kane, knowing Finger was up to the
task and knowing Finger desperately wanted
to be a writer, sub-contracted Finger to write Batman’s first story for Detective
Comics #27. Kane also did something else: He
got a contract.
Kane came from a
well-to-do family with enough money to employ lawyers to nail down Kane’s
interest in the character. Kane secured an ownership percentage in Batman, and
an ironclad legal guarantee that for now and forever, all Batman tales would
start with the tag “Batman created by Bob Kane.”
Finger came from a poor
background, and in fact had been bedridden for months with a case of scarlet
fever as a child. It was there in bed, with nowhere to go, that he fell in love
with reading. He devoured books by the dozens, and it became his lifelong dream
to one day become a writer himself. When Kane made his fateful call to Finger,
Finger was barely scraping by with a low-paying job as a shoe salesman. Given
the opportunity to write for a living, he leapt at the chance. For the first
six Batman stories, Finger was Kane’s employee, nothing more. It wasn’t until
the seventh script that Finger got paid via DC. They may not have even known he existed at the time.
THE BAT-BOOM
Batman was booming and
Kane, realizing where his financial interests lay, hired a stable of artists to
produce more material. The work was very collaborative. One day, Kane mentioned
to Finger that Batman needed a boy sidekick. Finger said that he’d dream one
up, and went out for a sandwich. By the time he returned, Kane and inker Jerry
Robinson had already nailed a name: Robin. Finger then wrote the first Robin
tale.
Similarly, Finger “found”
the Joker for Kane to draw. Accounts vary as to if Kane or Robinson came up
with the notion of the psychotic villain, but it was definitely Finger who
delivered the visual. “Bill came in with a photograph of Conrad Veidt, who
played in a movie called ‘The Man Who Laughs,’” Kane relays in Batman
& Me. “‘Here’s a picture of the Joker
character,’ Bill exclaimed. ‘Copy it and I’ll write the first Joker story.’”
Kane, “a superb copyist”
in his own words, copied; and Bill Finger wrote the Joker’s first two stories,
in Batman #1 and #2. But every story,
regardless of who wrote it, drew it, or came up with a new character, came out
with the same byline: “By Bob Kane,” as per Kane’s contract.
“In the early days, only the originators put their names
on strips, regardless of whether they had ghost-writers or ghost-artists doing
their features,” Kane says in Batman
& Me. “I never thought of giving [Finger] a byline, and he never asked
for one.” Still, as the originator and a co-owner, Kane enjoyed healthy bonuses
based on sales. Finger made his script rate of $12 a page, and still lived with
his parents, helping his poor family make ends meet.
Finger wanted too desperately to be a writer, and would do anything to
remain in his position, and rise above poverty. “He was so overwhelmed that he
was getting steady jobs that he never thought of anything else,” says Sheldon
Moldoff, an artist who ghosted for Kane for 16 years. “He just wanted to be a
writer. Bill was so happy he was working, he didn’t think about royalties,
rights, any of that. He was very grateful to Bob.”
Perhaps too grateful.
Golden Age artist Martin Nodell once visited Kane’s apartment with Finger in
tow. “We rang the bell, and Bob Kane came to the door,” Nodell recalls. “When
Bill entered the room, it was if he was greeting the king. Bill was bowing
down, his hands out, just to say hello. That, in essence, was the way it was.
Bill felt as if he had to condescend before Kane.”
The love was not
returned. “Bob Kane never was a nice
guy,” Moldoff says flatly. “He had a tremendous ego. If I came up with an idea,
he had no problem stealing it and claiming it as his own. Was Bob generous to
Bill Finger? No. Was he nice with him? No. Bob wasn’t nice to anybody.”
THE NICE GUY
Finger, on the other hand, was known for his kindness and
generosity. Jerry Robinson was only 17 years old, consumed by school all day
and drawing all night, when he started in the Kane studio. Finger took the
youngster under his wing. “Bill was very much my cultural mentor,” Robinson
remembers. “He exposed me to potential. He brought me to museums, to fine
movies, that inspired us both.”
Finger’s love of
learning, born of his bedridden childhood, never stopped. “I don’t think he had
a college education of any kind, but he was very auto-didactic, always
self-teaching,” said 15-year Batman Editor Denny O’Neil, who credits Finger with mentoring him when O’Neil began his
career in 1965. “He made notes constantly. He was very observational.”
Finger was famous for
taking his job seriously. He kept huge
files of articles clipped from newspapers and Popular Science. Whenever Batman needed a way out of a tough
situation, Finger could refer to his files and find one. The technical wonders
of the Batcave, with its computers, submarine pens, and Giant Penny, sprang
from the imagination and files of Finger. Other comic writers of the time
surely knew his importance. A Golden Age Green Lantern villain with a huge book
of tricks he pulled his crimes from was named “William Hand,” an obvious riff
on Bill Finger’s name.
But Finger was more than
just a book of tricks. “He was one of the guys who showed us how to do this
work in this new medium,” O’Neil maintains. “Comics were really brand-new at
the time—The umbilical cord hadn’t even been cut. And Bill really understood,
almost instinctually, how to do it. He really had a handle on writing for
comics. I’ve seen some of [Superman co-creator] Jerry Siegel’s original
scripts, and it was these two guys, Siegel and Finger, who really first
understood writing for comics. They taught the next generation.”
THE WORK HORSE
But that which made
Finger great was also his downfall. Finger cared too much about his work, and refused to turn in a script
until it was perfect. For a poor man who never made much money…this was a
problem.
“Bill was the greatest
comics writer of his time, and maybe since,” says Jerry Robinson. “But he was
not a natural writer. Things didn’t flow
from his pen. He really struggled every time.”
Finger once delivered a first page of a script stapled to
a bunch of blank pages to an editor, hurriedly grabbing his check and bolting
the office before his editor could see that the work wasn’t finished. Missing
deadlines led to lack of income, which led to paralyzing fear, alcoholism, and
more missed deadlines. By the mid-1950s, Kane had moved to California and was
comfortably out of comics, with a massive studio producing work in his name.
Finger still struggled, with both deadlines and money.
“The second Batman story he ever did for me [in the early
’60s], I made him sign a little note that went roughly as follows: ‘I, William
Finger, will not ask for the check for this story until I’ve completed it,’”
says longtime DC Editor Julius Schwartz. “He had a habit of always needing
money, and before he’d finish a story, he’d ask for a check. And he was
invariably late.”
By the mid-1960s, things were changing. New editors were
coming in at DC, and Kane hadn’t been personally involved for years. Finger’s
assignments dwindled away, and he fell
off editors’ radar. Finger, once known as the best writer in comics, became
almost an urban legend to new editors. He’d occasionally be seen haunting a
bar, but no one would give him an assignment, fearing certain deadline
problems. By 1965, Finger was out of comics. He resurfaced very briefly writing
mystery stories at DC in the early ’70s, but at the time of his death in 1974,
Bill Finger had lost the only thing that really mattered to him. He wasn’t a
writer anymore.
THE LEGACY
All that’s left today of
Finger is his place in history—a place that’s largely misplaced. His
contributions are lost to the mists of time, and the fact that Bob Kane had the
power of an ironclad contract on his side.
“It’s impossible to tell
exactly who created what anymore,” says Denny O’Neil. “The truth is, it’s 60
years since, and nobody really kept notes then. But I’ve spent a lot of time
looking at Batman history. It was my main professional concern for 15 years.
And near as I have been able to learn, Bill’s contributions were considerable.”
Even Michael Uslan, the
producer of the “Batman” movies and a close personal friend of Kane’s, agrees.
“It was such a great creative effort by so many people over so many decades
that really ‘created’ Batman,” Uslan says. “But you still have to look at Bill
Finger as one of the two essentials. It’s Kane-and-Finger—and I say that in one
breath—who were there at the beginning.”
Even Kane could give Finger his due. “I must admit that Bill never received the fame and recognition he
deserved. He was an unsung hero,” Kane wrote in Batman & Me, which he dedicated, among others, to Bill Finger.
“I ran into Bill a year before he died in 1974. Bill was disheartened by the
lack of major accomplishments in his career. He felt that he had not used his
creative potential to its fullest and that success had passed him by.”
But crafting Batman is a major accomplishment, and more people are learning
of the man behind Batman’s mask. Julius Schwartz has long been an advocate of
getting Finger the credit he is due. O’Neil, too. “I certainly think he deserved more that what he got, both in
terms of credit and in terms of money,” O’Neil says. “There was no way for me
to get him money, because of the legalities involved. It may not be fair, but
it is the law.”
Official credit may be out of the question. “Short of
adding his name to the credits, which I don’t think can legally be done, I
don’t think there’s anything DC can do,” says comic writer and historian Mark
Waid. “The Bob Kane estate is protected. Bob Kane’s selfishness continues from
beyond the grave.”
Kane grew rich off of
Batman and lived a comfortable life until he passed away in 1998. Finger died
an unfulfilled man, never enjoying the late-life accolades or money that did
eventually come to Superman co-creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster.
“Siegel and Shuster are
looked at as these guys who really got screwed until later in life. Bill Finger
is like them, except he never got
un-screwed,” says Ed Brubaker.
And Finger has left
something more behind than just Batman for other creators to follow. “It’s a
different scene,” Brubaker says. “If you write Batman right now and create a new character, regardless of
the fact that Bob Kane created the comic, you would get money for that character. Chuck Dixon got money when they
used Bane in the ‘Batman and Robin’ movie. These things are in place now because of creators like Bill Finger. The business is more
human now.”
Finger also has a final,
more chilling legacy, according to Brubaker. “The greatest thing, but also the
most f---ed thing about Bill Finger is that if you’re ever in a situation where
you’re worried that you’re not getting proper credit for what you’re doing, you
can say to your editor, ‘Hey, I’m feeling like Bill Finger over here. And I
don’t want to get Fingered.’ And they’ll understand. Everybody gets it. I
guarantee it.”
Jim McLauchlin urges you to think about Bill Finger, just
a little bit, next time you read a Batman comic.
“Bill Finger” sidebar
TITLE: THE LAST LINK
Sub: ‘Batman’ inker Jerry Robinson, there in 1939, is
still going strong today
It’s been 55 years since Jerry Robinson drew Batman. But
it feels as fresh as yesterday.
“I’ve gone through a number of stages in my career,” the
80-year-old artist says today. “But that stage endures, as Batman does.”
Robinson got a job inking Bob Kane’s pencils at the
tender age of 17 in 1939, when he entered Columbia University as a freshman. He
continued working on Batman until 1947, collaborating with Kane, Bill Finger,
and others—even though the creators had little idea just what they were
creating.
“We certainly didn’t have any thought that this would be
popular in 60 years, or even if it would endure at all,” Robinson recollects.
“But we did have the feeling that were creating a new means of communication
with comics.”
Robinson has communicated in many venues in his career.
He worked at Atlas Comics in the ’50s, and in 1960, started a 30-year stint as
a political cartoonist with the nationally syndicated “Still Life” and “Life
With Robinson.” He also taught at New York’s School of Visual Arts and Pratt
Institute for 10 years. But people always know him as “the Batman guy.”
“I’ve been invited around the world to many comic
conventions and festivals,” he says. “A lot of it stems from my Batman days, of
course.”
Robinson has visited 43 countries, and in 1978, formed
Cartoonists & Writers Syndicate, a firm that represents 550 artists in 50
different countries, syndicating their work worldwide. One creator in
particular, he has special fondness for.
“Bill Finger deserves co-credit for the creation of
Batman, simple as that,” he states. “It’s nice to see that more people are
learning about him today. But I wish something could have happened for him in
his lifetime.” —JM
