CCI: Revealing Bill Finger's "Batman" Contributions

[CBR News]

Author Marc Tyler Nobleman spoke with a Comic-Con International audience about "Bill, The Boy Wonder," his new book exploring the true contributions to Batman by the character's co-creator Bill FInger.


Full article here.

[Kurosawa]

Fantastic article and I can't wait for the book. It's nice to know that DC does all they can to acknowledge Finger, which Kahn's heirs would make this right, but they are of his seed and are probably as scummy as him.

The original Batman drawing shown there is of a character that wouldn't have lasted for 5 minutes much less 70 years. Finger basically created Batman.

[Thad]

A correction: the image is captioned "Bob Kane's initial design for Batman, before Kane's input".

Anyway, I haven't read the book yet but really appreciate the research Nobleman has done. He's one of the good guys.

[Fan-El]

No offense, but it's a poorly written article.

"According to Nobleman, there are two primary "villains" in the story; Bob Kane, and Bill himself. There's a reason the book is titled "Bill, the Boy Wonder" -- Bill Finger was a very boyish character, quietly submitting to the demands of Kane, handing over his paycheck to his parents and generally not standing up for himself professionally".

How does this make finger a villain? It doesn't. I also feel that DC is implicated. they knew that kane was hiring people and signing his name to their works. So they're hardly blameless.

It'd also be interesting to hear about Frank Foster here, since I and others believe that Kane got the idea for Batman from seeing Foster's portfolio.

But the worse part of this article is the part that tries to implicate Finger for not speaking up sooner. He had a contract with Kane; he couldn't speak up sooner.

[boysofsteel]

This is Marc, author of the Bill Finger book. Thanks for the most kind words, Kurosawa and Thad.

Fan-El (love that handle), looks like it got lost in the pixelverse but my point about Bill being a villain was that he apparently did not do enough in his own defense. So he's not exactly a villain but he's not blameless, either. And it wasn't because of a contract with Kane that he didn't speak up. For one thing, he most likely did NOT have a written contract - or at least there is no known surviving record of it. Even if the two did have a contract, DC discovered Bill and hired him away from Bob early on. By 1941, if not earlier, Bill and Bob were both working on Batman (Bill writing, Bob managing ghost artists) but no longer working together directly.

As for Frank Foster, very nice guy. Here's my take (which I've shared with Frank) on why I don't believe there is any correlation between his dad's Batman and the Batman we know: http://noblemania.blogspot.com/2012/...n-of-1932.html.

[ArnoldoAAD]

Basically Bob Kane was a giant ass with a good contract

I remember an anecdote that I read of him on a book call Batman: The rest is silence, and on it Bob makes his own biography, Batman & me, and gets a call from someone, i honestly cannot remember who it was, i think it was Jerry Robinson, maybe someone else, well this person asks Bob for a signed copy to which he responds "why would you want it, you are not even on it!" and the person responds "thats ok, i was working with you for only 15 YEARS!!"

Its just a shame that Finger cannot get mention on this, it feels like a great injustice in the world of comics to have one of the creators of he best characters ever completely unnamed because of something like this

[dvader]

http://www.npr.org/2012/08/11/158494...ot-bruce-wayne

Must read/listen to the story...I don't know what to say...the guest is promoting his book, but wow...I had no idea...makes me feel terrible for Mr. Finger who never received any BAT money!

Thank you Mr. Bill Finger, creator of Batman!

[king mob]

Bill Finger & Jerry Robinson created much of what we know as Batman, but Bob Kane took the credit for a variety of reasons.

[dvader]

Bill Finger & Jerry Robinson created much of what we know as Batman, but Bob Kane took the credit for a variety of reasons.

Yeah...is this common knowledge among the people of CBR? I only heard about it for the first time last night.

[king mob]

Yeah...is this common knowledge among the people of CBR? I only heard about it for the first time last night.

It's common knowledge for those of us who know our history. Some of the younger fans might not know, or worse, care.

[net06]

I was aware of something of this, but I didn't know how extensive Fingers contributions were.

[Johnny P. Sartre]

Bill Finger & Jerry Robinson created much of what we know as Batman, but Bob Kane took the credit for a variety of reasons.

Can you please tell where I can read more on this? My history on comics and it's creations is still lacking... Sadly.

[Darkspellmaster]

Can you please tell where I can read more on this? My history on comics and it's creations is still lacking... Sadly.

Start by looking up names of comic characters you like, usually on wiki there is a link to the creators. You can copy and paste their names and look online for some info. Also take down names that you like then go to the library and see if there are any books on the history of comics there. That's where I started to learn.

[dvader]

Can you please tell where I can read more on this? My history on comics and it's creations is still lacking... Sadly.

If you want to know about the Batman history then that link I provided at the top features an author promoting his book on this entire issue.

[pureclint]

http://www.npr.org/2012/08/11/158494...ot-bruce-wayne

Must read/listen to the story...I don't know what to say...the guest is promoting his book, but wow...I had no idea...makes me feel terrible for Mr. Finger who never received any BAT money!

Thank you Mr. Bill Finger, creator of Batman!

http://www.comicbookresources.com/?p...ticle&id=40442
According to the CBR story they paid royalties they were not obligated to to Finger's estate and son.

Actually the NPR and CBR stories about the same book with quotes from the author really contradict each other a lot:

NPR

"This is going to sound like I'm milking this," Nobleman says, "but he literally died alone, poor ... and unheralded. No obituary ran for him, he didn't have a funeral and he doesn't even have a gravestone."

CBR

The truth is, he was not an alcoholic, he had three heart attacks before he died, and his body was not left unclaimed. His remains were cremated and the ashes scattered on a beach in Oregon by his son, Fred, who spread them on the shore in the shape of a bat.

NPR

DC Comics puts Finger's name on the specific scripts he wrote, but it doesn't recognize his influence on the creation of the character, he says.

CBR

the company has for years acknowledged the fact of Finger's contributions by means of regular financial payments to his estate, as well as by giving as much credit as they legally could.

Etc

Either way Kane was tricky and smart with his contract considering all the stories about Finger and Kane's own "art" habits.