Did Bob Kane Steal Batman From Bill Finger?
The Hulu documentary, Batman and Bill, revealed a shocking truth. The biggest villain in Gotham isn’t the Joker, or the Penguin, or the Riddler, but Batman’s creator himself, Bob Kane. In the years following Batman’s first appearance in Detective Comics #27 in May 1939, Kane became almost as famous as the Caped Crusader himself. But Kane wasn’t the only creator behind Gotham’s masked vigilante. He wasn’t responsible for what makes the crime fighter so memorable: his costume, his arsenal of cool gadgets, or his secret identity. He didn’t even create Gotham City.
All these creations belong to Bill Finger, whose identity remained as secret as Batman’s secret identity, Bruce Wayne. Finger made Batman what he is, and had a hand in the creation of Robin, and villains like The Joker, Penguin, and Two-Face. Nonetheless, Kane got all the credit. For the rest of Finger’s life, and for 15 years after his death, Kane did everything he could to suppress Finger’s involvement, living a life in luxury and being praised as the sole creator of Batman. Finger, on the other hand, died penniless and in obscurity.
The documentary, released in 2015, is based on the book, Bill The Boy Wonder by Marc Tyler Nobleman, who along with Finger’s heirs finally got Bill the credit he deserves. The most fascinating part of the documentary is the relationship between Kane and Finger, and how the brash Kane, who was ever the showman, knocked the quiet, and nerdish Finger into obscurity. Kane paraded himself as a genius, but without Finger, the Batman would most likely not have made it past the first issue.
Kane’s tombstone insists that “Bob Kane, Bruce Wayne, Batman–they are one and the same”. But now the jig is up: Kane took credit for everything great about Batman. Everything he did not create. But should we be so dismissive of him? Did Kane possess the marketing skills to make Batman a success? If so, both men had different talents that were needed to make Batman popular.
Bob Kane (left) did everything he could to suppress Bill Finger’s (right) involvement in the creation of Batman. Finger was not a natural salesman, but Kane was. Kane negotiated a deal with DC, bringing fame and fortune as the sole creator.
The Bat-Man
Kane came up with the idea but had limited ability. And he knew it. Inspired by the popularity of Superman in 1939, Kane saw an opportunity to replicate the success. Drawing inspiration from Zorro, Leonardo Da Vinci’s drawings, and a 1937 film called The Bat Whispers, Kane conceived of The Bat-Man.
But he didn’t look like the Batman we’re familiar with today. Kane’s version wore a red jumpsuit, domino mask, and had two rigid bat wings attached to his back. Obviously, this is a far cry from the Bat suit we’re familiar with. And let’s face it, a man wearing a bright red jumpsuit is not exactly how you picture a bat.
Kane knew the look needed a considerable overhaul. And so he rang Finger, a ghostwriter he met at a party a year earlier. Finger impressed Kane. He was self-taught, well-read, and a talented wordsmith.
After the party, Kane quickly formed a partnership. He sought Finger’s advice for a comic strip he was working on called Rusty and Pals–the duos’ first collaboration. While Kane helped the shoe salesman finally move into work as a full-time writer, the benefits of the relationship would soon tip considerably into Kane’s favor with Batman.
Douglas Fairbanks Sr as Zorro in The Mark of Zorro (1920) was an inspiration for Kane’s The Bat-Man.
Batman Gets Dark And A Secret Identity
After Finger looked at Kane’s design of The Bat-Man, he changed almost everything about the character. First, he changed the costume. He suggested adding the cowl and gloves and making his suit darker. Inspired by Lee Falk’s The Phantom, Finger turned Batman into the character we recognize today.
Finger also gave Batman his secret identity: Bruce Wayne.
Finger took the name Bruce from Robert the Bruce, a Scottish King. For his last name, Finger wanted a name that suggested he was part of the gentry. “I searched for a name that would suggest colonialism,” said Finger. “I tried Adams, Hancock … then, I thought of Mad Anthony Wayne.”
The combination of Bruce’s old medieval freedom fighter with the “mad” escapades of Revolutionary War leader, Anthony Wayne suited Batman’s character. A rich playboy by day, and by night a vigilante who fought injustice from the shadows. The Dark Knight was born.
Finger’s Batman also possessed unique attributes that distanced him from Superman, who clearly influenced Kane. By making him a detective, Finger made Batman a completely different character, abandoning Kane’s desire to make Batman a superhero. This final touch by Finger is directly inspired by the 1930s noir film, The Bat Whispers, much like it had inspired Kane to conceive of The Bat-Man. But Kane just didn’t have the talent to incorporate these ideas successfully into the Bat-Man, or even recognize them in the first place. Nor could he conceptualize the character like Bill Finger.
Batman, who now appeared as the opposite of Superman, needed a suitable home that reflected his noir origins. Unsurprisingly, Finger also created Batman’s hometown, Gotham. “Originally I was going to call Gotham City ‘Civic City’, he said in The Steranko History of Comics. “Then I tried ‘Capital City’, then ‘Coast City’. Then I flipped through the New York City phone book and spotted the name ‘Gotham Jewelers’. And said, ‘That’s it. Gotham City.’ We didn’t call it New York because we wanted anybody in any city to identify with it.”
Bill Finger contributed so much to the creation of Batman and Gotham City that it was almost a completely different character to Kane’s creation.
So just how did Bob Kane take all the credit and all the money?
The answer is bravado, or in Finger’s case, a lack of it. Finger was a nerd. A bookworm. He carried a scrapbook full of weird facts, clippings, and notes he could use in future Batman stories. He’d ride the bus for hours staring at New York, which inspired Gotham. Bruce Wayne’s tragic origin story and the unusual fights between the Caped Crusader and Gotham’s underbelly came from his isolation. A trait many good writers share.
Kane, on the other hand, loved the limelight. He’d greet fans wearing expensive suits or dressed in a cowl, wrote an overblown autobiography, and, according to the documentary, passed off artists’ oil paintings of Batman as his own. But the real treachery began in a lawyer’s office.
Bill Finger’s illustration of Batman on the cover of the first issue in May 1939.
Bob Kane Makes A Deal And Gets Rich
DC Comics offered to publish the Batman comics. And Kane made sure he was the only one to show Batman off to the comic book publisher. Kane, following advice from his father, negotiated sole credit as the creator of Batman and a percentage of everything DC Comics licensed the character on. The lucrative deal formed the foundation of the $10 million fortune Kane would accumulate over the course of his life. Simultaneously, that same deal relegated Bill Finger to obscurity. While Kane drew the comics, he also took credit as the writer. Finger was nothing more than a ghostwriter.
“Unfortunately, [the deal happened] because Bob Kane had the lawyer father, and Bill Finger was shy,” said comic book historian, Arlen Schumer. “Bob Kane went in and his father made sure that his name was on it. That’s how Bill Finger ended up getting shunted away from his co-creation.”
Finger had no idea how successful his creation would become. And Kane could not keep up with the demand from DC Comics for new publications featuring Batman and Gotham’s cast of characters. Other ghost writers were soon employed, and Kane soon turned his attention to other avenues for the character such as the Batman newspaper comic strip.
Kane turned Batman into a business by hiring writers and artists. But just like Finger, they too went uncredited with Kane receiving all the kudos.
Finger, by now, was lost to history, even though he had helped create iconic characters like The Joker, The Scarecrow, The Riddler, The Penguin, and Robin. Meanwhile, the unscrupulous Kane took sole credit for all of them. And let’s not forget the money he made from them.
The Batman gravy train gained momentum for Kane. Batman’s popularity exploded into different media mirroring Superman’s success and following a similar trajectory into television. In 1966, Batman became a hugely popular TV show, which soon gained cult status. Kane milked Batman for all he was worth. Meanwhile, Finger lived in a cramped New York apartment, eking out a pittance from writing jobs.
During this time, Finger received credit only once for writing a two-part episode for the Batman TV series. Nobody at the time knew Finger created Gotham City and its inhabitants. He was seen–if seen at all–as just another television writer for the series.
Bob Kane followed his lawyer father’s advice and gained sole credit for Batman and a deal with DC that earned him a $10 million fortune in his lifetime.
Bill Finger Gets Brief Credit
But Finger didn’t disappear entirely. In the summer of 1965, he was named co-creator of Batman in a fanzine by Jerry Bails. The revelation appeared in an article after Finger made a rare appearance at New York City Comic-Con. The article, entitled “If The Truth Be Known Or A Finger In Every Plot”, details Finger’s involvement in the creation of Batman and Gotham City.
But Kane wasn’t having any of it. He rebutted with a letter condemning Finger’s claim to Batman:
“Bill Finger has given out the impression that he and not myself created the Batman, as well as Robin and all the other leading villains and characters. This statement is fraudulent and entirely untrue. That is ‘myth’ … The truth is that Bill Finger is taking credit for much more than he deserves, and I refute much of his statements here in print.
… The only proof I need to back my statement is that if Bill co-authored and conceived the idea, either with me or before me, then he would most certainly have a by-line on the strip along with my name … It’s been 25 years now, and truthfully, time sometimes blurs the memory and it is difficult to separate at times, so that I cannot blame Bill too much if at times his memory ‘clouds’…”
Unfortunately, the article remained the solitary piece of credit Finger received in his lifetime. He died alone from heart disease in 1974.
With Finger well and truly out of the way, Kane went unchallenged for the rest of his life. He lived to see Tim Burton’s Batman (1989) become one of the biggest box office films of all time. The film’s success brought renewed interest and fame to Kane yet again. And it also added extra padding to his already sizable fortune.
Bob Kane Gets A Conscience
While Kane went unchallenged and appeared as the sole creator in the film’s credits, he did the unexpected. He confessed. Around the same time as the film’s release, Kane admitted that Finger had considerable input in the creation of the Batman mythos. Not just the Dark Knight himself, but Gotham and much of its mentally imbalanced cast of characters including the Clown Prince of Crime, The Joker.
“Bill Finger and I created the Joker. Bill was the writer. Jerry Robinson came to me with a playing card of the Joker. That’s the way I sum it up. [The Joker] looks like Conrad Veidt — you know, the actor in The Man Who Laughs, [the 1928 movie based on the novel] by Victor Hugo. … Bill Finger had a book with a photograph of Conrad Veidt and showed it to me and said, ‘Here’s the Joker’. Jerry Robinson had absolutely nothing to do with it. But he’ll always say he created it till he dies. He brought in a playing card, which we used for a couple of issues for him [the Joker] to use as his playing card.”
DC Takes Time To Credit Bill Finger
Kane died in November 1998; his conscience eased with his admission nine years earlier. But DC wasn’t entirely ready to add Bill Finger as co-creator to their Batman comics. In fact, for years their response was to give occasional praise to Bill Finger. But they still refused to put his name on a comic book, movie, or TV show.
The truth finally came out with the release of Marc Tyler Nobleman’s book, Bill The Boy Wonder. In 2015, with the Hulu documentary of the book looming, DC had no choice but to give Bill Finger credit as Batman’s co-creator. After 76 years, Finger’s name finally appeared on the cover of every future Batman comic issue, and future TV and film adaptations.
Bill Finger never received the proper recognition he deserved for Batman in his lifetime.
While Bob Kane did indeed come up with the idea for Batman and helped create a number of the villains, Bill Finger’s improvements to the character turned the Dark Knight into the most popular comic book hero today. It is most likely, that if Kane launched his red-suited Bat-Man, which had more in common with Superman than the original character Finger created, then the character would have most likely failed. In this sense, Bob Kane did steal Batman from Bill Finger.
But, Kane’s strength lay in marketing the character. He turned Batman into a business. And one could easily make the claim that without Kane’s help, Batman would never have gotten off the ground. As such, both men deserve that “created by” credit. It’s just a shame, that Kane saw fit to deny Finger credit, fame, and fortune in his lifetime.
