Kane & Finger

[batass4880]

Up until about 5.5 years ago, I thought that Bob Kane was responsible for all of Batman's golden age material--not so much! Does it piss anyone off that Bob Kane took all legal credit for Batman when Bill Finger was a significant contributor to the legacy?

I know that Finger did much more than Batman and that it was an equal partnership between him and Bob Kane but this is a man who co-created an American icon and did not get the credit he deserved when his life ended.

I also know Finger couldn't get legal credit on Batman but I think that Kane had a moral obligation to reimburse him because the Batman world would have been very different or possibly a failure if it weren't for him. By doing this it may have saved Finger's life and would possibly have been around to see the height of Batman's popularity in the late-80's+. I don't think Mr. Kane would've liked it if Finger did to him what has already been done to Finger.

Just unforgivable!

[Dark Knight Detective]

From what I've read in his biography, Kane has given credit to Finger. Anyway, Bob did have the Batman in his mind before he met Finger. However, w/o Bill's vision, we could have seen a Batman w/ a red suit, blond hair, stiff wings, & a domino mask. Not only that, but Batman would not have had the detective side to his character.

[Paul (ral)]

This is from Cinefantastique Feb 1994:

The creation of Batman was actually a collaboration between artist Bob Kane and writer Bill Finger. Finger wrote Batman?s first two adventures in Detective Comics and helped refine Kane?s initial concept, adding a cowl, bat-ears, nose-piece, gauntlets and omitting Batman?s eyes for a more mysterious look. Finger named Batman?s alter ego (Bruce Wayne), and placed him in Gotham City. Finger also wrote milestone stories such as ?The Origin of the Batman? (Batman #47, June-July 1948) and ?The 1000 Secrets of the Batcave!? (Batman #48, August-September 1948). Much of the direction of the 1960?s BATMAN TV series was essentially the unacknowledged work of Finger.

William Finger was born February 8, 1914. As a child Finger loved movies and pulp fiction, including The Shadow and Doc Savage, all of which influenced his plots and writing style for comic books.

Finger met cartoonist Bob Kane at a party in 1938. They subsequently collaborated on several adventure strips. Rusty and his Pals, which began in Adventure Comics #32 (November 1938), was the first. Within a year, Finger and Kane had co-created Batman. Finger wrote Batman?s first two adventures in Detective Comics #27 (May 1938) and #28 and shortly thereafter became the regular scribe for Batman.

Although chronically and notoriously tardy with submissions, Finger simultaneously was a gifted and prodigious author, turning out thousands of pages of work in his lifetime. Throughout his association with DC, he worked on numerous characters, including Batman, Green Lantern, Wildcat, Vigilante, Johnny Quick, Superman, Superboy, Blackhawk, Tomahawk, Challengers of the Unknown, Lois Lane and Robin (solo stories which appeared in Star Spangled Comics) as well as in World?s Finest Comics (Batman and Superman team-ups). From 1943 to 1946, Finger wrote a number of the daily and Sunday Batman and Robin newspaper strip continuities. At Timely Comics, he worked on Captain America Comics and All Winners Comics. He wrote the first Lana Lang story, ?The Girl in Superboy?s Life!? which appeared in Superboy #10 (September-October 1950). 1-lis last Batman story, written in early April 1965, was ?Two Batmen Too Many!? in Batman #177 (December 1965).

Known for his organized, methodical comic book plots as well as oversized props, Finger maintained a detailed ?gimmick me? on numerous topics. Over the years, he clipped and saved articles and photos on a wide variety of subjects, using the file not only as a springboard for new stories but also to provide artists with references. By the time of his death, Finger had accumulated a wealth of information; ?enough to fill a standard file cabinet:? according to his son, Fred.

Finger wrote for 77 SUNSET STRIP, THE ROARING TWENTIES and HAWAIIAN EYE TV during the late ?50s and early ?60s. He worked on two episodes of the BATMAN TV series (#45: ?The Clock King?s Crazy Crimes,? and #46: ?The King Gets Crowned?) which aired in 1966. Dining the late ?60s, Finger worked at a studio on Long Island making institutional training films for the Army. He wrote the script for THE GREEN SUMP, a 1969 movie co-production between Toho and MGM and he is likely to have written several animated Superman cartoons during late ?60s.

Finger is fondly recalled by his contemporaries. ?Bill Finger was a genius,? observed artist Dick Sprang. ?The best writer in the comics. I?d get one of his scripts and what fun! He?d always send a bunch of clippings. Some page he ripped out of Life. He never got his work in on time. I don?t know how many Bill Finger stories I did where I?d [only] get three pages. [Fellow artist] Jack [Schiff] said, ?I don?t know what?s coming, but you better protect yourself.? I then had to make what the movies call protection shots. I had to trace the characters or some setting before I sent in my page because I knew I had to pick this up somewhere in the continuation of this story.?

Recalled artist Charles Paris, ?One Summer night, somewhere in the l950s. I remember sitting down in Washington Square talking to Bill, I asked what he was doing, and he [said he] was writing TV commercials. I asked, ?How is it that you write TV commercials?? He said, ?Because I?m used to thinking in terms of pictures. A writer?s writer is no good for writing TV scripts. He thinks in writer?s terms. A comic book writer thinks in visual terms. Or should.?

Finger suffered several heart attacks during his life. ?He was a golf nut,? recalled Schwartz. ?But he went around for hours with that pain in his arm and finally wafted into St. Vincent?s hospital and discovered he was having a heart attack. This was in the early 1950s, I guess.?

Bill Finger died in Manhattan on January 24, 1974, two weeks shy of his 60th
birthday.

[Silver Nemesis]

Here's an interesting blog about author Marc Tyler Nobleman's attempts to get Finger an onscreen credit for The Dark Knight Rises. It would appear Finger's ex-wife and son almost succeeded in getting him credited on the 1989 movie. You can read the correspondences between Lyn Simmons and Warner Bros here:

http://noblemania.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/the-dark-knight-creator-rises.html

I found those letters quite sad. Nobody's pursuing monetary compensation, just an onscreen credit. It doesn't sound too unreasonable to me.

I've also got to wonder who the jerk was at DC who replied:

With all due respect, I'm not having this discussion.

[zDBZ]

In a perfect world, the most accurate credit for Batman would read "Created by Bob Kane, Developed by Bob Kane and Bill Finger." IMO.

[Azrael]

http://www.cracked.com/article/97_7-iconic-characters-they-saved-from-cutting-room-floor_p2/

7 Iconic Characters They Saved from The Cutting Room Floor
By: Cezary Jan Strusiewicz | August 31, 2009

#1.
Batman

He's a superhero. You can Google him.

How We Almost Lost Him:

We've covered several characters who were nearly killed off early on, but Batman was nearly aborted.

It was 1938, when Bob Kane approached the editors over at National Publications and presented them with his idea for a new superhero: "Bat-Man," a no-nonsense crime fighting bat-themed vigilante who didn't mind getting rough with the criminal scum. This is how he envisioned him:

"Is... is Batman behind this guy? I don't understand."

By the way, you can't tell from the drawing, but the costume was to be red.

Who Saved Him?

Bill Finger.

No matter how you look at it, Bill Finger is the man who created Batman. Turns out that Bob Kane, the man credited with the birth of The Dark Knight (a term Finger coined in 1940), did about f**k-all with the character. Finger was hired to "even out the wrinkles" in the "Bat-Man" concept (a process we hope he referred to as "Fingerbanging").

His work is the reason Batman became the kind of dark hero who would survive when thousands of brightly-colored cornball heroes came and went. Finger gave the character a bat cowl with ears and a wing-like cape, replaced the red costume with a brooding black and gray combination and slapped a big ole bat symbol right on the chest. This was the end result:

Finger also wrote the parts of Bruce Wayne, Robin, the Riddler and the bulk of the first Batman stories. In the simplest terms, if Finger had not been hired as an assistant to Kane, there may have been a "Bat-Man" character--one we likely would not know about today--but there never would have been a Batman.

The world owes you one, Mr. Finger.

[The Dark Knight]

Give Bob the finger and back Bill.

[Azrael]

ASK CHRIS #164: BOB KANE IS JUST THE WORST

Q: How do you square what happened to Bill Finger with your love of Batman? Is it a problem? — @MikeFromNowhere

A: You know, it is and it isn't. I think the record will show that outside of a few years here and there where I just wasn't interested in what was going on in the comics, there has been very little that has stood in the way of my love of Batman. It is river deep, mountain high for me and Batman, and at this point, I don't think there's anything that's going to change that. But at the same time, there are those moments where I'll be reading one of my favorite stories, or watching Batman: The Animated Series or Brave and the Bold, and that damn "Batman created by Bob Kane" credit comes up, and I'm just angry about it for the rest of the day.

Link

[The Dark Knight]

Saw this today - it's relevant to this thread:
http://io9.com/heres-how-awful-batman-would-be-without-the-existence-1507373880

[Silver Nemesis]

Is there any word yet on whether Bill will be getting that Google Doodle on his 100th birthday? I hope the campaign proves successful.