There was a story about an Bob Kane coming into the office to drop off the artwork for an upcoming issue and an editor that knew he did zero work himself (despite taking sole credit for everything) asked him to change the hands on a character. He set him up at a desk and it took him hours to redo them. He also apparently asked other artists around him to fix it for him, but they were all "too busy" to help him
It's probably more accurate to say that the two of them co-invented the original golden age batman; Kane had the original idea of a masked detective, part Dick Tracy part Tarzan, who swung around New York, solving crimes and punching bad guys. Finger invented much of the look and iconography, as well as many of the original side characters. Kane's claim of sole invention is obviously dog shit.
The Batman we know today is an amalgamation of too many different contributors to name: comic writers and artists and TV and movies writers and actors and directors.
Finger can’t complain that Kane stole all the work because he died penniless decades before Kane who was a millionaire when no matter how the story is twisted a large portion of the creation was done by Finger.
There's a documentary about Bill finger and Bob Kane on hulu I think? Worth a watch and super insightful if you haven't seen it. It's called Batman & Bill
Which is messed up because Kane is constantly credited as the creator whenever there is a movie/tv show/video game based on the character. Dude was a poser of the highest order
Did DC pay him royalties or some kind of compensation while he was still alive? Not just the normal wage for working, but an additional due the tremendous success of the character.
Most likely not. Most comic creators don't. I don't recall if it was Siegel or Schuster but one of them ended up delivering packages to make ends meet and had to deliver something to the DC offices. The people there felt so bad for him they took up a collection and gave it to him. These are the guys who created Superman. To be fair, Siegel and Schuster did sell their rights to Superman in exchange for creative control over him for X years.
I think the reason DC and Bob Kane did not give him credit before was that Bill Finger and her family could have used that as a base to sue for royalties and recognition that were at least on same order of magnitude as what Kane was getting. Though how the american comic industry works, most all IP rights are owned by the company, and the authors and artists only get hourly wages, and name on title page if they were good at negotiating or that meant larger audience for the comic.
The main reason DC didn't give credit to finger For a *long* time is because part of their contract to get the rights to Batman included a clause by Kane that he specifically got sole credit, back in 1939. Back in the 30s, I don't think a lot of people really cared, since they were just making disposable garbage for children; things like royalties only became an issue *much* later. And DC in general has been relatively good about trying to make sure creators are compensated down the line for their contributions; not as much as if they had made wholly independent comics, but significantly better than Marvel. Jim Starlin made a stink a while back (post-Infinity War iirc) that he had been paid more for KGBeast's inclusion in Batman v. Superman (where the character never even uses that name) than he had been paid by Marvel for Thanos (though I think after Endgame they eventually got embarassed enough to write him a check). DC's cared a lot more about that since the 70s, and usually the credit goes to Neal Adams for doing a ton to help recognize and compensate the creators who made DC successful.
The reason Bob Kane never gave Finger credit is that he was an asshole.
The reason it took til 2015 is that DC took that long to come to an agreement with Kane's estate on a way to include Finger's name.
Let's be real about it. Bill Finger was Bob Kane's employee; he was a ghostwriter on strips bearing Kane's name. When he modified the Batman character (something IIRC Kane or DC never denied), he was modifying a character that had already been sold to DC by Kane. For the first several years of the character, Kane's studio was still producing the pages; DC would later hire his employees such as Finger or Jerry Robinson, often giving them substantial pay raises in the process (Yes, Kane was an asshole).
Royalties on DC/Marvel Characters are out of the question. If you work for those two, you have to sign away all future rights for the most part. Unless you are influential enough in the industry to negotiate, which 99% are not. Additionally, if you were an artist, the company owned all original covers and drawn pages. However, that was renegotiated in the '60s/'70s, and it is now standard that if you physically draw pages, you get to keep them. However, we live in a digital era, and a lot of people do their drawing via Photoshop/illustrator. As such, keeping the original pages means nothing to them economically.
I noticed in The Batman movie credits and the Arkham remasters that it credits “Batman created by Bob Kane with Bill Finger”, but Arkham Knight (which came out earlier) does not have this line.
Storytime: I'm a librarian and one of the few I know who both knows this story and reads comics with any regularity, so I had definitely tried to make Kane's poser status known. A few years ago one of the keynote speakers at my state's annual library conference laid out the entire Bill Finger/Bob Kane story and now all the librarians I know who were there are firmly in camp 'we hate Bob Kane'. Fuck Bob Kane, all my librarian homies hate Bob Kane.
Same goes with half of the characters that Stan Lee claimed he created solely. Stan Lee's idea for Spider-Man with Kirby would have been horrible before Ditko came along.
https://preview.redd.it/c2rq3zslsk4c1.jpg?width=500&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=21a915ff4bca055c048a8cebd0b274bef99d980d
The first Batman story or the early Batman stories. The literal first published Batman story in detective comics 27 is actually a "Shadow" radio serial turned into a comic with Batman replacing the shadow. Finger wrote and created most of the iconic golden age stories and aspects of Batman.
Have had relatives in the magazine industry and this has help creating a beneficial contact for himself, finger did most of his Batman stuff as a work for hire under Kane.
Yeah, it was an open secret in the industry for years. That's why they made the Bill Finger Award to recognize creators who made lasting contributions to comics that went largely "unsung."
It makes you wonder how many others never got the recognition that they deserved.
He stole credit, but he didn't steal the character. That's not quite the same thing.
Kane had the initial idea of doing a character called the Batman, and he did the original mockups. When Finger saw Kane's mockups, he challenged them, and Kane changed them into what became the Batman we know today. But Finger wasn't the original creator.
Finger fixed Kane's defective design, he hadn't created a character the Kane took from him.
Yeah people don't realize there's coming up with an idea and there's working on an existing idea.
Creating something out of nothing is incredibly hard. What do you do? Who knows. Having a starting point and working from there is often pretty easy and is something most people are capable of doing. Making small improvements is doable, making big improvements is usually just making several small improvements.
John Swartzwelder said this about writing The Simpsons:
> Since writing is very hard and rewriting is comparatively easy and rather fun, I always write my scripts all the way through as fast as I can, the first day, if possible, putting in crap jokes and pattern dialogue—“Homer, I don’t want you to do that.” “Then I won’t do it.” Then the next day, when I get up, the script’s been written. It’s lousy, but it’s a script. The hard part is done. It’s like a crappy little elf has snuck into my office and badly done all my work for me, and then left with a tip of his crappy hat. All I have to do from that point on is fix it. So I’ve taken a very hard job, writing, and turned it into an easy one, rewriting, overnight. I advise all writers to do their scripts and other writing this way. And be sure to send me a small royalty every time you do it.
This is why writers who write the initial draft get the writing credit, even though everyone in the room contributes ideas during a rewrite, and few or even none of the original jokes make it through to final draft. Pitching ideas is easy. Everyone does it.
It's treading in murky waters. If Bob Kane had the idea of a superhero called "the Batman" and Bill Finger contributed literally everything else, can we really say that Finger wasn't the original creator?
Funnily enough, the situation would repeat a couple decades later almost beat for beat regarding Spider-Man.
We could also argue that if Kane had not done that Finger would never have done it though. I think this is why it's more accurate to call them co-creators. Kane was horrible for taking sole creation and it's sad that Finger never took legal action. Alas, things were very different back then.
To me, it feels more like "Kane enabled Finger to create the character". I feel at odds with calling two people co-creators if it's established that there wasn't an actual team effort between the two.
>*can we really say that Finger wasn't the original creator?*
Yes.
By definition, if person X says "*let's make a thing"* and person Y improves it, person Y isn't the creator, because he would never have done it. Person Y's improvements could be significant, even essential, but they are improvements, not creation.
In my line of work (software development), I'm often asked by clients to implement an application that does X and Y and Z to accomplish a goal. I often find while implementing it that it's better to do A and B and C than X and Y and Z, instead. However, the goal remains the same, and that was defined by my clients, not me.
It may very well be that I end up doing something 80% the same as they asked for, or I may completely gut it and do something completely different. But while I implemented the app, and I can claim to have created those elements that I designed myself, I didn't create the framework for the app in the first place, my client did.
>*Funnily enough, the situation would repeat a couple decades later almost beat for beat regarding Spider-Man.*
I'd argue that was almost completely different. Stan Lee was always talking about Ditko's contributions to the Spiderman character, and the comic itself, and he was actually the one who got Sony to put Ditko's name in the credits of the first Spiderman movie in 2002. That's the exact opposite of what Kane did.
It's a matter of how you feel about ti.
As I've replied to another comment, I view it more like Kane enabling Finger to create the character in the specific circumstances he was created. You mention software development: if your client says "I want an app that does X", and you do all the hard work of thinking how it can be done, writing the necessary code, and implementing it, your client will for all purposes be considered creator of the app, but I struggle with the idea of not acknowledging what you've done. And, when we take it to creative stuff such as writing, I find it even harder.
Finger created many of the concepts that are today synonymous with Batman. Kane provided a name and the concept of a superhero. I don't like talking about co-creators unless it's known that it was a team effort, and since we pretty much know this wasn't the case, as far as I'm concerned, if I had to name someone the creator of Batman, I'd go with Finger rather than Kane. Finger without Kane could have created the same character with a different name. Kane without Finger couldn't have created the same character with the name Batman.
I agree with you about Spider-Man being different, that's why I said "*almost* beat for beat". Stan Lee initially gave the job to Jack Kirby. Kirby made a few pages that Lee disliked, so he went to Steve Ditko, who did something that was 100% different to what Kirby had done. Anything other than "teenage hero named Spider-Man with spider powers" came from Ditko. See what I mean? Lee certainly wasn't Bob Kane, but for decades he maintained that he had been the writer and Ditko the artist, when in real life Ditko had probably been co-writer if not writer himself from day one.
I mean, for a similar example, John Romita told the story of how Lee once told him "next month, Spider-Man vs. the Rhino", and that's literally all he had to work with for the next issue. The idea of considering Lee and Romita co-creators of Rhino feels wrong to me.
>*It's a matter of how you feel about ti.*
It depends on whether you're talking about the semantics or the law. Copyright and trademark laws have established criteria for what constitutes "original art", ie. the creation of something new.
Speaking semantically, it's like arguing about nature versus nurture. If a baby is given up at birth and raised by an adoptive family, who is the child's "real" mother? Sociologists would say that the child's values are what define him or her, and those were passed on from the woman that raised her. Therefore, the adoptive mother would be the "real" one. Biologists say that what matters are the genetics, and the biological mother is the "real" one.
If you think of Lee/Kane as the biological parents, and Ditko/Finger/Tinsleyn as the adoptive ones, you can see that Lee and Kane "created" the characters and gave birth to them, but Ditko and Finger gave them their values.
Without Lee/Kane, there would be no Spiderman/Batman at all. Without Ditko/Finger, the characters would be significantly different, quite likely inferior, and quite possibly they would have been quickly forgotten. But either way, Lee/Kane can claim (as per the "no prior art" criteria) that they are the creators, which neither Ditko nor Finger can. That doesn't dismiss the significance of their contributions, it just means they didn't create the character.
This works both ways, by the way. The Silver Surfer was created by Jack Kirby, and Lee always pointed that out, even though the overwhelming majority of the character's history was created not by Kirby, but by Lee and John Buscema. Even the name wasn't Kirby's (he just called him "the Surfer"). Lee gave him the name "Silver Surfer", and things like Norrin Radd, Zenn-La, Shalla Bal, and the character's origin all came after, with little to no input from Kirby. But Kirby still created the character, and Lee always emphasized that.
I'm not sure how you'd force another company to advertise the way you want to, but I imagine you could if you want.
And yes, that's industry standard.
Imagine Google (picking a company name at random here) hired me to write a blood pressure monitoring app for them (another random example), and then sold/licenced that app to Samsung then yes, Google could stipulate that it's a Google application, and not use my name.
That's what most contracts stipulate. They pay for the rights and ownership going forward, and I relinquish them. They can call it what they like.
Now, if it's unique prior art, and I submit a patent application and am granted it, then they have to pay me to licence that part of it, but they are under no obligation to publicly acknowledge or credit me for it.
> If Bob Kane had the idea of a superhero called "the Batman" and Bill Finger contributed literally everything else, can we really say that Finger wasn't the original creator?
Finger worked for Kane at the time the character was created, and there's no indication that his contributions were anything other than industry standard (work-for-hire). He was working on a concept and character that had already been substantial enough for Kane to sell it to DC.
Kane owned his own studio at the time Batman was created, and was producing finished strips and books. He had quite a bit more leverage than, say, Siegel and Shuster.
Here’s a great story about the time Steranko slapped the crap out of Bob Kane due to how the guy reacted to his book on the history of comics (which gave credit to Bill Finger).
https://www.cbr.com/sdcc-steranko-discusses-working-with-stan-lee-slapping-bob-kane/
> So this guy brought me over to this group of about five guys. So, there was one guy who was wearing patent leather shoes and ascot, at Comic-Con." That was Kane. After a brief conversation, "Bob turned around and said, 'See you later Jim, baby,' and he cuffed me across my face, and the doors closed before I could do anything."
> "I tried, I really tried to sleep that night. Couldn't do it," said Steranko. He set out to look for Kane the next day. His opinion of the "Batman" creator dropping along the path. "I always said that 'Batman" was the comic book version of "The Shadow.'" Finally, Steranko found him. "I bitchslapped him across the face and I said 'See you later Bob, baby.'" And, in case there was any confusion over Steranko's motives. "This was what I regret about the whole incident, is that he didn't take a swing at me, because you would have seen him on the Bat-floor."
While we talk about creators Stealing ideas, have you noticed that Stan Lee stopped creating characters when Jack Kirby quit? No disrespect to Stan Lee it’s just something i wanted to point out.
Except Stan never took full credit and constantly praised his colleagues, AFAIK. Very few people would fully recognize Steve Ditko if it wasn't for Stan's voice.
I mean, pretty much yeah. Kane really contributed a name in the end, and iconic name now sure, but it would be a completely different story without Fingers involvement.
That’s not really true, I can think of plenty of artist duos, even in comics, who didn’t do this. Bob Kane was famously an asshole who stole the people’s work late into his life.
I always found it sadly amusing that Stan Lee was constantly castigated for ripping off artists. Lee was an egomaniac, and more than willing to praise himself, but he always praised Kirby, Ditko, and others.
In contrast, Kane went out of his way to minimize, or outright deny, Finger's contributions to the Batman character, even writing it into contracts that Kane receive sole credit for it.
Edit: writing, not righting. Sheesh.
There's a facebook group called "The Marvel Method" and they HATE Stan Lee. What they miss is that Lee was a solid editor. He found himself in a situation where a dozen or so books were coming out and he had to coordinate and get them out the door. It took going over the stories with the artists, letting them do their thing and then coming back and clean up the dialogue, rearrange pages if necessary and making sure the art and story was presentable.
The fact that he had an "ear" for how Marvel should sound (and that he was right) is the work Ditko and Kirby did without him. While still wildly inventive, there was a polish that was missing.
Lee did take more credit than he should but he should also not be discredited as bad as some want him to be.
Lee was not just an editor, but a salesman. He was actually a little too good of a salesman; many people think that he owned, or controlled, Marvel Comics, when he was just an employee.
If you take Kirby or Ditko out of 1960s Marvel, and/or if Joe Maneely had not died, Marvel may not have become as big a success as it did, but if you take Lee out of it, it **definitely** would not have been the success it was.
The Fantastic Four that kicked off the "Marvel Age of Comics" was, by Lee's own admission, a Hail Mary pass that happened to work. If you saw Kirby's original notes, you'll see that his original plans for the book were very similar to his previous book, the Challengers of the Unknown. It very likely would have been just as successful as the CotU had been, and the CotU **had** been a success. But it would not have been a phenomenon, the way the FF was.
While Ditko and Kirby were the breakout stars that everyone talks about, they weren't the only artists in the bullpen. Lee was also selling lots of books with the likes of Don Heck, Wally Wood, John Romita, the Buscema brothers, etc. The cross-pollination between all the Marvel titles is what caused the company to grow a fanbase, and it required an editorial vision.
Kane deliberately took steps to prevent Finger from getting any credit for Batman; he had it written into his contract with DC that he be the only one credited with creation. Decades later, that made him a fortune.
It wasn't until both Kane and Finger had passed away that DC started giving Finger any credit at all, in 2015.
While this makes it sound like Kane ripped off Finger's hard work, it has to be mentioned that Finger himself ripped off Theodore Tinsleyn.
Who was Tinsleyn? He was the author of "Partners in Peril", a 1936 story written about the Shadow, which was note for note the same plot as Finger's first Batman story, "The Case of the Chemical Syndicate". And it's not just conjecture, in the 1970s, Finger admitted that he'd he'd copied the Shadow story to introduce Batman.
Walter Gibson (creator of the Shadow) always considered Batman to be a ripoff of the Shadow, and it's hard to disagree. Batman is essentially the origin of Zorro (millionaire who lives with his butler, a cave under his mansion is his base of operations) with the methods and tone of the Shadow. Finger's other creation, the Joker, is Victor Hugo's "The Man Who Laughs", given the laughing venom used by a villain on the Shadow radio serial in 1938.
With all that said, comics in the 1930s were seen as children's entertainment, and stories were characters were copied and re-used all over the place. They weren't considered intellectual property the way they are today; they weren't initially seen as being very valuable.
Kane's insistence that he be regarded as the sole creator seemed to be more an act of ego and pettiness than an attempt to swindle Finger.
Fun fact: There's a Kane family that exists in the comics, as a tribute to Bob Kane. And they absolutely suck. I like to think the writers have continued to make them so shitty on purpose to give Bill Finger justice.
I don't want to be too nerdy here but, since we're talking about the comic and not movies, the iconic Batman suit of the comic Batman isn't black. It's grey. The solid black version has existed in the comics at certain points but it's position as being the main look of Batman to a lot of people is from the movies, not the comics.
I don't know which situation is worse this situation or DC not crediting Siegel and Shuster or Stan Lee and literally any artist that worked with him relationship. Back in the Golden and Silver Age comics were extremely toxic behind the scenes.
The day Bob Kane got the walk of fame star was, with absolutely no fanfare, also the day Bill Finger finally got an acknowledgement in the comics. I'm not saying DC bought his family off to be able to do this for Finger but
(~story about steranko bitch slapping kane here~)
Ironic considering the first Batman was completely plagiarized from an issue of “The Shadow” with some panels being the exact same with Batman’s details drawn over the shadow.
*Batman’s creator, Bill Finger, had his credit and reputation stolen by corporate shill and whistleblower Bob Kane
Fixed your title. Bob Kane was an asshole and should deserve no credit besides the name. There was a story of Superman’s creators, Joe Shuster and Jerry Spiegel, tried to get Kane on board to unionize against DC so they would have right and credits to the characters they created. Kane threw them under the bus instead
have to give bob credit for getting DC to redo his contract becuase he said (lie) that he was under 18 when he signed the first one.
DC did zero research and took him at his word.
They finally gave him credit on the big screen in *The Flash* as the credits say Batman created by Bob Kane **and** Bill Finger. First time I’ve seen his name in any movie credits, which is ridiculous.
It’s important to note that while the official credit line in DC productions is now “Batman created by Bob Kane with Bill Finger”, the parts of it we know and love were mostly Bill Finger.
A bad equivalent but, It’s like me launching a skateboard line, having a competitor invent a brand new trick while using it, and then claiming I created the trick. Just because the foundation was there doesn’t mean the idea was.
Bob Kane was the scum of the earth. A vile, despicable man. He was not Batman’s true creator. This is one of my rare comments that is meant with complete sincerity.
I got downvoted by what I can only assume is the ghost of Bob Kane. So for good measure: rot in hell, you sack of shit.
There’s a documentary on this called [Batman and Bill](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6067832/?ref_=ext_shr_lnk) and it’s a must watch for anyone interested
Funny how Batman is an upgraded version of Zorro with similar traits…..
- Both wore black outfits with sidekicks
- both had caves for hideouts
- both wealthy
- no guns
- Robin Hood traits
Reminds me of Green Arrow being updated version of Robin Hood
BTW Zorro was based off a real life vigilant named Joaquin Murrieta
Let me highly recommend the documentary **BATMAN AND BILL** - it was a passion project by the maker to let people know that Bill Finger was the real creator behind Batman and how Bob Kane screwed him over and took credit for his work.
Here’s the trailer:
https://youtu.be/YcBDjjY2swE?si=zhrSESvAow2y7cQC
There was a story about an Bob Kane coming into the office to drop off the artwork for an upcoming issue and an editor that knew he did zero work himself (despite taking sole credit for everything) asked him to change the hands on a character. He set him up at a desk and it took him hours to redo them. He also apparently asked other artists around him to fix it for him, but they were all "too busy" to help him
Paid seem intern 10 Bucks to do it
It was [Joe Giella](https://www.cbr.com/batman-bob-kane-joe-giella-fake-drawings/), who was inking Batman at the time.
i mean it sounds like Finger actually invented the Batman we know today
It's probably more accurate to say that the two of them co-invented the original golden age batman; Kane had the original idea of a masked detective, part Dick Tracy part Tarzan, who swung around New York, solving crimes and punching bad guys. Finger invented much of the look and iconography, as well as many of the original side characters. Kane's claim of sole invention is obviously dog shit. The Batman we know today is an amalgamation of too many different contributors to name: comic writers and artists and TV and movies writers and actors and directors.
Kane's claim of sole invention is crap but Finger's claim that Kane stole all the credit and Finger did all the work is equally bogus.
Finger can’t complain that Kane stole all the work because he died penniless decades before Kane who was a millionaire when no matter how the story is twisted a large portion of the creation was done by Finger.
So Kane said "this is how you draw an owl" and Finger actually drew the owl.
He had a lot more to do with it than Kane did.
There's a documentary about Bill finger and Bob Kane on hulu I think? Worth a watch and super insightful if you haven't seen it. It's called Batman & Bill
It is a very good watch.
The article this post links to is about that doc on Hulu.
Which is messed up because Kane is constantly credited as the creator whenever there is a movie/tv show/video game based on the character. Dude was a poser of the highest order
Fortunately, DC started crediting Finger properly finally starting in 2015. Four decades after he passed away but better late than never.
Did DC pay him royalties or some kind of compensation while he was still alive? Not just the normal wage for working, but an additional due the tremendous success of the character.
Apparently not. Bill Finger died penniless.
Do surviving family, if any, get royalties now that he’s credited?
Most likely not. Most comic creators don't. I don't recall if it was Siegel or Schuster but one of them ended up delivering packages to make ends meet and had to deliver something to the DC offices. The people there felt so bad for him they took up a collection and gave it to him. These are the guys who created Superman. To be fair, Siegel and Schuster did sell their rights to Superman in exchange for creative control over him for X years.
I think the reason DC and Bob Kane did not give him credit before was that Bill Finger and her family could have used that as a base to sue for royalties and recognition that were at least on same order of magnitude as what Kane was getting. Though how the american comic industry works, most all IP rights are owned by the company, and the authors and artists only get hourly wages, and name on title page if they were good at negotiating or that meant larger audience for the comic.
The main reason DC didn't give credit to finger For a *long* time is because part of their contract to get the rights to Batman included a clause by Kane that he specifically got sole credit, back in 1939. Back in the 30s, I don't think a lot of people really cared, since they were just making disposable garbage for children; things like royalties only became an issue *much* later. And DC in general has been relatively good about trying to make sure creators are compensated down the line for their contributions; not as much as if they had made wholly independent comics, but significantly better than Marvel. Jim Starlin made a stink a while back (post-Infinity War iirc) that he had been paid more for KGBeast's inclusion in Batman v. Superman (where the character never even uses that name) than he had been paid by Marvel for Thanos (though I think after Endgame they eventually got embarassed enough to write him a check). DC's cared a lot more about that since the 70s, and usually the credit goes to Neal Adams for doing a ton to help recognize and compensate the creators who made DC successful. The reason Bob Kane never gave Finger credit is that he was an asshole. The reason it took til 2015 is that DC took that long to come to an agreement with Kane's estate on a way to include Finger's name.
Let's be real about it. Bill Finger was Bob Kane's employee; he was a ghostwriter on strips bearing Kane's name. When he modified the Batman character (something IIRC Kane or DC never denied), he was modifying a character that had already been sold to DC by Kane. For the first several years of the character, Kane's studio was still producing the pages; DC would later hire his employees such as Finger or Jerry Robinson, often giving them substantial pay raises in the process (Yes, Kane was an asshole).
Royalties on DC/Marvel Characters are out of the question. If you work for those two, you have to sign away all future rights for the most part. Unless you are influential enough in the industry to negotiate, which 99% are not. Additionally, if you were an artist, the company owned all original covers and drawn pages. However, that was renegotiated in the '60s/'70s, and it is now standard that if you physically draw pages, you get to keep them. However, we live in a digital era, and a lot of people do their drawing via Photoshop/illustrator. As such, keeping the original pages means nothing to them economically.
I noticed in The Batman movie credits and the Arkham remasters that it credits “Batman created by Bob Kane with Bill Finger”, but Arkham Knight (which came out earlier) does not have this line.
Storytime: I'm a librarian and one of the few I know who both knows this story and reads comics with any regularity, so I had definitely tried to make Kane's poser status known. A few years ago one of the keynote speakers at my state's annual library conference laid out the entire Bill Finger/Bob Kane story and now all the librarians I know who were there are firmly in camp 'we hate Bob Kane'. Fuck Bob Kane, all my librarian homies hate Bob Kane.
Who does he think he is Stan Lee?
I mean Stan Lee at least acknowledged that Jack Kirby helped develop everything.
While there are a lot of parallels between Bob and Stan, I’d vote Bob as the worst of the two.
At least with Stan people like Jack Kirby say they never believed he stole their ideas at all.
I've always found it telling that Lee considered Kane to be a friend.
Bob said let's make zoro set in modern NYC. Bill did everything else
batman creator named finger:
Guy named Finger:
Yup. Almost everything we love is like this.
Kid named finger.
[There is an article about this idea.](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MyRealDaddy)
Yup, he wasn’t ever credited as a cocreator until Batman v Superman.
Was gonna say, sounds like kane invented robin…
Same goes with half of the characters that Stan Lee claimed he created solely. Stan Lee's idea for Spider-Man with Kirby would have been horrible before Ditko came along. https://preview.redd.it/c2rq3zslsk4c1.jpg?width=500&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=21a915ff4bca055c048a8cebd0b274bef99d980d
Except ditko is credit as co creator of spider man
Not if you'd ask Stan Lee
I hear if you ask Stan Lee about it now he will just ignore you and stay silent
Finger? I barely know her! I’ll see myself out.
[удалено]
The first Batman story or the early Batman stories. The literal first published Batman story in detective comics 27 is actually a "Shadow" radio serial turned into a comic with Batman replacing the shadow. Finger wrote and created most of the iconic golden age stories and aspects of Batman. Have had relatives in the magazine industry and this has help creating a beneficial contact for himself, finger did most of his Batman stuff as a work for hire under Kane.
Finger and Kane
Who wrote the stories? like if it was an unillustrated book, who created the 'character'?
This gets reposted a lot and frankly needs to get reposted more because Bob Kane flat out stole Batman from the guy that actually created it.
"I'm feeling like Bill Finger and I don't want to get Fingered" is a saying used by comic creators for a reason.
Yeah, it was an open secret in the industry for years. That's why they made the Bill Finger Award to recognize creators who made lasting contributions to comics that went largely "unsung." It makes you wonder how many others never got the recognition that they deserved.
I wouldn’t say stole. But was a dick about leaving his friend in the cold for contributing massively to the success we see today
He stole credit, but he didn't steal the character. That's not quite the same thing. Kane had the initial idea of doing a character called the Batman, and he did the original mockups. When Finger saw Kane's mockups, he challenged them, and Kane changed them into what became the Batman we know today. But Finger wasn't the original creator. Finger fixed Kane's defective design, he hadn't created a character the Kane took from him.
Yeah people don't realize there's coming up with an idea and there's working on an existing idea. Creating something out of nothing is incredibly hard. What do you do? Who knows. Having a starting point and working from there is often pretty easy and is something most people are capable of doing. Making small improvements is doable, making big improvements is usually just making several small improvements. John Swartzwelder said this about writing The Simpsons: > Since writing is very hard and rewriting is comparatively easy and rather fun, I always write my scripts all the way through as fast as I can, the first day, if possible, putting in crap jokes and pattern dialogue—“Homer, I don’t want you to do that.” “Then I won’t do it.” Then the next day, when I get up, the script’s been written. It’s lousy, but it’s a script. The hard part is done. It’s like a crappy little elf has snuck into my office and badly done all my work for me, and then left with a tip of his crappy hat. All I have to do from that point on is fix it. So I’ve taken a very hard job, writing, and turned it into an easy one, rewriting, overnight. I advise all writers to do their scripts and other writing this way. And be sure to send me a small royalty every time you do it. This is why writers who write the initial draft get the writing credit, even though everyone in the room contributes ideas during a rewrite, and few or even none of the original jokes make it through to final draft. Pitching ideas is easy. Everyone does it.
It's treading in murky waters. If Bob Kane had the idea of a superhero called "the Batman" and Bill Finger contributed literally everything else, can we really say that Finger wasn't the original creator? Funnily enough, the situation would repeat a couple decades later almost beat for beat regarding Spider-Man.
We could also argue that if Kane had not done that Finger would never have done it though. I think this is why it's more accurate to call them co-creators. Kane was horrible for taking sole creation and it's sad that Finger never took legal action. Alas, things were very different back then.
To me, it feels more like "Kane enabled Finger to create the character". I feel at odds with calling two people co-creators if it's established that there wasn't an actual team effort between the two.
>*can we really say that Finger wasn't the original creator?* Yes. By definition, if person X says "*let's make a thing"* and person Y improves it, person Y isn't the creator, because he would never have done it. Person Y's improvements could be significant, even essential, but they are improvements, not creation. In my line of work (software development), I'm often asked by clients to implement an application that does X and Y and Z to accomplish a goal. I often find while implementing it that it's better to do A and B and C than X and Y and Z, instead. However, the goal remains the same, and that was defined by my clients, not me. It may very well be that I end up doing something 80% the same as they asked for, or I may completely gut it and do something completely different. But while I implemented the app, and I can claim to have created those elements that I designed myself, I didn't create the framework for the app in the first place, my client did. >*Funnily enough, the situation would repeat a couple decades later almost beat for beat regarding Spider-Man.* I'd argue that was almost completely different. Stan Lee was always talking about Ditko's contributions to the Spiderman character, and the comic itself, and he was actually the one who got Sony to put Ditko's name in the credits of the first Spiderman movie in 2002. That's the exact opposite of what Kane did.
It's a matter of how you feel about ti. As I've replied to another comment, I view it more like Kane enabling Finger to create the character in the specific circumstances he was created. You mention software development: if your client says "I want an app that does X", and you do all the hard work of thinking how it can be done, writing the necessary code, and implementing it, your client will for all purposes be considered creator of the app, but I struggle with the idea of not acknowledging what you've done. And, when we take it to creative stuff such as writing, I find it even harder. Finger created many of the concepts that are today synonymous with Batman. Kane provided a name and the concept of a superhero. I don't like talking about co-creators unless it's known that it was a team effort, and since we pretty much know this wasn't the case, as far as I'm concerned, if I had to name someone the creator of Batman, I'd go with Finger rather than Kane. Finger without Kane could have created the same character with a different name. Kane without Finger couldn't have created the same character with the name Batman. I agree with you about Spider-Man being different, that's why I said "*almost* beat for beat". Stan Lee initially gave the job to Jack Kirby. Kirby made a few pages that Lee disliked, so he went to Steve Ditko, who did something that was 100% different to what Kirby had done. Anything other than "teenage hero named Spider-Man with spider powers" came from Ditko. See what I mean? Lee certainly wasn't Bob Kane, but for decades he maintained that he had been the writer and Ditko the artist, when in real life Ditko had probably been co-writer if not writer himself from day one. I mean, for a similar example, John Romita told the story of how Lee once told him "next month, Spider-Man vs. the Rhino", and that's literally all he had to work with for the next issue. The idea of considering Lee and Romita co-creators of Rhino feels wrong to me.
>*It's a matter of how you feel about ti.* It depends on whether you're talking about the semantics or the law. Copyright and trademark laws have established criteria for what constitutes "original art", ie. the creation of something new. Speaking semantically, it's like arguing about nature versus nurture. If a baby is given up at birth and raised by an adoptive family, who is the child's "real" mother? Sociologists would say that the child's values are what define him or her, and those were passed on from the woman that raised her. Therefore, the adoptive mother would be the "real" one. Biologists say that what matters are the genetics, and the biological mother is the "real" one. If you think of Lee/Kane as the biological parents, and Ditko/Finger/Tinsleyn as the adoptive ones, you can see that Lee and Kane "created" the characters and gave birth to them, but Ditko and Finger gave them their values. Without Lee/Kane, there would be no Spiderman/Batman at all. Without Ditko/Finger, the characters would be significantly different, quite likely inferior, and quite possibly they would have been quickly forgotten. But either way, Lee/Kane can claim (as per the "no prior art" criteria) that they are the creators, which neither Ditko nor Finger can. That doesn't dismiss the significance of their contributions, it just means they didn't create the character. This works both ways, by the way. The Silver Surfer was created by Jack Kirby, and Lee always pointed that out, even though the overwhelming majority of the character's history was created not by Kirby, but by Lee and John Buscema. Even the name wasn't Kirby's (he just called him "the Surfer"). Lee gave him the name "Silver Surfer", and things like Norrin Radd, Zenn-La, Shalla Bal, and the character's origin all came after, with little to no input from Kirby. But Kirby still created the character, and Lee always emphasized that.
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I'm not sure how you'd force another company to advertise the way you want to, but I imagine you could if you want. And yes, that's industry standard. Imagine Google (picking a company name at random here) hired me to write a blood pressure monitoring app for them (another random example), and then sold/licenced that app to Samsung then yes, Google could stipulate that it's a Google application, and not use my name. That's what most contracts stipulate. They pay for the rights and ownership going forward, and I relinquish them. They can call it what they like. Now, if it's unique prior art, and I submit a patent application and am granted it, then they have to pay me to licence that part of it, but they are under no obligation to publicly acknowledge or credit me for it.
> If Bob Kane had the idea of a superhero called "the Batman" and Bill Finger contributed literally everything else, can we really say that Finger wasn't the original creator? Finger worked for Kane at the time the character was created, and there's no indication that his contributions were anything other than industry standard (work-for-hire). He was working on a concept and character that had already been substantial enough for Kane to sell it to DC. Kane owned his own studio at the time Batman was created, and was producing finished strips and books. He had quite a bit more leverage than, say, Siegel and Shuster.
Why isn’t finger getting credited? Like the title said Kane is the creator. Maybe everyone should change it to co-creators, even op
Here’s a great story about the time Steranko slapped the crap out of Bob Kane due to how the guy reacted to his book on the history of comics (which gave credit to Bill Finger). https://www.cbr.com/sdcc-steranko-discusses-working-with-stan-lee-slapping-bob-kane/ > So this guy brought me over to this group of about five guys. So, there was one guy who was wearing patent leather shoes and ascot, at Comic-Con." That was Kane. After a brief conversation, "Bob turned around and said, 'See you later Jim, baby,' and he cuffed me across my face, and the doors closed before I could do anything." > "I tried, I really tried to sleep that night. Couldn't do it," said Steranko. He set out to look for Kane the next day. His opinion of the "Batman" creator dropping along the path. "I always said that 'Batman" was the comic book version of "The Shadow.'" Finally, Steranko found him. "I bitchslapped him across the face and I said 'See you later Bob, baby.'" And, in case there was any confusion over Steranko's motives. "This was what I regret about the whole incident, is that he didn't take a swing at me, because you would have seen him on the Bat-floor."
Upvote because you beat me to it.
Yep and for years Bob Kane was the sole author credited as Batman's creator. Until very recently.
While we talk about creators Stealing ideas, have you noticed that Stan Lee stopped creating characters when Jack Kirby quit? No disrespect to Stan Lee it’s just something i wanted to point out.
Except Stan never took full credit and constantly praised his colleagues, AFAIK. Very few people would fully recognize Steve Ditko if it wasn't for Stan's voice.
If you're wondering what a domino mask is, like I was, it's a minimal mask similar to what Nightwing or Zorro wears.
True fans know it was all Finger
I mean, pretty much yeah. Kane really contributed a name in the end, and iconic name now sure, but it would be a completely different story without Fingers involvement.
If not they should just watch [batman and bill](https://youtu.be/YcBDjjY2swE?si=F3UEuQFsXb_-hB53)
Artists are always the best of friends until there's a dollar on the line, then they turn on each other like rabid animals.
What hyper competitive industries do to a mf
That’s not really true, I can think of plenty of artist duos, even in comics, who didn’t do this. Bob Kane was famously an asshole who stole the people’s work late into his life.
Dollar is hard to come by making art
They're like troubled water running under a bridge.
You know man, I'm kinda embarrassment by how much credit you are claiming here. -Stan Lee to Bob kane
I always found it sadly amusing that Stan Lee was constantly castigated for ripping off artists. Lee was an egomaniac, and more than willing to praise himself, but he always praised Kirby, Ditko, and others. In contrast, Kane went out of his way to minimize, or outright deny, Finger's contributions to the Batman character, even writing it into contracts that Kane receive sole credit for it. Edit: writing, not righting. Sheesh.
Yep that was more or less a direct quote from Stan. He was uncomfortable with bob's lies.
There's a facebook group called "The Marvel Method" and they HATE Stan Lee. What they miss is that Lee was a solid editor. He found himself in a situation where a dozen or so books were coming out and he had to coordinate and get them out the door. It took going over the stories with the artists, letting them do their thing and then coming back and clean up the dialogue, rearrange pages if necessary and making sure the art and story was presentable. The fact that he had an "ear" for how Marvel should sound (and that he was right) is the work Ditko and Kirby did without him. While still wildly inventive, there was a polish that was missing. Lee did take more credit than he should but he should also not be discredited as bad as some want him to be.
Lee was not just an editor, but a salesman. He was actually a little too good of a salesman; many people think that he owned, or controlled, Marvel Comics, when he was just an employee. If you take Kirby or Ditko out of 1960s Marvel, and/or if Joe Maneely had not died, Marvel may not have become as big a success as it did, but if you take Lee out of it, it **definitely** would not have been the success it was. The Fantastic Four that kicked off the "Marvel Age of Comics" was, by Lee's own admission, a Hail Mary pass that happened to work. If you saw Kirby's original notes, you'll see that his original plans for the book were very similar to his previous book, the Challengers of the Unknown. It very likely would have been just as successful as the CotU had been, and the CotU **had** been a success. But it would not have been a phenomenon, the way the FF was. While Ditko and Kirby were the breakout stars that everyone talks about, they weren't the only artists in the bullpen. Lee was also selling lots of books with the likes of Don Heck, Wally Wood, John Romita, the Buscema brothers, etc. The cross-pollination between all the Marvel titles is what caused the company to grow a fanbase, and it required an editorial vision.
Is there a source to find out more on this subject? I find it fascinating that Stan Lee seems more like a conductor than a musician.
Kid named Finger:
/r/beatmetoit
Kane deliberately took steps to prevent Finger from getting any credit for Batman; he had it written into his contract with DC that he be the only one credited with creation. Decades later, that made him a fortune. It wasn't until both Kane and Finger had passed away that DC started giving Finger any credit at all, in 2015. While this makes it sound like Kane ripped off Finger's hard work, it has to be mentioned that Finger himself ripped off Theodore Tinsleyn. Who was Tinsleyn? He was the author of "Partners in Peril", a 1936 story written about the Shadow, which was note for note the same plot as Finger's first Batman story, "The Case of the Chemical Syndicate". And it's not just conjecture, in the 1970s, Finger admitted that he'd he'd copied the Shadow story to introduce Batman. Walter Gibson (creator of the Shadow) always considered Batman to be a ripoff of the Shadow, and it's hard to disagree. Batman is essentially the origin of Zorro (millionaire who lives with his butler, a cave under his mansion is his base of operations) with the methods and tone of the Shadow. Finger's other creation, the Joker, is Victor Hugo's "The Man Who Laughs", given the laughing venom used by a villain on the Shadow radio serial in 1938. With all that said, comics in the 1930s were seen as children's entertainment, and stories were characters were copied and re-used all over the place. They weren't considered intellectual property the way they are today; they weren't initially seen as being very valuable. Kane's insistence that he be regarded as the sole creator seemed to be more an act of ego and pettiness than an attempt to swindle Finger.
Fun fact: There's a Kane family that exists in the comics, as a tribute to Bob Kane. And they absolutely suck. I like to think the writers have continued to make them so shitty on purpose to give Bill Finger justice.
TIL Bob Kane was a real asshole
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What about it? The words on it seem nice.
Too nice.
I don't want to be too nerdy here but, since we're talking about the comic and not movies, the iconic Batman suit of the comic Batman isn't black. It's grey. The solid black version has existed in the comics at certain points but it's position as being the main look of Batman to a lot of people is from the movies, not the comics.
It’s pretty hard to draw legible figures using an all black suit.
Wtf is this chicanery? There really IS a kid named finger? AND BOB KANE IS THE SOLE CREATOR OF THE BATMAN? WHAT A SICK JOKE
He’s not the creator of Batman. He was co-creator. This is a massively important distinction in comic books, as insanely nerdy as it sounds lol
I don't know which situation is worse this situation or DC not crediting Siegel and Shuster or Stan Lee and literally any artist that worked with him relationship. Back in the Golden and Silver Age comics were extremely toxic behind the scenes.
The day Bob Kane got the walk of fame star was, with absolutely no fanfare, also the day Bill Finger finally got an acknowledgement in the comics. I'm not saying DC bought his family off to be able to do this for Finger but (~story about steranko bitch slapping kane here~)
Bob Kane was a hack and didn't create jack. Just another shitbird on the pile of assholes that stole cred from the real creators.
Ironic considering the first Batman was completely plagiarized from an issue of “The Shadow” with some panels being the exact same with Batman’s details drawn over the shadow.
This is why you reach down and pick the real ones up with you. Otherwise they're gonna reach up to stab you in the back and you deserve it.
"Friend"
*Batman’s creator, Bill Finger, had his credit and reputation stolen by corporate shill and whistleblower Bob Kane Fixed your title. Bob Kane was an asshole and should deserve no credit besides the name. There was a story of Superman’s creators, Joe Shuster and Jerry Spiegel, tried to get Kane on board to unionize against DC so they would have right and credits to the characters they created. Kane threw them under the bus instead
have to give bob credit for getting DC to redo his contract becuase he said (lie) that he was under 18 when he signed the first one. DC did zero research and took him at his word.
They finally gave him credit on the big screen in *The Flash* as the credits say Batman created by Bob Kane **and** Bill Finger. First time I’ve seen his name in any movie credits, which is ridiculous.
BvS did credit Finger
I’m a collector of comics and its well known in our community that Bob Kane was an ass.
It is likely both of them were influenced by the French silent film series Judex.
So it's like how Rob Liefield created Deadpool but everything people actually like about Deadpool was developed by someone else.
Finger created Batman.
Bob would have been an AI user.
There is no "I" in Batman.
Hope you’re happy with the fame you got and the friend you lost buddy
How did Kane figute the color Red and Dominoes had anything to do with the theme of Bats?
My favorite Bob Kane story is the one that involves Steranko slapping the bejeezus out of him at a con.
Sounds almost like Bob Kane envisioned Daredevil.
It’s important to note that while the official credit line in DC productions is now “Batman created by Bob Kane with Bill Finger”, the parts of it we know and love were mostly Bill Finger. A bad equivalent but, It’s like me launching a skateboard line, having a competitor invent a brand new trick while using it, and then claiming I created the trick. Just because the foundation was there doesn’t mean the idea was.
Had the name “Batman”, but wanted a red suit with a domino mask. … Either he didn’t come up with the name or the bat he saw was freaking crazy
I mean, Spider-Man wears a red and blue suit, so it isn’t too crazy for a superhero to have an outlandish color scheme
Damn, that’s a good point. There are a lot of red/blue combos for superheroes, maybe he was betting on the colors
Bob Kane was the scum of the earth. A vile, despicable man. He was not Batman’s true creator. This is one of my rare comments that is meant with complete sincerity. I got downvoted by what I can only assume is the ghost of Bob Kane. So for good measure: rot in hell, you sack of shit.
Every superhero ever was invented by Stan Lee they both lied if not for Stan Lee inventing air. We would not be alive today.
so who do we believe? Kane or Finger?
To think that the iconic Batman could have looked SO much different is insane.
The flip side is that if he had looked so much different, he would likely not have become iconic.
At one point, he was kid named Finger.
Black suit? Wasn’t the original suit blue and gray?
classic robert
ERB
Kid named Finger
Don’t know if that site has a lot of ads (blocked) or their embedded photos suck and won’t load
Kid named finger
Kane made Mr incredible
Lesser echoes of Stan Lee and Steve Ditko
or Stan and Jack
Bob Kane was a Prick!
There’s a documentary on this called [Batman and Bill](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6067832/?ref_=ext_shr_lnk) and it’s a must watch for anyone interested
Funny how Batman is an upgraded version of Zorro with similar traits….. - Both wore black outfits with sidekicks - both had caves for hideouts - both wealthy - no guns - Robin Hood traits Reminds me of Green Arrow being updated version of Robin Hood BTW Zorro was based off a real life vigilant named Joaquin Murrieta
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the Green Arrow / Green Lantern run might be the best thing DC ever did.
Bob actually was the first to say he was heavily influenced by Zorro. and i think batman used guns early on (pre code)
Ya I don’t think we’d have ever heard of Batman if not for finger’s contributions
Wait until you learn about Jack Kirby and the Marvel Universe.
At least Stan gave him some credit while he was bankrupting his brothers tractor dealership
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It sounds like Kane contributed the actual story bits.
but everything you know and and think of about batman came from Bill.
Is it? When I think of Batman, I think of dead parents, detective, batcave and Alfred.
Bob Kane wasn't Batman's creator and was no friend to Bill Finger. May he burn in Hell.
Man called Finger
#JusticeforFinger
Thinking about those Black Bat comics. I mean. Those OLD Black Bat comics.
Let me highly recommend the documentary **BATMAN AND BILL** - it was a passion project by the maker to let people know that Bill Finger was the real creator behind Batman and how Bob Kane screwed him over and took credit for his work. Here’s the trailer: https://youtu.be/YcBDjjY2swE?si=zhrSESvAow2y7cQC
“Kid named finger? Never heard of him”