Batman is arguably the most iconic comic book character ever created. With his dark edge, use of gadgets instead of powers, and classic lineup of villains, love him or hate him you can’t deny this character has had a giant impact on popular culture.
However, despite most of us knowing the character, I’m betting many of you don’t know who created him? Spoiler alert, it was not Stan Lee.
If you watch any of the movies, or TV series, you’ll always see the name Bob Kane as the creator of Batman. But, Kane was not the sole creator, nor even responsible for a majority of the mythos. That credit goes to a man named Bill Finger, who despite making a huge contribution to this series, lived in almost complete obscurity.
In 1939, a comic book publisher called DC Comics, was cashing in on their hugely successful hero, Superman. Attempting to branch out even further, the company was working hard on who would become their next cash cow; enter Bob Kane.
Kane was a cartoonist who, in the 1930s, did various freelance jobs for other comic book franchises. When Kane heard about DC’s search for a new hero, he quickly created a character called The Batman, who wore a red jumpsuit, a domino mask, and had bat wings.
At that time, Kane was friends with another aspiring writer, Bill Finger. Kane asked Finger for input on the new character. It was Finger who suggested giving him a cowl, bright white eyes, gloves, and making the suit dark with a cape, instead of wings. Finger also come up with Batman’s secret identity, Bruce Wayne, and the fictionalized version of New York, Gotham City. With that, the two became collaborators on the character.
When Kane sold the character to DC, he made a deal that he would be credited as the sole creator and retain all copyrights, with no mention of Finger.
Despite that deal, Finger continued to ghostwrite for the Batman series. Finger created many of the characters in the franchise, including his sidekicks, Robin and Batgirl, his friend Commissioner Gordon, and many of the villains, including The Joker, Catwoman, The Penguin, The Riddler, The Scarecrow, and Two-Face.
In the summer of 1965, Finger made an appearance at Comic-Con, and an article was subsequently written citing Finger as the co-creator of Batman.
When Bob Kane heard about this, he made another deal with DC, and asked that Finger’s name be added to the comic strip, and that he get a co-creator credit. He also admitted that Finger’s involvement was far greater than his, and that Finger should get almost all the recognition.
No, I’m kidding! What he actually did, was issue the following public statement:
“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, the myth from the truth, so that I cannot blame Bill too much if at times his memory clouds.”
Wow...
Yeah, he didn’t take sharing the limelight too well.
So, with Kane’s “by-line on the strip,” and his contract with DC, Finger didn’t have a leg to stand on.
Since a writer's life, especially in those days, was not lucrative, Finger worked constantly and made little in return. According to his son Fred, “You had to write a lot of stories in order to make any kind of money at all, and it was exhausting.”
By the 1960’s, Finger slowed down writing for comics and switched to scripts. He even wrote a couple of episodes for the 1960’s Batman TV series. According to his friend and co-writer on those episodes, Charles Sinclair, Finger was on the verge of tears, when he finally saw his name attached to his work.
During that time, Finger’s health was slowly deteriorating. He suffered three heart attacks in 1963, 1970, and 1973, and later died from atherosclerosis in 1974 at 59 years old. At the time of his death, Finger was broke, while Kane, who lived for another 24 years, would die with a reported net worth of $10 million.
After Finger’s death, his son Fred took his ashes to the beach, traced the Batman symbol in the sand, and poured the ashes into it before it was taken away by the waves.
On October 3, 1979, Michael E. Uslan, who has produced every Batman movie since the 80’s, (including Joker in 2019), hired Kane as a creative consultant for Tim Burton’s Batman & Batman Returns, Joel Schumacher’s Batman Forever & Batman & Robin, as well as all the animated works, including Batman: The Animated Series, Batman: Mask of the Phantasm and Batman & Mr. Freeze: Subzero. Despite his death in 1998, Kane even got sole creator credit for Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins, The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises.
Kane did give credit to Finger once. But it was 16 years after his death, and without any financial benefit to Finger’s estate. In his 1990 autobiography, Kane wrote, “Now that my longtime friend and collaborator is gone, I must admit that Bill never received the fame and recognition he deserved. He was an unsung hero. I often tell my wife, if I could go back fifteen years before he died, I would like to say, I’ll put your name on it now. You deserve it.”
In 2012, a writer named Marc Tyler Nobleman did an extensive study into Finger’s life, and wrote a biography called Bill the Boy-Wonder: The Secret Co-Creator of Batman. His work reignited the story of Bill Finger, and lead his family into a short legal battle to get Finger’s name back into print.
In 2015, Finger’s family struck a deal with DC, finally giving him his long-overdue credit. While the statement made no mention of any financial compensation, Bill Finger’s name has appeared on all Batman-related projects since 2016, including the most recent 2022 film, The Batman.
Bill Finger was a man who worked hard to create an icon, only to have it stolen by his creative partner. It’s an unknown story, but hopefully this blog, Nobleman’s book, and his subsequent HULU documentary Batman & Bill (which goes into even greater detail about Bill Finger’s life) can shed light on the story of this brilliant writer, and will help give him the recognition he always deserved.
Thank you Bill, for giving us my favorite superhero of all time!!!