Batman's unaccredited co-creator: Bill FingerBob Kane is known as
Batmans creator. But is the
Batman that you
see wearing only wearing bright red costume, stiff black bat wings attached to his arms, a black domino (Robin style) mask? That was the
Batman that Bob Kane created. It's Bill Fingers
Batman that you know today.William
Finger was born February 8, 1914, in New York City. He attended a DeWitt Clinton High School, the same as Robert (Bob) Kane. The two never met as students as Bill Finger was a couple of grades ahead of Bob Kane. The two would meet later when Bill was a shoe salesman. The two had a mutual love of newspaper strips and comics. They read characters like
The Shadow and
Doc Savage. Kane and Finger would work together and create
"Rusty and His Pals", a kid strip and later
"Clip Carson", a world traveling adventurer.In 1938,
Superman would create a boom in the comic industry and DC would go looking for another hero. Bob Kane would come up with a character called
The Batman. After creating this character he phone up Bill Finger, and showed him the sketch of the
Batman. Finger felt the character looked too much like
Superman and
suggested some changes.
"I got Webster's Dictionary off the shelf and was hoping they had a drawing of a bat, and sure enough it did. I said, 'notice the ears, why don't we duplicate the ears?' I suggested he draw what looked like a cowl... I had suggested he bring the nosepiece down and make him mysterious and not show any eyes at all... I didn't like the wings, so I suggested he make a cape and scallop the edges so it would flow out behind him when he ran and would look like bat wings. He didn't have any gloves on. We gave him gloves because naturally he'd leave fingerprints."Bill Finger also wrote some of the early
Batman stories. In doing so, he created the personality of
Batman and turned him into a great detective.
"My idea was to have Batman be a combination of Douglas Fairbanks, Sherlock Holmes, The Shadow, and Doc Savage as well."Finger went on to give
Batmans alter ego the name of
Bruce Wayne, and later named his sidekick
Robin (Dick Grayson). He named
Batmans hometown Gotham City, and contributed in the creation of many of
Batmans villains.
The Cat-woman, Penguin, Riddler, Two-Face, and
Clay-Face were among them. While Bill Finger didn't create the
Joker, he did write the first
Joker issue in Batman #1.Bill Finger really enjoyed mystery novels. He would often use that style of story in the
Batman comics. He would also use giant props in the stories because they were good visuals for the readers. He often did the research that artist usually does for the prop scenes. He was very good in writing them, the artist didn't have to guess what was going on.But throughout his career Bill always had a problem meeting deadlines. He once delivered a first page of a script stapled to a bunch of blank pages in order to get paid early.Bill has worked on much more than just
Batman, he created the original versions of
Green Lantern and
Wildcat with artist Irwin Hansen. He also went on to work on
Superman, Superboy, Wonder Woman, Flash, Atom, Challengers of the Unknown, Tomahawk, and many others. He at one time worked for Marvel Comics and wrote
Captain America and the
All Winners Squad. Bill also did some work outside of comic books. He co-wrote the 1969 film
"The Green Slime" and wrote for many Warner Brothers TV detective series of the 60's. Some included
77 sunset Strip, Hawaiian Eye, and
The Roaring Twenties.Also during the 60's Bill was one of the long time creators that DC fired when they asked for some health benefits. He later went back to work for DC in the 70's and wrote some a few mystery stories, he then died in 1974