The name Bill Finger.
While the casual fan might be asking “who?,” most Batman devotees know Bill Finger as the writer on the earliest Batman stories and a consistent contributor to tales of the Dark Knight during the character’s evolutionary years.
But according to author Marc Tyler Nobleman, who chronicled Bill Finger’s life in 2012′s “Bill the Boy Wonder: The Secret Co-Creator of Batman,” an illustrated story which Nobleman calls “an all-ages book,” Finger was much more than that.
Nobleman, along with a swelling collection of comic insiders and fans, posit that Finger should share creator status with Bob Kane, Batman’s long-acknowledged and credited creator, because Finger was responsible for creating or co-creating almost everything fans know and love about the Dark Knight — from Bruce Wayne’s name and origin story and the character of Robin, to Gotham City, Commissioner Gordon and the Joker. Not to mention Catwoman, the Riddler, Two-Face, the Batmobile and many more. Even the name “the Dark Knight” was first used in a Finger-penned story.
Finger never received official credit for any of these characters and died in 1974, with little money or recognition. For years, his only credit came in the form of editor’s notes praising his work in a few scattered issues and whispers among comic scribes, insiders and fanatics.
In recent years, the tides have begun to change. Finger was posthumously inducted into the Jack Kirby Hall of Fame in 1994 and the Will Eisner Award Hall of Fame in 1999. In 2005, Comic-Con created the Bill Finger Award for Excellence in Comic Book Writing, which is given annually to “two recipients — one living and one deceased — who have produced a significant body of work in the comics field.”
And when DC Comics first announced the plans for Batman Day, it made sure to note Finger’s contributions, saying that Batman first appeared “in the comic book ‘Detective Comics’ No. 27, which hit newsstands on March 30, 1939, featuring artwork by Bob Kane and a script by Bill Finger.”
Still, it appears that there may be more to come in the debate over Finger’s legacy. In response to a DC Comics panel at Wonder-Con in April, where DC’s Larry Ganem was quoted as saying “…we’re all good with Finger and his family,” Finger’s surviving granddaughter Athena released a press statement contradicting that assessment, saying “… due to what I feel is continued mistreatment of a true artist, I am currently exploring our rights and considering how best to establish the recognition that my grandfather deserves.”
Nobleman has also had a busy year advocating for Finger. He recently called for the upcoming CW show “Gotham,” a Batman prequel of sorts, to acknowledge in its credits the man who he says named the fair city. He also tried earlier this year to get a Google doodle in honor of Finger’s 100th birthday.
This Thursday, he’ll be appearing alongside Michael Uslan, an executive producer of the “Batman” movies, at Comic-Con in a panel dedicated to the writer called, “Spotlight on Bill Finger, the Co-Creator of Batman,” which runs from 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 pm in Room 4.
Hero Complex caught up with Nobleman to talk about Bob Kane’s contributions to Batman, orphan myths and standing up for oneself.
Hero Complex: How did you first become aware of Bill Finger and how did that evolve into writing the book?
Marc Tyler Nobleman: I wish I remembered exactly. All I can say is that I did not know who Bill Finger was when I was in college. I grew up loving Batman and superheroes and did not hear the name until sometime after college. I think it was sometime after that when I became a “professional” and through researching other personal interests that I learned about Bill Finger. Long before I wrote the Superman book that came out in 2008, I was planning to do a Batman story, told from the perspective of Bill Finger. Which I think is the rightful telling, where he’s the center of the story and not Bob Kane. In fact in my book, Kane’s role in the whole story, from a creative perspective, is a cameo in my opinion.
HC: You’ve said that Bill deserves 99% of the credit. What would you give Bob Kane the credit for?
MN: The two main contributions of Bob that I would credit him for are the name, and even that is disputed by people like Gerard Jones and with selling Batman; with going to DC and getting it done. But creatively, if you break it down, if you ask any stranger on the street to name one thing about Batman that pops into his head, chances are it’s going to be a Bill Finger contribution. It’s that pervasive. Even your grandmother who knows nothing about Batman, she’ll know some villain or she’ll know the Batcave. That’s Bill Finger. The last thing about the name: Even though I do credit Bob with the name, even that was not that original in the Thirties. The Thirties were rampant with Bat-themed characters and the concept itself was not strikingly original. It was the way that Bill synthesized various elements and gave this character a psychological back story that we had not seen before. So even Bob’s name contribution, if he did do it, isn’t the most significant.
HC: When someone asks you, “OK, Bill Finger: What did this guy really do?” What do you say?
MN: Bill Finger is the uncredited co-creator and original writer of Batman. He is responsible for not only the first story but the first stories of most of the major characters, like Robin, Joker, Catwoman, Penguin, Scarecrow and Commissioner Gordon. He wrote the stories that introduced the Batcave, the Batmobile, and coined the nickname the Dark Knight. I think most importantly for Batman’s legacy, he gave Batman the psychological reasons to have a realistic motive. That was different. Superman and a lot of these characters did good for good’s sake, but Batman had a mission.
HC: You’ve said, “We don’t relate to Batman because he has no powers, we relate to him because he has no parents.” Why is this such an important part of the story?
MN: The orphan myth is huge in literature, going back to Greek myths. All the way up to Superman, Luke Skywalker and Harry Potter. All of these major heroes are orphans, and Batman is one of them. The difference obviously is that Bruce Wayne was right there when his parents died and it was a horrifically traumatic thing. My daughter is 10 now and for a long time, something that she and her friends would play was a game called “Orphan.” I think it’s a fascination that kids have; a scared yet natural gravitation to the morbid and sad. Every kid wonders at one point: “What if my parents don’t pick me up? What if I’m alone?”
HC: Your previous book was about Superman creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster. Where do you think this larger interest in the unsung artist and their struggle comes from for you?
MN: Well, everybody loves a good underdog story and there’s a special irony when the underdog story involves the creating of superheroes. It’s a funny paradox in my mind. The two main motivators for me from a purely creative and practical perspective is that no one had done it! It was 2004 when I wrote “Boys of Steel,” and Superman was 66 years old and no one had written a biography of his creators? It was unthinkable. And Bill Finger even more so because Batman has become so dominant in the culture. It just seemed like a natural topic for someone like me. But it wouldn’t have made sense if there weren’t stories. I could love Aquaman and Green Lantern but there’s most likely no drama behind their creation. As popular as those creations have become, a book wouldn’t work because there’s no conflict that I know of offhand. These stories had that in spades and everything aligned for me.
HC: Speaking of Green Lantern, Bill had a hand in his development too, right?
MN: Yes, he was the original writer of the original Green Lantern.
HC: He also created Lana Lang for Superman and had a hand in an element of the Krypton myth too, right?
MN: Yes, he wrote the first story in which Superman learns of his Kryptonian heritage. Also, he didn’t create Kryptonite, that was introduced on the radio show, but he was the first to include it in a comic book story.
HC: Reading about your research, it sounds at times like we’re talking about a figure from the 19th century. For example, there’s only 11 known photos of Bill?
MT: We just found a 12th.
HC: How shocking was that for you that there would be so few photos and artifacts?
MT: The thought that behind this hugely visual character is a guy who left so few visuals traces of himself is a huge irony to me. Earlier in my career, I wrote about the Klondike Gold Rush, which took place in the late 1800s. I wrote it narratively and I just turned it into the editor and they did all the photo research. They found photos of some of these people that I was writing about in the late 1800s in the middle of the wilderness! They were able to dig up photos of these people who are far from household names, who predate Bill Finger by a couple of decades and weren’t living in New York City. And here I am scrounging around, you know, I’m desperate to find Finger. It was just such a weird paradox.
HC: What do you find so exciting or helpful about using the illustrated, ‘all-ages’ medium?
MN: I love it because it forces me as a writer to really cut to the essence of the story. You’ve got a limited space. I also like the way that text and art work together to tell a story. One of the big signs for me was what happened to Bill after he died. The thought was that Bill was buried in a pauper’s grave with no headstone and was neglected. And I found out that he wasn’t. His son had him cremated and spread his ashes on the beach in the shape of a bat. Which is so poetic and I get chills almost every time I talk about it. So the book sets this up with words but I don’t say in the text that his son Fred scattered the ashes in the shape of a bat. I say that he arranged the ashes in a fitting shape on the sand and the picture shows you that it’s a bat. This is a small detail but it actually has a big impact that way. I like the interplay between words and art that you don’t get with a prose only book. And again, the most important reason really is that I want young kids who love Batman to know who they can thank for that.
HC: There’s a lot of real life lessons in the story, and you’ve said that “these stories empower us to protect our own ideas.” What would you say are the chief lessons of Bill’s story?
MN: I think, the biggest one is: Stand up for your work and yourself. I speak all over the world about this and kids totally latch on to that. They get so indignant when they hear how this all played out. It’s really re-affirming. It really makes you believe that everyone is born good, everyone has the potential to be good and when you hear that someone was wronged, it makes you want to go out and fight for them. It’s a really sweet. I couldn’t have predicted how this would all play out but it’s illustrated a lot about defending yourself and now defending people who aren’t able to do it for themselves.
HC: What’s next for you? Are there other stories like this that you’re currently working on?
MN: Nothing superhero-related, but this part of my larger interest in a high-profile angle with a mystery in the background. One of the next books I’m working on which is going to be the same format is a World War II story about a Japanese pilot who did something unprecedented which has still not been repeated and hopefully never will be. He’s the only person in history to succeed in dropping bombs from a plane on the U.S. mainland. This guy bombed Oregon and he’s largely been ignored in history. It sounds completely different from the Finger and Siegel and Shuster stories, but it’s this really juicy piece of history that’s hidden in plain sight.
HC: The hidden-in-plain-sight thing seems like a definite theme. Like how the name “the Dark Knight” is a Finger creation and it’s in the titles of some of the most popular movies of all time.
MN: And the word “Batman” is not in the title. His nickname is so famous that they don’t need the name Batman. That was especially galling for me. Talking about the legality of putting Bill’s name in the credits, I proposed to DC, actually before my book was out even, so they didn’t know who I was yet, that “The Dark Knight” credit Bill simply for writing the first story to include the name. I know they can’t get into subjective terms like “creator” and “co-creator” because that’s loaded, but it would be completely legal and factual to say “ ‘the Dark Knight’ was first applied to Batman by Bill Finger in a story written in 1940,” which they do in their reprints all the time. So it just seemed to me that that’s what they should do for these movies, but that did not happen. When you watch the credits for the Dark Knight, there’s got to be a thousand people on that credit list. None of them would have had that job if it weren’t for Bill Finger. You would not have that movie! That was really hard for me. That’s why I started the effort to have people recognize that with this show “Gotham,” it wouldn’t have a name without Bill Finger. So we’ll see what happens. I mean a lot depends on what happens with Athena.
HC: A big part of the ongoing fight for Bill’s recognition going forward will be what Athena chooses to do. Is she going to be pursing legal action? What do you think the future holds for this battle for Bill to get recognized?
MN: Well, I am in the front row eagerly awaiting to see what happens. I am not at liberty to say more than that. But, Athena did put out that press release, which someone wouldn’t do if they weren’t prepared to follow up on it.
