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In 2000 I had the pleasure of being a guest at a show in White Plains New York, and among the invitees there were Julie Schwartz, Carmine Infantino and Jerry Robinson, all of whom had experience with Bob Kane, much of this column will be filled with conversations we had.
Bob Kane wanted to be a star, there was no doubt about it. When he was delivering his gag strips to his editor at National Comics (now known as DC Comics), Vince Sullivan, Sullivan showed him the incredibly successful SUPERMAN strip that Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster were producing for the company and they were making roughly $600 per week each – big money in early 1939 and Kane wanted in. His gag strips were currently paying about $25 each.
So Kane went back to his studio and began tracing over images of Flash Gordon and Tarzan from the comic strips– Kane had always been more a humor artist so the natural human form was tough for him. Sharp eyed comic book detectives have since found the source of his tracings, casting further proof to Kane’s shady ways, here are a few more swipes, if we showed all of them we’d need six blog posts;
Kane came up with a character he called Batman, and in his book, BATMAN AND ME, he published what he claimed were the original concepts as he came up with them in 1934.
Trouble was this didn’t match the story that Sullivan had requested a new adventure strip in 1939 and even worse it didn’t match up with what Kane’s original concept of the costume was, which was red-based with stiff bat-wings.
It was his lifelong friend and often time collaborator Bill Finger who suggested changing the costume from red to grey and black and probably most importanty, changing the mask from a simple domino design to the cowl with ears giving him that distinctive look.
But what about Kane’s claims he did this all himself? That surely Finger would have his name on the byline if he’d done any of the work? Bill Finger was a creative man, but he was mostly shy and reserved and not one to stand up for himself. He relied on the kindness of friends and strangers and never thought Bob would cut him out as he did when he sold the concept to National Comics getting a contract naming him the exclusive creator of the strip.
Kane also hired a team of ghosts, which was normal at the time. When you look at the early SUPERMAN comics the art is very crude then suddenly it starts to improve to the point that it’s much more polished- you’d think artist Joe Shuster was getting better- the truth was Shuster was doing layouts but other artists were providing the finishes.
In Kane’s case, it’s rumored that he stopped doing even layouts pretty quickly, opting instead to draw a face here and there. He hired 17 year old Jerry Robinson as his first assistant in either late 1939 or early 1940 before BATMAN #1 even hit the stands and artists with a very distinctive style like Dick Sprang or Shelly Moldoff, who worked on the strip in the 40s and 50s were never credited despite it clearly being a different hand drawing.
In 1964 Batman’s sales had fallen to an all time low, and editor Julie Schwartz was assigned the task of revamping him and he brought along artist Carmine Infantino who helped him do the same thing for The Flash years earlier. Both of them said Bob Kane was impossible to work with, claiming as he would drop off pages that he was still the one drawing the strip. At functions and before crowds Kane would often demonstrate a drawing of Batman and it was at one of these events that an attendee noticed the page he was going to draw on had a lightly pencilled image of Batman drawn in already– later artist Shelly Moldoff admitted he often did these for Kane before such events.
Carmine, who would eventually become Publisher of DC Comics, refused to work on BATMAN without credit so the company bought Bob Kane out of his contract which now allowed other artists to be credited with the art, just as the TV Series went into production.
Finger died poor and penniless in 1974 and Kane lived on another 24 years basking in the success of Batman. Toward the end of his life Kane recanted and admitted that teams of other artists and writers had actually “helped” him– and Bill Finger would eventually get a co-creator credit on the comic.
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