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57: The Man Behind The Man Behind The Mask
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57: The Man Behind The Man Behind The Mask
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Batman is worth billions, and for over seventy years the credit went to one man: Bob Kane. But Kane’s original 1939 sketch was a figure in a red suit with a little domino mask and stiff bat wings. The writer Kane brought in, Bill Finger, is the one who said: give him a full cowl with pointed ears, a flowing cape, make him gray and black — a creature of the night. Finger wrote the first story, named Bruce Wayne, named Gotham City, shaped the Joker, and created the Riddler. But Kane had signed a contract guaranteeing himself sole credit, so Finger got no byline, no royalties, and no fame. He died poor and forgotten in 1974 — and only in 2015, after a long campaign by writer Marc Tyler Nobleman and Finger’s granddaughter Athena, did the credit finally change to “Batman created by Bob Kane with Bill Finger.”
How a goofy red bird-man became the Dark Knight in a few sentences
The contract that erased him from his own creation
The decades-late fight that finally put his name on the screen