Batman & Bill Page #3

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And Bill was a shoe salesman.

He had aspirations

to become a writer.

I said, "Why don't

you try writing

for the new comic book?"

Bob was already

working in comics,

drawing stories, and Bob

could immediately sense

that Bill was good with

narrative, had good ideas.

It sounds like they were

very different types of people,

but I think what

they had in common

was their love of the

new medium of comics.

In the early days,

really, it was Superman

that brought the comic

book publishing industry

out of this mire of

reprints of comic strips.

It was very much kind of

a fly-by-night industry.

You had a comic publisher

which is maybe a couple

guys at a couple desks

in a couple of rooms

in Midtown somewhere,

and what they largely

did is they farmed out

the actual production

of comic book stories

to what were known as "shops."

You had guys just laying

down the pencil artwork,

you had inkers and finishers

that were then putting

permanent artwork

on top of that.

There were people

doing paste up,

there were people

adding word balloons.

Bob Kane and Bill Finger

were, in effect, a sort of shop.

Bob was the only one

dealing with the

publisher directly.

Kane had his name on

the Batman stories,

but he didn't tell

anybody about Bill Finger,

and, of course, you assumed

that he had done

the whole thing,

and I think that's just

the way Bob wanted it.

From a corporation

point of view,

they contract Bob Kane,

Bob Kane is supposed to

deliver pages to them,

and that's all they cared about.

They're going, "I don't

care how you build it,"

right, just, "I need it

built every 30 days

because we've got a publishing

deadline coming here."

So in order to meet the demands

of the hungry audience

and feed the machine

and earn money by cranking out

as many different Batman

titles as possible,

they would hire ghost

writers back in the day.

Bob Kane would get

credit for the story.

He'd hand it in,

"Here's my Batman story."

They're like, "Bob,

you're a genius,"

and, you know, that's

how the industry worked

for a long, long time.

Most ghost artists

or ghost writers

were there just to

execute the vision

or the work directive

of the guy hiring them.

They weren't there to sort

of create new concepts.

But because Bill Finger

was there at the beginning,

he wasn't just a ghost writer.

He wasn't just the guy

that was brought on later on

when Batman was already

running and successful

and all the tropes

were in place.

Bill Finger basically

created all those tropes,

but in the actual work hierarchy

as just a ghost writer.

(birds chirping)

I had never researched

a person to this extent.

I mean, this became

such a quest,

and there just seemed to be

such a higher moral

obligation to this.

You know, this is 700 pages

of information on a subject

that some people told

me at the beginning,

"There's nothing more to

learn about Bill Finger."

I did feel this

calling to do this.

Especially with something as

phenomenally

successful as Batman,

how could this not have

been so well-known?

The first panel of

the first Batman story,

just setting up this mysterious,

foreboding character says,

"His identity

remains unknown."

Obviously that's Bill

writing about Batman,

but it ended up being a prophesy

because Bill was

Batman's secret identity.

When I started the

research on this project,

there were only two known photos

of Bill in circulation.

It was either him with

a baseball cap in profile

or him golfing, half in

shadow and not that close.

From seven sources

over nine months,

I ended up finding 11

more photos of Bill.

He was interviewed

only a few times,

so for a man of Bill's impact

to have only these few

recorded interviews

in existence is just staggering,

so the first time was

Jerry Bail's in 1965

and then for the 1970

book History of Comics.

And it turns out that in 1972,

a man in California

named Robert Porfirio

interviewed Bill on audio.

It took a while, but eventually

we actually did find

this audio recording...

Testing, one... do you want

to say something, or...?

Yeah, sure.

How are you?

...which was one of the

more emotional moments

I would say, for me,

because it was

the first time that

I heard Bill's voice.

To write this book,

I spoke to more than 250 people.

Of that number,

a handful, maybe a dozen,

knew both Bill

and Bob personally.

Two of the creators

that were hugely helpful

and impactful in this

process were Jerry Robinson,

one of the earliest

Batman ghost artists,

and Carmine Infantino.

He was the artist that redefined

Batman's look in the '60s,

and Carmine went on

to become the publisher

of DC Comics for

a time in the '70s.

He was genius, literally genius.

I believe that.

I know Bob tried to take

credit for everything.

He should have been credited

as co-creator of Batman.

He said, "I'd like to

get some ownership."

No, he didn't say,

he said, "I'd like to get

a piece of that

because I did it."

So, but then he said,

"I can't afford a lawyer,

and they know that,"

quote, "They know that."

They told me in, you know,

in no uncertain terms,

that they thought Bill Finger

was deprived of his legacy.

He is the Batman, Bill was.

Everything you would think

that's good, that's Bill.

They take away their humanity

when you take away their credit.

Basically both of them said,

"Without Bill,

there'd be no Batman."

It's that simple.

And that's because

Bill did the following:

Bill Finger was the

dominant creative force

and original writer of Batman,

Robin, the Joker,

Catwoman, the Riddler,

the Penguin, the Scarecrow,

Commissioner Gordon,

Bruce Wayne, and Dick Grayson.

He named Gotham City.

He nicknamed Batman

"The Dark Knight."

He was the first person

to write a story

with the Batmobile

and the Batcave

called those things.

He wrote Batman's origin.

It was just a two-page

story, but it was seismic.

This eight-year-old boy

sees his parents murdered

right before his eyes

and makes a vow

that he will not let this

happen to other people.

I mean, the guy

built this world.

He kept what he called

the "gimmick book."

He would fill that

up with story ideas,

and he would just

sometimes take a bus

around the city to get inspired.

He would just notate

and just be an observer.

He would do extensive

research for scripts.

He would attach

clippings for the artists

so that they would

have reference.

He thought very visually.

He thought cinematically.

He would write these

big, epic scenes.

One of the things that

he's best known for

was writing stories

with oversized props,

so Batman and Robin

fighting on top

of a giant typewriter

with some criminals,

and this stuff was

just wildly fun

and inventive to look at.

He had a hero who

looked like a villain.

He had a superhero who

was also a detective.

He was smart, he wasn't

just using brawn,

he was using brains too.

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