Batman & Bill Page #3
- Year:
- 2017
- 93 min
- 128 Views
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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"Batman & Bill" Scripts.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 22 Dec. 2024. <https://www.scripts.com/script/batman_%2526_bill_3657>.
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