Batman & Bill Page #5

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the time Bill Finger died,

his friend and partner

who co-created Batman,

that gave Bob Kane a

living and notoriety

for the rest of his life,

he allowed to die

penniless and unknown.

And for that, there

is no forgiveness

for Bob Kane.

In the early '70s,

Bill did begin to write

for comics again and for DC.

He began to

write mystery stories,

and he had two

stories due on a Friday,

he turned in only

one and went home,

presumably to finish

the second one.

This was January 18th, 1974.

He was living alone in Manhattan

in a small apartment

in the same building as Charles.

On this particular day,

I had not heard from Bill

for like a couple of days,

and I'm carrying a duplicate key

for his apartment.

I went to the apartment,

and he was behind in his rent.

The landlord had eviction

notices on his door.

I used my key and went in.

I walked up to him.

He had a blanket like

pulled up to about here.

I pulled it down.

Looked, looked,

and looked, you know.

No movement, nothing, you know?

And I reached down,

shook his shoulder.

Nothing.

Poor Bill had died alone

with his little

television set going on.

I thought, you know, what a...

kind of a sad little end.

The world has lost a

very interesting guy.

So when I asked Charles

"What happened to

Bill after he died?"

Charles said,

"Marc, I don't think

we want to

talk about that."

And I said, "You're

probably right.

I know it's difficult,

but I do have to ask."

And then Charles

said that he thought

that Bill was buried

in a potter's field.

It's a graveyard

of unmarked graves.

People that don't have someone

to take care of them.

Homeless people... I

mean, it's desperately,

desperately sad.

The medical

examiner report says,

"natural causes,

no family, no history,"

which of course was referring

to his medical history,

but when you read

that now, textually,

it's eerie because

this medical examiner

had no idea the immensely

significant history

that this man had.

So when I heard

that, I just thought,

you know, just on a human level

we've got to do

something for this guy.

There are so many

fans who clamber

for justice for the creators.

I think in the end it takes more

than this amorphous

mass of fans.

There has to be one

person who steps up

and leads the charge.

When I started this project,

I was already a

published author.

I wanted to tell

another good story.

And then when I learned

how much there was to

reveal about Bill's life

and how much more we

could do on his behalf,

it became not only

a book but a crusade.

My goal became getting

Bill's name on Batman,

to get this man the credit

that will never go away,

that will hang over all of this.

I had a couple

of people that said,

"What you are trying

to do will never happen.

This is a contractually

bound line

that's been in

place for 70 years,

so what are you

going to do about it?

What is any one person

going to do about it?"

And I said to myself,

"I have no idea,

but I'm going to try."

(wind blowing)

Here it is, Poe Park.

So this is Poe

Park in the Bronx.

This is where Bill

and Bob would come

and brainstorm

ideas for stories.

They would sit on

park benches here

and discuss Batman.

I had no idea that

I would be doing

this kind of digging.

This is the apartment

in which Bill was living

in 1965 when he was

interviewed by Jerry Bails.

He's also very righteous,

and he wants to, you know,

he wants to do

right in the world,

and so he is driven.

Bill Finger was the

co-creator of Batman.

And I am pretty sure

that he was living here

at the moment that

he created Batman,

so I think he was living

in one of these three units,

and I'd love to see inside

if you could show it.

The parallel was not lost on me

that Bill made

Batman a detective,

and I was a detective in

pursuit of Bill's legacy.

That was part of the fun of it.

How did you find this out?

I did a lot of research.

I actually went through

the New York City phone book

every year from 1930 to

1974 looking for my guy,

and this is where it started.

It became addictive.

I felt like, if I

found this big thing

that wasn't known,

there's probably more.

When I started the research,

we knew this much:

Bill's wife was named Portia,

they were married

sometime in the 1940s.

I believe that their

marriage fell apart

in the '50s.

To try to legally

contest a credit line,

you need an heir.

That was my goal

was to find an heir,

so very early in my

Bill Finger research,

I learned that Bill

had a son named Fred.

I was super pumped that

day because I thought

it's going to take

me less than a day

to find Fred Finger,

and it took me less than a day

to find out that Fred

was Bill's only child,

Fred was gay, and

Fred died in 1992,

which to me implied

that he was the end

of the Finger family,

that there was nobody left.

And while I'm writing a

book to tell a good story

and tell an important story,

at the same time my goal

was to do what I could

to see Bill's name

added to Batman,

but I knew that to do that,

you need to be an heir

and there wasn't one.

So I was then going

to look for anybody

who might have had some

connection to this man.

Apparently when you are

doing detective work,

you find yourself doing things

that you wouldn't

expect yourself to do.

For example, I

called every Finger

in the phone directory,

which was 500 names

asking if they were

related to Bill Finger.

Not a one was.

I staked out the apartment

building that Portia,

Bill's first wife, lived

in at the end of her life.

I figured there

could still be people

in the building who knew her.

Next thing I know, I'm

sitting in an apartment

with two lovely

women in their 70s

who are in their nightgowns

at 6 o'clock at night

telling me stories about Portia.

When I didn't know

how to reach people

that knew Fred, I posted fliers

in community centers

targeting the gay

and lesbian community

saying, "Does anybody

remember Fred Finger?"

It was actually a flier

with the little

pull-off things,

you know, "I know Fred Finger"

with my phone number.

Yeah, it's crazy.

Bill Finger was a charming guy,

but he was not, I

think, a forceful guy.

He was making his own way,

and it was kind of permanently

on the outside looking in a bit.

At some point, Charles said

that Bill and Portia divorced

and Bill was

dating other people,

and in the late '60s,

he had a lady friend

named Edith Simmons.

That was what Charles

said, "a lady friend."

I discovered that Edith

was more than just

Bill's lady friend,

she was his second wife.

Someone that nobody in

comics had ever heard of.

He was a very amiable, pleasant,

and easy-going man.

He had a good sense of humor,

he... do you want

me to tell you

about the things he

was interested in?

She was, along with Charles,

the two biggest finds

up until that point...

the two people that I thought

would ensure that this was

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