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Bob Kane

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Bob Kane
File:Batman Kane.jpg
Kane standing beside Michael Keaton as Batman on the set of the 1989 Batman film.
Nationality
American
Area(s)Penciller, Writer
Notable works
Batman

Bob Kane (born Robert Kahn, October 24, 1915 – November 3, 1998) was an American comic book artist and writer credited as the creator of the DC Comics superhero Batman. In later years, Kane acknowledged his studio writer Bill Finger as "a contributing force" in the character's creation.[1] Comics historian Ron Goulart, in Comic Book Encyclopedia, refers to Batman as "[t]he creation of artist Bob Kane and writer Bill Finger".[2]

Biography

Early life and career

A high school friend of fellow cartoonist and future The Spirit creator Will Eisner,[3] Robert Kahn legally changed his name to Bob Kane at age 18.[citation needed] He entered comics in 1936, freelancing original material to editor Jerry Iger's comic book Wow, What A Magazine!. The following year, Kane began working at Iger's subsequent studio, Eisner & Iger, one of the first comic book "packagers" that produced comics on demand for publishers entering the new medium during its late-1930s and 1940s Golden Age. Among his work there was the funny animal feature Peter Pupp, published in the U.K. comic magazine Wags and later reprinted in Fiction House's Jumbo Comics; and for two of the companies that would later merge to form DC Comics, the humor features "Ginger Snap" in More Fun Comics, "Oscar the Gumshoe" for Detective Comics, and "Professor Doolittle" for Adventure Comics. For that last title he went to on to do his first adventure strip, "Rusty and his Pals.

Batman

File:Detective27.JPG
Detective Comics #27 (May 1939). The first appearance of Batman. Art by Bob Kane.

In early 1939, DC's success with the seminal superhero Superman in Action Comics prompted editors to scramble for more such heroes. In response, Bob Kane conceived "the Bat-Man".[4] Kane said his influences for the character included actor Douglas Fairbanks' movie portrayal of the swashbuckler Zorro, Leonardo Da Vinci's diagram of the Ornithopter, a flying machine with huge flapping wings; and the silent film The Bat Whispers (1930), based on Mary Rinehart's mystery novel The Circular Staircase.[5]

Bill Finger joined Bob Kane's nascent studio in 1938. An aspiring writer and part-time shoe salesperson, he had met Kane at a party, and Kane later offered him a job ghost writing the strips Rusty and Clip Carson.[6] [7] He recalled that Kane

had an idea for a character called 'Batman', and he'd like me to see the drawings. I went over to Kane's, and he had drawn a character who looked very much like Superman with kind of ... reddish tights, I believe, with boots ... no gloves, no gauntlets ... with a small domino mask, swinging on a rope. He had two stiff wings that were sticking out, looking like bat wings. And under it was a big sign ... BATMAN.[7]

Finger said he offered such suggestions as giving the character a cowl and scalloped cape instead of wings; adding gloves; leaving the mask's eyeholes blank to connote mystery; and removing the bright red sections of the original costume, suggesting instead a gray-and-black color scheme. Finger additionally said his suggestions were influenced by Lee Falk's popular The Phantom, a syndicated newspaper comic strip character with which Kane was familiar as well. Finger, who said he also devised the character's civilian name, Bruce Wayne, wrote the first Batman story, while Kane provided art. Kane, who had already submitted the proposal for Batman at DC, and held a contract, is the only person given official company credit for Batman's creation.

According to Kane,

Bill Finger was a contributing force on Batman right from the beginning. He wrote most of the great stories and was influential in setting the style and genre other writers would emulate ... I made Batman a superhero-vigilante when I first created him. Bill turned him into a scientific detective.[8]

The character debuted in Detective Comics #27 (May 1939) and proved a breakout hit. Within a year, Kane hired art assistants Jerry Robinson (initially as an inker) and George Roussos. Shortly afterward, when DC wanted more Batman stories than Kane's studio could deliver, the company assigned Dick Sprang and other in-house pencilers as "ghost artists", drawing uncredited under Kane's supervision.

In 1943, Kane left the Batman comic books to focus on penciling the daily Batman newspaper comic strip. DC Comics artists ghosting the comic-book stories now included Jack Burnley and Win Mortimer, with Robinson moving up as penciler and Fred Ray contributing some covers. Gardner Fox was a ghostwriter.[citation needed] In 1946, Kane returned to the comic books but, unknown to DC, had hired his own personal ghosts: Lew S. Schwartz from 1946-1953[9] and Sheldon Moldoff from 1953-1967.[10]

Robin

By early 1940, Kane, partly inspired by the Junior character from the Dick Tracy comic strip, initially suggested an impish character named Mercury, while Finger suggested a more down-to-earth sidekick: "Robin was an outgrowth of a conversation I had with Bob. As I said, Batman was a combination of [Douglas] Fairbanks and Sherlock Holmes. Holmes had his Watson. The thing that bothered me was that Batman didn't have anyone to talk to, and it got a little tiresome always having him thinking. I found that as I went along Batman needed a Watson to talk to. That's how Robin came to be. Bob called me over and said he was going to put a boy in the strip to identify with Batman. I thought it was a great idea".[7]

Robinson suggested the name "Robin", after the then-popular Errol Flynn movie The Adventures of Robin Hood.[citation needed] Robin — an orphaned circus performer named Dick Grayson who came to live with Bruce Wayne as his young ward — debuted in Detective Comics #38 (April 1940) and would inspire a slew of similar sidekicks throughout the Golden Age of comic books.

The Joker

Batman's archnemesis the Joker was introduced near that same time, in Batman #1 (Spring 1940). Credit for that character's creation is disputed. Robinson has said he created the character.[11] Kane's position is that

Bill Finger and I created the Joker. Bill was the writer. Jerry Robinson came to me with a playing card of the Joker. That's the way I sum it up. [The Joker] looks like Conrad Veidt — you know, the actor in The Man Who Laughs, [the 1928 movie based on the novel] by Victor Hugo. ... Bill Finger had a book with a photograph of Conrad Veidt and showed it to me and said, 'Here's the Joker'. Jerry Robinson had absolutely nothing to do with it. But he'll always say he created it till he dies. He brought in a playing card, which we used for a couple of issues for him [the Joker] to use as his playing card".[12]

Robinson, whose original Joker playing card was on public display in the exhibition "Masters of American Comics" at the Jewish Museum in New York City, New York, from Sept. 16, 2006 to Jan. 28, 2007, and the William Breman Jewish Heritage Museum in Atlanta, Georgia from Oct. 24, 2004 to Aug. 28, 2005, has countered that:

Bill Finger knew of Conrad Veidt because Bill had been to a lot of the foreign films. Veidt ... had this clown makeup with the frozen smile on his face. When Bill saw the first drawing of the Joker, he said, 'That reminds me of Conrad Veidt in The Man Who Laughs.' He said he would bring in some shots of that movie to show me. That's how that came about. I think in Bill's mind, he fleshed out the concept of the character.[13]

Later life and career

As Kane's comic work tapered off in the 1960s, Kane parlayed his Batman status into minor celebrity. He enjoyed a post-comic book career in TV animation, creating the characters Courageous Cat and Cool McCool, and as a painter, showing his work in art galleries, although even some of these paintings were produced by ghost artists. [14] In 1989, Kane published the autobiography Batman and Me, with a second volume Batman and Me, The Saga Continues, in 1996.

He was set to have a cameo in the 1989 movie Batman as the newspaper artist who prepares the drawing of the "Bat-man" for Alexander Knox, but scheduling conflicts prevented this. Kane's trademark square signature can still be seen clearly on the drawing. Kane died on November 3, 1998, leaving behind wife, Elizabeth Sanders (Kane), an actress who appeared in three Batman films, a daughter, and grandson. [15] Kane is interred in Forest Lawn Memorial Park (Hollywood Hills) in Los Angeles, California.

Quotes

  • Jerry Robinson: "A lot of people don't give him [Kane] as much credit for his art, but I thought he had a flair. It was rudimentary, but in a way that worked to his benefit in the strip. He didn't know much about perspective and anatomy, so he had to improvise".[16]
  • George Roussos: "Jerry was an excellent,very meticulous inker, but slow. Bob and I got on very well during the years I worked on Batman. He was a mild-mannered individual who made no demands on Jerry and me, and in general, he was terrific to work for"[17]

Footnotes

  1. ^ Kane, Bob (1989). Batman & Me. Forestville, CA: Eclipse Books. p. 44. 1-56060-017-9. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
  2. ^ Goulart, Ron, Comic Book Encyclopedia (Harper Entertainment, New York, 2004) ISBN 0-06-053816-3
  3. ^ Weinstein, Simcha (2006). Up, Up, and Oy Vey! (1st ed.). Leviathan Press. ISBN 978-1-881927-32-7.
  4. ^ Daniels, Les. Batman: The Complete History. Chronicle Books, 1999. ISBN 0-8118-4232-0, pg. 18.
  5. ^ Daniels, Ibid., page number?
  6. ^ Walker, Brian. The Comics Before 1945 (Harry N. Abrams), page number?
  7. ^ a b c Steranko, Jim. The Steranko History of Comics (Supergraphics, Reading, Pa., 1970; ISBN 0-517-50188-0), page number?
  8. ^ Kane, Andrae, Ibid., p. 43
  9. ^ Lew Schwartz interview, Alter Ego #51 (Aug. 2005)
  10. ^ Moldoff, in a 1994 interview given while Kane was alive, described his clandestine arrangement in Alter Ego #59 (June 2006) p. 15): "I worked for Bob Kane as a ghost from ' 53 to ' 67. DC didn't know that I was involved; that was the handshake agreement I had with Bob: 'You do the work don't say anything, Shelly, and you've got steady work'. No, he didn't pay great, but it was steady work, it was security. I knew that we had to do a minimum of 350 to 260 pages a year. Also, I was doing other work at the same time for [editors] Jack Schiff and Murray Boltinoff at DC. They didn't know I was working on Batman for Bob. ... So I was busy. Between the two, I never had a dull year, which is the compensation I got for being Bob's ghost, for keeping myself anonymous".
  11. ^ Per many sources, including The Comics Journal #271 (Oct. 2005): Jerry Robinson interview (online excerpts posted Oct. 15, 2005)
  12. ^ Entertainment Weekly writer Frank Lovece official site: Web Exclusives — Bob Kane interview
  13. ^ Newsarama (Oct. 18. 2006): "The Joker, the Jewish Museum and Jerry: Talking to Jerry Robinson" (interview)
  14. ^ Arnold Drake recalls Bob Kane's legal troubles with one of his alleged ghost artists regarding his oil paintings. From Mark Evanier's blog. [1]
  15. ^ "Elizabeth Sanders (I)". IMDb. Retrieved 2007-01-19. {{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
  16. ^ The Comics Journal, Ibid.
  17. ^ Dark Knight Archives Volume Two (DC Comics, 1995)

References

  • Goulart, Ron, Over 50 Years of American Comic Books (BDD Promotional Books Company, 1991) ISBN-10 0792454502; ISBN-13 978-0792454502

External links

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