I cut a joke about Bob Kane out of the previous post. I thought it was funny yesterday morning when I posted it but by nightfall, it seemed like something people could view as mean. I have a number of mixed feelings about Bob but none of them make me want to be mean to him or his memory.
As I wrote here and other places, I knew Bob — not a close association but I certainly spent a lot of hours talking with him. He didn't seem to care about others in the comic book field very much but he did like to talk about himself and that's more fun when you have an audience. I've always been a good audience for people in the comic book field, especially those responsible for the comics I read as a kid.
There's no question that Bob got too much credit for Batman but in the rush to give credit to folks like Bill Finger and Jerry Robinson, a few folks out there may be too eager to undercredit Bob. Last year, a lady called me from a very prestigious magazine and asked me if I'd be so good as to help her vet or "fact-check" an article on Batman written by a so-called expert. I'm fairly sure the article has never been published and that may be because I (and maybe others) told her that many assertions in it were wrong or at least not supported by any evidence.
The first one went something like this: "Fans of Batman have been stunned to learn that Bob Kane, long hailed as the brilliant artist who created Batman, never drew a single panel of the Caped Crusader's comic book." That is not so…the part about him never drawing, I mean. Bob did not draw well and Bob did not draw for long…but he definitely drew until he had the clout and a contract that allowed him to live well while others slaved over their drawing boards.
The next assertion was that he really had nothing whatsoever to do with the creation of Batman. Again, not so. One can argue that there would have been no such character without Bill Finger but that doesn't mean Bob contributed nothing. And when one is condemning the anonymity and other wrongs forced upon Finger, one should not make it seem like this only happened to people if they collaborated with Bob Kane. The industry and others in it did this to lots of people.
This is admittedly not a great defense of Robert "Bob" Kane but that industry should get some of the blame. Sometimes in comics, alone or with others, you come up with something that's extremely successful and extremely lucrative. There's something dangerous about a profession that makes you think that to achieve any sort of fame and fortune for it, you have to try and grab everyone else's fame and fortune.