Still, I may have been a little rash in declaring him a reason to hate comics; I was flush with outrage after reading his '65 letter (really, it's just outrageous). But love is also too strong.

Finally, here's a quote by Sheldon Moldoff, from Kane's Wikipedia page: "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".

He is a reason to HATE comics.

You see, as I said in comment #1, I think he is precisely because of the achievement of basically doing very little on the backs of a lot of other people's work. I'm not denying he's scummy as all get out, but at the end of the day I think Bob Kane was the epitome of the 1940s system of lots of comics being farmed out of a particular person's studio (like Eisner, Iger, Siegel and Shuster, etc) -- so succesful he continued to do it long after the practice in the industry switched to the comic companies directly employing freelancers and not a studio. And he was able to trade on that fame. He was, vile as his professional practices were*, possibly the most famous comic book 'professional' the industry had until Stan Lee.

Mark Evanier used to have a great article about Bob Kane on his website (it's now in his book Wertham Was Right) about meeting Kane in the late '60s and getting him to 'fess up to the fact he used assistants to do the actual work. Kane said to Evanier, "I wanted to be Bud Fisher", the artist behind Mutt and Jeff, another cartoonist who achieved great fame and pretty much had his assistants do the actual labour while Fisher got rich and famous for a strip he increasingly had little to do with. The point being. essentially, all Bob Kane did was something newspaper cartoonists have done since the beginning of time.

In the 30s to the 60s, that's understandable. But the medium and its fans has been more generous in acknowledging other artists subsequently, and Kane became more, not less entrenched in the fiction he created Batman, Robin and the Joker solely. And I think that's where Bob Kane lost credibility. But I'd still have him as a reason to love comics.

* For a great example, see Mark Evanier recounting a famous story via the late Arnold Drake about Bob Kane painting clowns:
http://www.newsfromme.com/archives/2007_03_15.html#013103

In Gerard Jones' Men of Tomorrow, he makes it pretty clear that Kane was not respected by his peers. His actual, tangible, contribution to Batman was so minimal as to be something of an industry joke. In the letter from '65 that T. links to above, Kane offers as proof that he solely created Batman the fact that only his name was on the strip. Well, of course his name would be the only one on the strip, if he was turning in the work without crediting his collaborators!

Bob Kane built his reputation for years on the backs of others. His career is a metephor for the dozens of creators who watched as others profited from their hard work. He is a reason to HATE comics.

I studiously avoided learning anything about the scratchey - imagey artists of the 90's so I don't know much about Adam Hughes, but is he the guy who did all those Wonder Woman covers of 10-5 years ago? They are ace! They really jumped off the shelves at me visually.

I still didn't buy the comic though.

It says my last comment is awaiting moderation. Is this a new policy in general or just for this post?

Just for you, T.

Seriously, yeah, the hyperlinks often get caught in the spam filter. Strangely, though, not ALL the time. Weird.

"…and here I disagree. You’re (surprisingly for you) ignorant of the facts here John. You make it sound as though DC ‘continued’ to pay them a generous pension after everything happened. They didn’t until 1977, almost 40 years later, by which point Shuster was a few steps away from being homeless and destitute, and Siegel was working in menial jobs. And Warners only paid them not because of a nuisance lawsuit (the last one of which was in the mid-sixties), but because of a concerted campaign to have their plight acknowledged organized by fellow cartoonists.

And they certainly didn’t get “$200,000 a year”. Maybe that’s what it eventually accumulated to through the efforts of Jenette Kahn and Paul Levitz, but Warner’s initial pension was something like 30K for Siegel and Shuster each."

Not so much ignorant of the facts as slipshod in my detailing, which is still pretty embarrassing. You are entirely correct in pointing out that DC had to be essentially shamed into paying them a pension, and further shamed into increasing the amount of that pension (which did, by the end of their lives, wind up being in the neighborhood of $200K.) But I don't think that invalidates my point--DC paid them that money despite having absolutely no legal obligation to do so, and they did it because they didn't want to be seen as cold, heartless businessmen. And in that respect, I think you could probably argue that they wasted their money.

Ok, but surely seeking to deny him praise, and to deny his importance to the industry, counts as ripping on the guy, doesn’t it?

Nope. "Not praising" is not akin to "insulting".

Bob’s transgressions against Bill weren’t just when he was an old man with faulty memory. He slandered Bill Finger as a liar way back in 1965, denying that he had any hand in creating Batman. And he kept doing so until years after Finger died, destitute.

This link has a description of Finger’s actual contribution, along with Bob Kane’s original conception of Batman before Finger tweaked it.

This link has Bob Kane’s letter to a fanzine in 1965 slamming Finger and lying about his contributions, even though at this point Bob was rich and Finger was struggling.

And also I don't think you need to justify including Bob Kane.

Walt Simonson has the best signature in comics, no question.

Give the man a prize.

And yes, I realized a Bob Kane entry would be controversial. And yes, I wish the Nick Cardy entry got more replies than this one. I couldn't, however, let the year go by without mentioning all of Batman's creators. So don't worry, Bill Finger will most certainly get his due. Same with Jerry Siegel-- I certainly wasn't planning to just profile Joe Shuster.

From what I remember, it was the fact that Siegel and Shuster were then-currently suing National which directly led to Kane getting the deal he got. He went and claimed that he was a minor when he signed his original deal, and that he too would sue as Shuster and Siegel did, and National didn't want to have the negative publicity of "stealing" both of their important characters, so they quickly settled with Kane, who was acting behind the backs of Shuster & Siegel (in fact, they went to him to get his support on the lawsuit, and he acted on that knowledge to corner National into the agreement), and his 'Batman' co-creators.

People here seem to be claiming that his actions were legal; but he committed fraud at some point in the process, and it's generally considered more likely that his latter claim -- that he was underage when he signed the original document -- was the fraudulent one.

So, yeah, good show, Bob. Very "shrewd".

And frankly (controversial statement coming up), I don’t know why everyone claims Siegel and Shuster got shafted. They got paid a fair price for an untested idea in an untested market, got lucrative positions writing and drawing Superman titles for many years, and then decided to turn around and sue DC with no actual grounds, solely because they decided they wanted more money than what they’d gotten.

Actually, I agree (somewhat) with you. Hence why I said at the top "Hell, if Jerry Siegel could have just kept his mouth shut in 1944 and not sued National Publications, he would have ridden the same gravy train [as Kane]".

Even after biting the hand that fed them, DC continued to pay Siegel and Shuster a generous pension for the rest of their lives solely for the PR value of being able to say they’d been nice to the creators of Superman, and it still hasn’t stopped people from calling DC cold and heartless. In no other business could you pay a guy $200,000 a year for doing nothing after he filed a nuisance lawsuit against you (and not just once, either)…and still be called the bad guy.

...and here I disagree. You're (surprisingly for you) ignorant of the facts here John. You make it sound as though DC 'continued' to pay them a generous pension after everything happened. They didn't until 1977, almost 40 years later, by which point Shuster was a few steps away from being homeless and destitute, and Siegel was working in menial jobs. And Warners only paid them not because of a nuisance lawsuit (the last one of which was in the mid-sixties), but because of a concerted campaign to have their plight acknowledged organized by fellow cartoonists.

And they certainly didn't get "$200,000 a year". Maybe that's what it eventually accumulated to through the efforts of Jenette Kahn and Paul Levitz, but Warner's initial pension was something like 30K for Siegel and Shuster each.

I do agree that if Siegel and Shuster had not rocked the boat they could have had a comfortable living running a studio that produced Superman strips much like Kane did. But Kane was also smarter than Siegel was and managed to legally maneouver his contract with National (by virtue of not having a birth certificate-- he claimed he was a minor when he signed it which invalidated it) to get a much bigger cut on Batman. Certainly better than selling the greatest pop culture character of the 40's for $130.

And frankly (controversial statement coming up), I don't know why everyone claims Siegel and Shuster got shafted. They got paid a fair price for an untested idea in an untested market, got lucrative positions writing and drawing Superman titles for many years, and then decided to turn around and sue DC with no actual grounds, solely because they decided they wanted more money than what they'd gotten. Fundamentally, Siegel and Shuster saw that DC had made a bigger success than anyone had expected (and while Siegel and Shuster deserve a share of that credit, so do hundreds of other people in marketing, merchandising, and other media altogether), and they got greedy.

Even after biting the hand that fed them, DC continued to pay Siegel and Shuster a generous pension for the rest of their lives solely for the PR value of being able to say they'd been nice to the creators of Superman, and it still hasn't stopped people from calling DC cold and heartless. In no other business could you pay a guy $200,000 a year for doing nothing after he filed a nuisance lawsuit against you (and not just once, either)...and still be called the bad guy.

Metatext is all the rage, isn't it?

The above is soaking wet with sarcasm for those who may not have understood that.

Sure, Bob Kane and Stan Lee could have an all-out ego show-off that only John Byrne could referee. But, all in all...Bob did what he had to do to survive. It completely sucks that he rolled over on Bill Finger and Jerry Robinson. But, if I were him, I wouldn't let NPP take me out like they did with Siegel and Shuster. In the same respect, I would do my best to include everyone involved.

But, hey, those were different times. I mean, people really wouldn't do anything like that these days. Oh, excuse me for a minute, I have to take a phone call from Steven Spielberg about the next project he plans to steal from a deceased director and call it his own.