News: Bob Kane Still Dead

[TELLE]

Saw this over at Oddball Comics: Bob Kane's gravestone.

http://www.findagrave.com/photos/2001/222/kanebob.jpg

Very weird.

[nightwing]

That's beyond weird.

When I first saw this thing, with all that text (!!!) I was going to dismiss it as a Photoshopped fake, but you know what, Bob's ego is all over it.  In fact, this may well stand as the one Batman-related work of fiction he ever created all by himself.

Holy Sense of Self-Importance, Batman!  It wasn't enough to "spin" history to flatter himself for 50 years, now he's doing it through Eternity.  Upon reflection, the only thing that still looks fake about this photo is that it shows a mere placque on the ground...I would've expected Bob to go for a 20-foot statue of himself with Batman and Robin springing from his brow.

Ah well, at least there's is a certain poetic justice in that a guy who relied so heavily on "ghosts" is now one himself!

[TELLE]

In fact, this may well stand as the one Batman-related work of fiction he ever created all by himself.

I'm pretty sure he didn't carve the marble and engrave it himself!

Ah well, at least there's is a certain poetic justice in that a guy who relied so heavily on "ghosts" is now one himself!

The big joke is, now that Bob Kane is dead, he can hire himself as a ghost.

Wait, does that even make sense?
 :?

[Super Monkey]

argh.. did Bob Kane ever create anything besides his own hype?

Every Batman idea, including Batman himself were created by other actually talented people and he took all the credit.

[Klar Ken T5477]

Do you think Bob set up his own gravestone?
Orwas it ...and one day...HIS HEIRS???

[JulianPerez]

BATMAN WAS CREATED BY THE HAND OF GOD!

That is the single most insane thing I have ever read in my entire life. The egotism of claiming that you possess all the great aspects of your most famous ultra-competent creation, and further, the idea of claiming that you were, like the writers of the Torah, "divinely inspired" requires an ego the size of Nebraska.

If Bob Kane isn't dead, there's a lightning bolt with his name on it, that's for sure. Never has any mortal asked for it more. If you did this kind of thing in Greek Mythology, they did stuff like turn you into a cow and have your own children eat you.

[Super Monkey]

For those of you out of the loop, please see this link:

http://www.geocities.com/batmanmagazine/nftc5.htm

[nightwing]

One of my favorite "Kane moments" was his appearance on NPR's "Fresh Air," where he told Terry Gross one his "inspirations" for Batman.

According to Bob, as a Brooklyn teenager he belonged to a gang (a doubtful claim already from a guy his peers remember as a prissy momma's boy) and found himself one day being pursued by a rival gang without his own to back him up.  So he ran.  (The one believable part of this story!).  He ran onto a construction site, where, outnumbered but never one to say die, he ran across lumber piles, making great leaps, tossing boards down on some foes and sliding some into the heads of others, swinging from cables like Douglas Fairbanks and the whole nine yards.  Then the other kids caught him and beat the tar out of him (Bob's 11th-hour concession to something like reality).  But out of that episode came the germ of an idea for a swashbuckling hero who could not be felled as he was.

With all due respect to the great Garrison Keillor, this remains the single funniest thing I ever heard on NPR.

If I'd heard him make that claim about Batman being an inspiration from the Almighty, no doubt I would have swerved my car into a ditch from laughing.

But hey, at least Bob finally found one collaborator he considered worthy of sharing his by-line.  Wonder if that last act of largess got him in the Pearly Gates.