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Author Topic: News: Bob Kane Still Dead  (Read 11173 times)
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Permanus
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« Reply #8 on: February 08, 2006, 09:51:52 PM »

I swear, when I first read the tombstone text, I actually missed the "Hand of God" bit. My mind must have edited it out for me, to save my fragile psyche from imploding. It would be wonderful to find out who wrote this bit of weirdness; I can't help suspecting that it must have been cobbled together by stuff Kane himself claimed.

"Hey, kids, did I ever tell you about the time the Lord Almighty prompted me to invent a comic-book character based on myself? I was sitting at home, thinking how criminals are a superstitious and cowardly lot, and all of a sudden, God the Creator flew in through my window, and I knew."
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DoctorZero
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« Reply #9 on: February 09, 2006, 02:38:15 AM »

I have to say, it's one of the most egotistical things I've ever read.  I do suspect that Bob Kane wrote the text for his own tombstone.  It seems like something he would have done.
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Lee Semmens
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« Reply #10 on: February 09, 2006, 11:30:28 AM »

If you can still get hold of it Alter Ego: The Comic Book Artist Collection (2001) has a few very interesting articles about Bill Finger's immense and largely uncredited contributions to Batman lore, and costume design, etc., which Bob Kane claimed all the credit for.

In fact, I though these articles were almost worth the price of the book alone.

I read somewhere else that sometime after Finger died (in 1974), Kane admitted to some guilt about not giving Finger due credit for his work on Batman - I don't know if this is true, or not.

I do know that when Finger died, he was a long way short of being well-off, unlike Kane.
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nightwing
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« Reply #11 on: February 09, 2006, 02:14:25 PM »

Recently I was re-reading my copy of Steranko's History of the Comics Volume 1 (always a joy), and I was kind of surprised to see Batman's creation story was already, in 1972 or so, pretty much pieced together.  Steranko credits Finger with most of the input we now know he provided, but I was under the impression that Kane managed to surpress most of this info until much later.  I know a lot of it came out in a mid-60s fanzine article by Jerry Bails and Kane wrote to the same 'zine all but threatening them with a lawsuit for even suggesting Finger had any input whatsoever.

The funny thing is Kane seemed to actually believed that the people of the world saw the caped crusader and thought, "Hey, there's Batman, created by Bob Kane!"  He seems to have had his mind stuck in the era when Chet Gould, Roy Crane and Milt Caniff were as famous as their creations.  Frankly, I think you'd be hard-pressed to find a lot of people who would associate Kane's name with Batman, any more than they would connect Jerry and Joe with Superman.  The perception seems to be that these are American icons that are too big and too storied to be tied to any one (or two) creators.  Sort of like Paul Bunyan or Johnny Appleseed...they belong to the ages, and no one ever asks (or cares) who told the first story.
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Dial H For Hero
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« Reply #12 on: February 10, 2006, 12:57:03 AM »

One reason Kane would've thought that people identified Batman as his sole creation was the fact that his name was on all Batman stories until (probably) the late '60s. I know I was shocked when I read in All in Color for a Dime that Batman was actually a group creation. While readers today don't know who Bob Kane was, kids who grew up in the '50s and '60s (I came in at the end of that period, but read a lot of reprints) at least knew his name, while they likely didn't know who Siegel and Shuster were.
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« Reply #13 on: February 11, 2006, 06:44:00 AM »

Quote from: "Dial H For Hero"
One reason Kane would've thought that people identified Batman as his sole creation was the fact that his name was on all Batman stories until (probably) the late '60s. I know I was shocked when I read in All in Color for a Dime that Batman was actually a group creation. While readers today don't know who Bob Kane was, kids who grew up in the '50s and '60s (I came in at the end of that period, but read a lot of reprints) at least knew his name, while they likely didn't know who Siegel and Shuster were.


Very true.  One of the few artists (I use the term advisedly) to have a byline in comic books.  I suppose the Batman newspaper strip carried his name as well, giving him a shot at the same sort of name recognition enjoyed by the cartoonists Nightwing mentioned.

Of course, his relentless self-promotion didn't hurt --he was allover the media when the Tim Burton film came out and had someone write his "memoir" Batman and Me at the same time.
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« Reply #14 on: March 17, 2006, 03:32:19 AM »

I've read a few times that Bob Kane was once practically booed off the stage at a 1970s comic convention, because he tried to take credit for stories drawn by Neal Adams, and claimed Neal was one of his "assistants". I so hope that the story is true!

I've got to wonder what would have happened if Neal Adams himself had been in the room at the time...

It's a very strange dichotomy with DC's two most famous heroes. Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster were denied the splash page credit for creating Superman over many years; roughly the same years that Bob Kane was getting splash page credits he DIDN'T deserve!
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davidelliott
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« Reply #15 on: September 23, 2006, 07:20:22 AM »

Quote from: "nightwing"
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.


At least he was consistent... in his autobiography "Batman & Me" he relates the same story.
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