In the summer of 1938 the tiny, young and generally disreputable business of “comic books” stumbled across its first big success. Those cheap, luridly coloured rags had been selling about 100,000 copies per issue until the new Action Comics caught the fancy of American boys and sales soared. According to news-agents who quizzed their customers, Action’s big draw was Superman. Instantly, Action’ s editors knew that they needed another costumed crimefighter to star in their other magazine, Detective Comics. One Friday an editor told this to one of his regular cartoonists, Bob Kahn (who would soon change his name to the less ethnic Kane). “I’ll have something for you on Monday morning,” said Kane. He grabbed the latest issue of Action and took the subway home to his parents’ apartment in the Bronx.
Kane was much like the creators of Superman, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster: a son of Jewish immigrants in his early twenties; non-athletic; close to his mother; and in love with adventure movies and newspaper comic strips. But he differed from Siegel and Shuster in one important respect: they had talent. Siegel was a rough but engaging writer with wit and fun ideas. Shuster was a charming draughtsman and pictorial storyteller who brought the odd notion of Superman to life. Kane had a middling flair for drawing funny animals, but he was entirely lost tackling the human, the heroic or the dramatic. As for his ideas and writing skill, one of his old high-school buddies, the cartoonist Will Eisner, put it simply: “Bob wasn’t an intellectual.”
The cover of the latest Action showed Superman leaping over Metropolis as if in flight, his cape billowing. Kane thought of the Birdmen in the Flash Gordon comic strip, remembered sketches of flying devices by Leonardo da Vinci that he had studied in art school, and produced his idea: a red-suited “Bird-Man” with artificial wings. Then he had an even better idea: he walked to his friend Bill Finger’s apartment and said: “Help me sell this and I ’ll cut you in on the money.”
Here we find another difference between Kane and the creators of Superman: he was charming. Siegel was nasal, jittery and annoying, while Shuster was cripplingly shy. Kane was a tennis player and a ladies’ man — he knew how to make people like him. Finger was a bit older and already married. He had a baby to feed and was making his living as a salesman while he tried to establish himself as a writer. Finger knew how to craft a satisfying story, so Kane persuaded him to write comic-book tales, which he would illustrate and then sell to Detective Comics.
Finger didn’t think that the Bird-Man would fit in a comic book about detectives. They should go for nocturnal mystery, with characters such as the Black Bat. Together, he and Kane developed the scalloped cape, the eared cowl and the eyeless mask. From pulp heroes such as the Shadow Finger they took the playboy secret identity, the clueless police commissioner, the death traps and the hero’s startling entrances and exits. Kane’s art was crude, but the hero’s design was devilish and the ideas were strong. On Monday, Kane took the sample pages to his editor and sold the new “Bat-Man”. He signed the contract as the sole creator.
Now we come to another crucial difference between Kane and the Siegel-Shuster team: Kane knew how the world worked; Siegel and Shuster signed away all their rights to Superman for nothing. When the series caught on, they signed a ten-year deal with the publisher to produce stories. There were vague promises made that the pair would receive a cut of whatever revenue was generated, but they never bolted down long-term rights. Kane, on the other hand, hired a lawyer. The publishers agreed to guaranteed credit and a permanent piece of the action.
Kane was a pretender in many ways, but he was canny enough not to fool himself about the quality of his art. With Batman’s second episode he was already persuading other young artists into drawing his pages for him. Suddenly, the caped crusader was lithe and graceful, his fistfights came alive, the buildings he scaled sported dramatic angles and accurate perspective — all attributes that Kane couldn’t have produced.
Kane had an eye for artists. On a tennis court one day he spotted a 17-year-old journalism student named Jerry Robinson, who had decorated his coat with his own cartoons. Kane flattered him, showed him the first printed Batman story and soon had Robinson drawing under the “Bob Kane” signature. It was Robinson who gave Batman its atmosphere, its shadows and clouds scudding across the moon and nightmarish cityscapes. And it was Robinson who created Batman’s perfect enemy, the Joker, and who designed Robin the Boy Wonder when Finger suggested that their hero should have a sidekick.
In the early days, Kane still contributed ideas and drew the pages. But as Batman became a hit, and Kane could increase his volume and his prices, he began slipping off to Miami and Hollywood to chase girls and meet celebrities — “Hi, I’m Bob Kane, creator of Batman” — as his staff cranked out the pages. Most of those artists agreed to anonymity in exchange for a steady gig; for decades Kane’s editors thought that he was actually drawing the work.
By the end of the Second World War, comic books were big business. National Comics was one of the industry leaders, and its two most valuable properties were Superman and Batman. Superman was also becoming its biggest headache, for Siegel was fighting to regain control of the character that he had given away. He wanted the income that he thought he had been promised. He resented his editors taking creative control of the series and was furious when they brought out Superboy without compensating him. He befriended a lawyer who said he and Shuster could probably win back the rights to Superman, along with a cash settlement of millions of dollars.
Siegel approached Kane and suggested that they sue National Comics together. With their two most popular characters at risk, Siegel thought that the publishers would buckle. Kane said that he would think about it. Then he went to Jack Liebowitz, an executive at National Comics, and said: “Jerry Siegel’s going to sue you. How can we make it worth my while to stay loyal?” Liebowitz didn’t like threats. “You signed a contract with us, Bob. What can you sue over?” So Kane played his trump card. “That contract is invalid,” he said. “You signed it,” Liebowitz said. “Sure,” said Bob. “Too bad I was a minor at the time.” In fact, Kane had been 23 when he signed, but he knew that no birth certificate existed — not an uncommon situation among the Jewish immigrant families of the early 20th century — so his claim could not be disproved. Liebowitz liked legal messes even less than threats, so he agreed to a 20-year deal that would make Kane rich.
During those same 20 years, Siegel and Shuster destroyed their careers with a series of lawsuits aimed at reclaiming control of Superman. They were fired by National Comics and had their names stripped from the credits. Drowning in resentment, Siegel lost his touch for brisk, inventive stories and found work scarce. Shuster’s eyesight had already been failing, and soon he was unemployable as an artist. By the time they turned 60, Siegel was working as a mail clerk and Shuster was living off his brother’s charity.
Meanwhile, Kane was serving as a consultant to the hugely popular Batman TV show. When the company that would become Warner Communications bought National Comics, Bob sold his underlying rights for $1 million and a perpetual slice of all licensing revenue.
In 1978, when Warner Communications established the comic-book hero as a staple of mainstream entertainment with Superman: The Movie, the creators had nothing to do with it. They used it, in fact, as the springboard for a publicity campaign that shamed Warners into paying them a pension and restoring their credits to the character. Kane had put together a team of writers and artists who created Batman under his name. But when Tim Burton made his Batman movie in 1989, he was still hired as a consultant.
How had this happened? A clue lies in the origin of Superman. When Siegel was in his teens his father was shot and killed during an armed robbery. The killer was never caught. The family went broke, and Siegel had to give up hopes of college and hustle to survive. The grief and rage burned in him for ever. Superman, that bulletproof nemesis of criminals, was surely a product of that pain. In Batman, the young Bruce Wayne sees his parents murdered in a robbery and swears to avenge himself on all criminals. The same trauma that created one hero in reality and the other in fiction undid Siegel as a man. Kane, who had never known such pain, used his savvy to make himself rich. In the end, it’s often those who are least able to function in the world who give it the greatest gifts. But the world reserves its rewards for those who know how to work the system.
Gerard Jones is the author of Men of Tomorrow: Geeks, Gangsters and the Birth of the Comic Book (published by William Heinemann on July 7); Batman Begins is released on June 16
