Only once in his lifetime, Bill Finger received a “written by” credit on a first-run Batman story, and it wasn’t a comic book.
And though he wrote Superman stories, too (he created Lana Lang!), same deal—one credit, in TV:
This is from The New Adventures of Superman, a Filmation series of animated shorts that debuted in 1966.
Though there is currently almost no trace online that Bill wrote for this series, in 2006, I did follow a path to determine that this was the case. But I didn’t look for the visual proof until now.Thank you to Bill Davis of Toronto for prompting me to revisit this.
Adios, Señor Superhombre.
Bonus:
Excerpts from emails with Bill’s second wife Lyn Simmons, and one other, in figuring this out:From: Marc Tyler Nobleman
To: Lyn Simmons
Sent: Saturday, October 14, 2006 9:02 AM
Subject: Hi Lyn - Superman movie
You said they called Bill to ask him to come to California to write a script for the Superman movie. I've talked with a few people who were involved with the film and they don't remember that. Are you sure?
There was another writer named Alfred Bester who was friends with Bill who was definitely asked—there are written accounts online. Did you know Alfred? Is it possible you're confusing the two? Can you remember any more details?
From: Lyn Simmons
Sent: Saturday, October 14, 2006 4:25 PM
good to hear from you marc. bester's name rings a bell but don't think i ever met him. i'm pretty sure that bill received invitation to ca to write superman films. it's so long ago and i could be mistaken but I don't think so. in any event he never went. he had anxiety about flying and about leaving nyc.
bill may never have told his fellow writers about ca because he didn't want to explain why he wasn't going.
From: Pierre Spengler
Sent: Wednesday, December 13, 2006 1:05 PM
We purchased the rights in november 1974 and therefore started hunting for writer in the beginning of 1975. Very soon thereafter we engaged Mario Puzo. Therefore we never approached Bill Finger.
From: Lyn Simmons
Date: Tuesday, December 19, 2006 10:18 AM
i believe he was asked to come out to ca in the late 60s. i'm pretty sure it was superman. maybe they wanted him out there for ideas or stories a year or so before he died which i think was in '74. but perhaps it was for cartoons.
Steve Simmons is the son of Lyn Simmons, who was Bill Finger’s companion in the 1960s and his second wife from 1968 to 1971.
What was your relationship with Bill Finger?
I knew him when I was in high school, growing up. He married my mother, I was probably in 12th grade, maybe a freshman in college. I knew him around the house. He would talk about how he was very proud of his work on the various comic books he worked on. I think he not only did work on the storyline, which he did an impressive amount with, [but] also I think I remember him saying was responsible for how Batman looked, like maybe his cape, and how the mask covered Batman’s face? I think he also talked about doing something with the Batmobile, maybe he came up with that idea, too. … He was very proud of his work. I remember him bringing Batman and other comics home. We had a whole stack of comic books at the house which would probably be very valuable today but have since been lost. He would have us read them and react to them. As kids, we were, of course, thrilled. He was a man with a great sense of humor. He was very smart. He was very worldly to a young kid. He liked opera and classical music and reading the New York Times and travel. He was a sharp dresser, I’d say, very nattily dressed. [Irwin Hasen also described Bill with the ten-dollar word “nattily.”]
Do you remember hearing about his death?
I do. I remember once he had a heart attack. I visited him in the hospital and he told me he was very touched by that.
When was that?
Probably 1970ish, something like that. I probably knew him from the late 50s through [his death in] ’74.
You were how old when you met him?
I was probably thirteen maybe. [this would’ve been 1959]
Do you remember Freddie?
Yes.
How old was he in relation to you?
I think he was a little older than me. I could be wrong about that. I met Freddie maybe once or twice. I really never knew him very well. … [Bill] was everything from showing me how to tie a tie to talking about college. He also wrote for television. When I went to California with my real father (Bill, of course, was stepfather), [he said] I should just drop by one of the Hollywood studios on his behalf just to say hi.
Did you consider him your stepfather?
It wasn’t the type of thing where he was a stepfather from when I was very young. It was more a late-blooming thing. I think they married when I was probably a freshman in college.
Your mom said ’68.
Then it was even later. Then it was when I was a junior or senior in college. [Steve graduated Cornell in ‘68]
Did you and your siblings have a sense of his significance in the comic industry at the time?
I would say we didn’t. And I think also the comic industry as a whole and the people who created it are now looked upon very very differently than they were at that day. I also can remember calling Warner Bros. when the first Batman—my mom wanted me to do this—first Batman movie came out to try and see if we could get Bill credit. I talked to the people there. They acknowledged Bill was instrumental but they weren’t willing to put—for legal reasons—didn’t want to give him credit on the film. I told them I’m not looking for money, I’ll sign a release, but they didn’t want to do it.
You wouldn’t happen to have anything left of Bill’s? Photos, mementos, letters?
I may have a photo. Let me take a look. … [He] talked about how he worked on other characters. I think on Superman, he was pretty instrumental in some of the stuff there. He told me that some of the things Superman is known for he helped create. Was there something called the Green Hornet?
Green Lantern. He co-created him.
Yes, he did that, too. He probably did a lot that Bob Kane took credit for, quite frankly. I don’t think he was paid as much as he should have.
Did he ever talk to you about that? That he was cheated?
I think he once said something to the effect that Bob Kane took more credit than he should have. Put it this way, Bob Kane was getting credit, he wasn’t. Something to that effect. I never heard him talking about not making enough money. Maybe once I did, that Kane got most of the money.
Do you remember him getting asked to write the Superman movie script?
Vaguely. I remember we’d all sit in front of the TV set and watch the television stuff he would write. We’d all be very proud when his name came on at the end. My mom was a friend of Reggie Rose, too, so Bill got to know Reggie. [Rose wrote 12 Angry Men]
You remember nothing more specific about the Superman script?
I do not but I believe that did happen. He worked very hard on this stuff and probably bounced stuff off my mother. My mother was very creative, still is. She’s a great artist. Always has been an artist. My guess is that during all those years Bill would—not all the time—would bounce ideas for comics off of my mother. So in some small way, I can’t give you chapter and verse, I’m sure she contributed a little bit to all of this.
She did say that he would run things by her.
I’m absolutely positive that happened. Another thing I remember is Bill showing me his muscles. He worked out. He was a short, not short short, but relatively short guy. But his muscles, I’d always brag to my friends about how strong his muscles are. He’d make a muscle and me and my young friends would all go—this was when we were 13 or 12—we’d all go feel his muscle.
Do you know why he didn’t serve in the war? Because of his heart?
There was something but I just don’t know. Sorry.
He was not overweight toward the end of his life?
Not that, no. Well, he certainly wasn’t when I saw him in 1970. He was never overweight that I saw. Always very muscular.
Was that the last time you saw him, ’70?
Probably, whenever that heart attack was when I visited him in the hospital.
Was he working [on scripts] in the hospital?
When I saw him he wasn’t.
Lyn was Bill Finger’s companion in the 1960s and his second wife from 1968 to 1971. She was unknown to the comics world before I discovered her.
I interviewed her for Bill the Boy Wonder: The Secret Co-Creator of Batman and am now posting many of those previously unpublished interviews.
Part 1.
Part 2.
Did you happen to know his parents’ names?
No. I know he didn’t talk to them at all.
Were they still alive when you guys met?
Yes. And I used to urge him to. I said for god’s sake, you’re a grown man now. Talk to them. But he just couldn’t. Whatever went wrong there, it couldn’t be made right.
Do you remember him telling you that one or both of them had passed away?
No.
So he wouldn’t have gone to the funerals?
Well, they were alive up until I moved to California. [actually, they died in 1961, within two months of each other]
But you never met them or he never talked to them in your presence?
No.
Why was he not in touch with them?
I don't know. Something was wrong with the relationship. Very wrong. And he just would have nothing to do with them.
Do you have any ideas where I can find out what their names were?
I have no idea where you could find that out. I’m bad at this sort of thing. I think his parents lived in Brooklyn. When we met, Bill was my second husband and I was his second wife. We were both grown up. And we just had a wonderful time together. We had arguments and fights but we always got together. I think about him still. It was for the most part a wonderful relationship.
What was Bill’s work schedule like? His writing schedule?
He worked a lot at night. Sometimes all night. When he worked, he worked very hard and steadily at it. But he didn’t always work very hard. He did miss deadlines. But they knew he was a very good writer for them and they gave the work.
Would he tell you, tomorrow’s a deadline and I’m not going to make it?
Yeah, he would.
What was his attitude?
He would say I have a deadline and I have to meet it. He would be serious about it. He was very serious about his work, but he just had certain weaknesses.
When he was not making deadlines, was he working on the story but just finishing in time, or was he completely procrastinating or distracted?
Both.
So when he was not working, what was he doing instead?
I don't know because if I knew about it, I would be yelling at him.
Did he still golf when you knew him?
No, he didn’t play golf when I knew him.
He used to play earlier. He used to play when he was still in the Bronx.
Maybe that’s where his parents lived, in the Bronx?
They did originally. Have you ever been interviewed about Bill before?
No, I haven’t, although I was in touch with Hollywood at one point because Bob Kane, something had happened with Bob Kane and Batman and I wanted to get Bill in on it. Bill was not alive.
Was this the first movie [1989]?
Maybe so. And they got very interested and then I said I was his wife, then they found I was divorced and that ended it.
So you wanted to try to get him some—
I wanted to get him the notice that he should’ve gotten as part of this. [how close she got]
Did you start that or did somebody contact you to help do that?
I don’t recall. Somebody may have contacted me.
Did you know Bob Kane?
I met him once, I think, at some function.
What was Bill’s opinion of him?
He never talked much about him.
Who were his friends in the comic book industry that you also knew?
Jerry somebody.
Robinson.
Maybe. He knew a lot of science fiction writers. We were both into science fiction. When 2001 came out, we went crazy. We went and got tickets. I don’t remember the names, I’m sorry.
Did he have any working quirks? Certain lucky charm on his desk?
No, he didn’t. When he wrote, he wrote well. I think he went over things a lot. He consulted with the artist.
Do you remember that he appeared at a comic convention in 1965 in New York?
No I don’t. He wouldn’t be good on panels.
Why not?
He wasn’t a good spontaneous speaker. He wasn’t real sure of himself. He could be wonderful personally and in familiar—with friends. But how was he on the panel?
I only have the transcript. [said he was jovial, had sense of humor, not most talkative of the four; I have since gotten the audio recording of the panel]
No. [she asked who other three were, she didn’t know them]
[I said Bill came late and they started without him, she laughed, “That would be Bill.”]
What did he look like?
Very attractive to women. He just had a good face. Sort of bald, was losing his hair. He had thick eyebrows. He had a very broad mouth, very nice mouth. He had lines down his cheeks that were very attractive.
Around his mouth, right?
Yes. He always wore Brooks Brothers shirts. He dressed well.
Anecdotes in relation to his work?
No. He was working, I was working. I was an advertising manager for a company for a lot of years. And Bill worked. We got together when we weren’t working. I slept over in the Village, he slept over—my children would stay with their father on weekends so that’s when Bill would stay over.
[asked about talking to her children, said she’s sure they’ll be happy to talk to me]
Do you think that they realize how important Bill was to comics?
No. They know that he did a lot with Batman. They knew that he had a good reputation. But they were too young.
[told her that since the ‘80s he’s become a legend, one of the most revered but tragic figures in comics, Lyn said that’s wonderful, she’s going to cry, she goes into comic book store every so often to see if there’s anything about Bill Finger, employees thrilled when she says she was married to Bill Finger
says she married about four years after Bill died and that was mistake, knew first husband since 13, his sister was her best friend, married and had three children, grew apart, Bill was my main love, this is very good what you’re doing]
You sound very, very nice. It would be nice to meet you sometime. [we eventually did meet]
[she asked me to think up more questions]
7/5/06
When did Bill and Portia divorce?
Probably the year before [Bill and I got married]. He didn’t get divorced from her for quite a while, which was okay with me because I was getting alimony and child support from my first husband and Bill didn’t have much money. But finally he got his divorce a year or two before we got married.
What do you remember about the Army Pictorial Center?
He wrote training films for them. And he hated it.
Was he still working in comics at the time?
Yes he was.
That was a desk job—he’d go every day?
I’m not sure he went every day. He was living with me on the island. I forget. I don’t think he went every day. Maybe he did. I’m not sure.
Let’s get back to the Superman script story you mentioned.
They asked him to come out to California to write the scripts [sic]. I don’t know if he would have had a writing partner. But he didn’t go.
They called him to do that?
Yeah, he was on the phone with them and they wrote him.
The money wasn’t enough of a motivation?
Oh no. I’m sure it would’ve been a lot of money. But money didn’t motivate Bill that way.
When was that?
It was in the ‘60s. The late ‘60s, I would say. While we were living together. [mentions how he had to take two trains to work] …big change for him to move out to Long Island. When we got married he moved out to Long Island.
Do you remember why he was not drafted? 4F?
Was he 4F?
That’s what I read.
He may have had heart trouble. I know he did have it early on. Something physical, I’m sure. [I later acquired his military record]
Do you remember Freddie being the same age as any of your kids?
When he came over he was very young. Like five or six. Maybe seven. Below ten.
When he came over where?
Great Neck, with Bill. Bill would bring him over to visit and be with my kids. He was overweight and he was very unfriendly, but he was young.
In Great Neck or Roslyn?
This was in my house in Roslyn. I lived there from 1952…no, 1950 to 1964, when I sold it and moved to Great Neck.
[tape cuts out (though we were nearly done anyway); she said she’d like to pay for Bill’s tombstone, and knows her son Steve would want to pay for all of it, she also wants involvement with what’s written on it]
Lyn was Bill Finger’s companion in the 1960s and his second wife from 1968 to 1971. She was unknown to the comics world before I discovered her.
I interviewed her for Bill the Boy Wonder: The Secret Co-Creator of Batman and am now posting many of those previously unpublished interviews.
Part 1.
6/25/06
[first few words cut off but she was saying that she told her son Andrew] that you were going to give Bill the credit that he never got and deserved and Andy said that was great, ‘cause Bill was wonderful to my children.
When did you and Bill marry?
We married quite late, actually. We were together for, I don’t know, 13 years and then we married in 1968.
In Great Neck?
Yes. Then I came out here because of my son and Bill and I got divorced. But we were on the phone all the time and I feel that had he lived, we would’ve gotten together again.
When did you move out there and get divorced?
I moved out in ‘71 and that’s when I got divorced. He had a lot of problem about my moving out. I don’t think you need to know about that.
After you divorced, did he move back into Manhattan?
Yes.
[asked about the article Lyn’s daughter Eve mentioned, she’ll send]
Did you know [Bill’s son] Freddie?
Yes I did. Freddie when he was little used to come out and visit in Roslyn. I had a house in Roslyn, Long Island. That’s where Bill moved when we were married. He was a sort of disturbed young boy.
His wife, I never met her, but I understand she was obese. Bill was rather short and slim and she had a lot of gay friends. I think they may have influenced Fred quite a bit. Bill was pretty upset about that. Bill had faults. He was not too good on the alimony. He was not too good with his deadlines. But he was the kindest man in the world, really. It just beset (?) by his own certain weaknesses. When I first met him and he came out to the house with a whole bunch of comic books, my kids went crazy. He had the early, not the Batman, the ones before that that he was writing. I forget the publisher but the Green Lantern. Bill had first editions that he was selling very happily for five or ten dollars and feeling he was making quite a profit. They probably sell for a couple thousand now.
Some of them would sell for five figures, if they’re in good condition.
Oh my god.
They’re very valuable. You know what else would go for a lot of money? Any memento from the Golden Age. So if Bill had any notes, I know that a lot of that stuff was thrown away, but all that stuff is highly collectible now.
Oh my god. I don’t have any of that.
Do you happen to remember Fred’s middle name?
His real name, his first name was Milton, and he hated that. He changed it to William. And everybody knew him by Bill.
Oh, you’re talking about Bill?
Whose middle name?
Freddie’s.
No, I don’t know.
And Bill’s real first name was Milton?
Yes, but don’t put that in. He didn’t like it. [she later gave permission]
So he was born as Milton William Finger?
No, he just changed it to William. I don’t know whether William was his middle name or he just changed it to William.
As long as anyone knew him, he was Bill.
Yes.
Did he have a middle name?
I don’t know.
[said I’m hoping to find some of his Freddie’s friends]
You haven’t found out where he is?
Well, he’s deceased. He passed away in the late ‘90s.
He died?
Yeah, he died.
Oh my lord. I knew nothing about him after I came out to California. … Was he married?
No, I believe he was gay and I heard he died of AIDS.
[asked if she might have any documents that would show Bill’s middle name]
No. If he had one. I didn’t have a middle name. I don’t think Bill did. We didn’t give middle names in those days. Maybe Freddie had one, I don’t know.
Bill was not in WWII?
No, he wasn’t.
Did he not get drafted?
I guess he didn’t. He didn’t get drafted. He had some problems, maybe some problems, I don’t know what it was. He never talked about it. One thing I wanted to tell you about. Bill and I were on the phone a lot in the years before he died and I was out here. One day I called him and he didn’t answer. I just had a feeling to call him late at night and there was no answer. I thought that’s very strange because he’s always in late at night. So next morning I phoned his friend Charlie who lived in the same building as Bill in New York. And I said take a look in at Bill, see if he’s okay, ‘cause I called last night, he wasn’t there. So Charlie looked in and a little while later he called me back. He said oh my god, you must be psychic, Bill is dead. He had died in his sleep on the couch sometime that night. That was quite amazing and I cried quite a bit.
So Charlie was the one who found him?
Yes. They brought up the manager of the building. My son was having operations and this was his third one that was coming up and I couldn’t go in for anything. He was very very sick, he almost died, so I had to stay with him. I don’t know what happened. His wife called me before this happened.
You mean his ex-wife Portia?
His ex-wife called me and she said that…wait, I may be getting mixed up here. I am getting mixed up. This was before I moved out to California. She was very mean. She called me about how sick Bill—she went to see him, he was sick, he had had something with his heart. I said I didn’t want to hear this, and so she said goodbye, and of course I visited him and he stayed with me when he recuperated, in Roslyn. He was alright but he had had a heart problem before.
You mean you came back from California to visit him?
No, this was before I left for California.
So you divorced and then you moved? You didn’t move first?
No, I moved first. We were in the process of getting the divorce and then I got the papers out here.
Then after ‘71—
We were in touch all the time.
Did you see him after that?
No.
He never came out to visit?
No. Well, he had a kind of reluctance to travel. He had a kind of anxiety about traveling.
I’ve been told that he didn’t drive.
Yeah, he didn’t drive.
Why?
I don't know. He just never got a license and he never drove. He never had a car.
How did he get around in the suburbs, like when he lived in Great Neck?
Well, he took the train into work, which was walking distance from where I lived. Then I drove him around, everywhere.
And it never came up why he didn’t want to drive?
Well, no. (laughs) I think I did tell him to get driving lessons a couple times. And he said I will, I will, I will. And he didn’t.
His reluctance to travel, what did you think—
Some anxiety about it.
You mean like getting on a plane?
Yeah. Leaving his familiar spaces.
Did you ever talk to him about his Batman work and what he thought of his fans? Did he know that he had fans?
No, he never thought of that at all. Not at all. He was very humble, very unassuming. He was just doing comics. He said “I’m a hack writer.”
So he wasn’t proud of his work?
Well, yes he was. He thought he did good work. But he said “I’m a hack writer.”
Did he have aspirations that he was working toward?
No. Well, he may have. I don’t remember that.
He was just content to continue writing comics and not try something else?
Yeah. Well, he and Charlie wrote a movie and they did some television scripts, so he did something more.
Did you read his work before he sent it to the publisher?
Sometimes.
And you gave him suggestions?
Sometimes.
What did he like to do for fun?
He loved theater, which we went to. Ballet we both loved. He loved classical movie and he had a very complicated [stereo] setup that I wasn’t allowed to touch.
Was that in his workspace?
Yeah, and then it was up in my house. Actually, when he moved up, he didn’t move to Roslyn. He stayed there quite a bit. But he moved up to my Great Neck apartment. I had sold the house in Roslyn in 1964. And I was in an apartment in Great Neck.
So he never lived in Roslyn? He just visited.
Yes.
And then he moved to Great Neck—
When he moved from New York he moved to Great Neck.
Did you have wedding photos?
No, we got married by a justice of the peace in Great Neck. We had no photos at all. We weren’t camera people. What he did for fun is we traveled, locally. We didn’t go abroad. We went to the Hamptons, we went to Cape Cod, we went to Maine.
Always by car?
Yes.
He never left the Northeast his whole life?
No, he never did. [I later found out that at least once he made it at least as far as Texas]
Part 3.
Lyn was Bill Finger’s companion in the 1960s and his second wife from 1968 to 1971. She was unknown to the comics world before I discovered her.
I interviewed her for Bill the Boy Wonder: The Secret Co-Creator of Batman and am now posting many of those previously unpublished interviews.
6/23/06
As you probably know, Bill Finger was a major factor in the creation of Batman and never received [official] credit.
That’s right, he was, and he never received enough credit for it. And I feel very badly about that. He was the one—he decided on having the Penguin, giving Batman a cape, and all sorts of different details that I may or may not remember. He was very instrumental in developing the whole image of Batman.
How old are you?
I’m 83. I was born in 1922. Bill was 10 years older than I. [Bill was born 1914]
Tell me what your memories are of Bill as a person and as a creative type.
As a person, he was very, very warm, very sincere, very hard-working, even though he problems meeting deadlines. We were very much in love most of the time. Toward the end it got a little bad. But for the most part he was my big, passionate love affair. We spent enormous amounts of time together. He had a good sense of humor. He was very interested in the theater, and ballet, and classical music. He gave an awful lot of thought to writing. He wouldn’t write any violent comic books.
Did he feel pressure that other people wanted him to write violent stuff?
Well, they would ask him to and he wouldn’t. He was asked to go out to Hollywood to write the Superman script and he didn’t do it. [NOTE: It turned out she was most likely thinking of the 1966 Filmation Superman series of animated shorts.] He liked New York and he didn’t want to leave there. And when we married he was out on Long Island with me but he just held on to the space he had and didn’t like to leave it. So going out to California was a great big step for him.
They asked him to write the script from scratch, or did they want him to edit somebody’s—
I think he would’ve had a partner. I don’t remember—you know, it’s 34 years, or 31 years, since he died. I don’t remember but I know he could’ve gone out and written Superman for the movies. And he just never took up that opportunity. He also worked very hard at getting the right words and the right image for Batman. He worried about it a lot and thought about it a lot. It was real important to him. Personally he was wonderful, I was in love with him, and he was a wonderful guy.
How did you meet?
We met at a friend’s house in the village. She was my friend. It was a couple—they were Bill’s friend and I was there with another friend and we went up to visit. He was there. And that’s how we met.
Do you know what year that was?
Oh God. I would’ve been about 35—that would’ve been 50 years [ago] almost.
When did you two start a relationship?
Right away. We started going out. He called me about two weeks after we met. He took me a foreign film, the first date. Something about the fifth lamb, I forget what it was.
This was in the fifties?
Oh yes.
So he was already divorced from Portia?
No he wasn’t. He didn’t get divorced for a few years.
The first time you lived together was in Great Neck, right?
No, we were together, I lived with him in the Village. We were living with each other on and off. We vacationed together often. We used to go to Cape Cod and up to the Hamptons.
Where did you live in the city?
When I met Bill I was on the island. I have three children.
So you have Eve and Steve…
…and Andy.
Where does he fall, oldest, youngest?
He’s my middle son.
When you lived with Bill in the city was that the 45 Grove Street address?
Oh god…
Or the neighborhood if you can’t remember the address.
No I don’t. He lived alone. I don’t remember that first apartment’s address.
But it was in the Village?
Yeah it was in the Village, it was always in the Village.
That might’ve been the 45 Grove Street.
[said how I went around city and took photos of where he lived]
I think it’s awfully nice that you’re doing this. I’m so happy for Bill that you’re doing it.
Do you have any photos of Bill?
I think I had a couple. I’ll have to look through my books. We weren’t photo people so we just didn’t take many photos.
[she said she had just gotten back from New York and she’s tired so can we continue tomorrow, then: Could you tell me what you said about things you’d do for Bill?]
As I understand it, he was buried on Hart Island so he doesn’t have a gravestone. Do you know about that?
I was in California [when Bill died] and my son was having a very serious operation. He has no gravestone?
I’m almost positive.
Oh god.
The friend of his that told me about you whose name is Charles Sinclair—
Oh yeah! Where is Charles?
In Brooklyn. I could put you guys in touch.
Yeah, I’d like to be in touch with him again.
[she said let’s continue tomorrow, I said if the book does well I’d like to get Bill a proper gravestone and she agreed]
I’m so glad, I’m so glad you’re doing this. I came out here 35 years ago to take care of my son Andrew who had a very bad accident and injured his spinal cord and he’s in a wheelchair so I took care of him out here for 12 years. When Bill died, well that’s another story that might interest you, Charlie said I was psychic, but it was very strange thing that happened, but I’ll talk about that tomorrow.
Part 2.
Twice in back-to-back columns, “Comic Book Legends Revealed” at Comic Book Resources covered revelations that came out of Bill the Boy Wonder: The Secret Co-Creator of Batman.
First, the decades-long rumor that Bill left no heir.
He died in 1974 with only one child, who himself died in 1992, and as far as most in comics knew before I began my research, this was the end of the Finger bloodline. Yet F is for Finger…and false. I found his lone grandchild, a granddaughter born two years after he died. For more on this debunked myth, check out these posts and the book itself.
Second, the decades-long presumption that (short of successful litigation) Bill could not earn a screen credit in a Batman film.
Each post generated some lively discussion in the comments section. And though it may not seem so at first, these two legends are linked. How this may play out is still on the horizon.
Bill the Boy Wonder: The Secret Co-Creator of Batman contains several revelations, one of which particularly stunned comics fans—and even some regular people.
But the full story is not confined to the book. In our post-paper era, I left out some choice discoveries, with the intention of posting them here.
Two of the most compelling: the almost-successful campaign by Bill’s second wife to get his name into the credits of Batman (1989) and the evidence that Bill—at least once—stood up to Bob.
Some notable outfits picked up on these controversial topics:The Beat (formerly part of Publishers Weekly; The Beat also addresses a third Big Issue I blogged about: are Batman and Robin gay?)Blastr (part of SyFy, formerly known as the Sci-Fi Channel)
Bleeding CoolComic Book Resources Earlier post with similar bent.
