From DC COMICS: SIXTY YEARS OF THE WORLD'S FAVORITE COMIC BOOK HEROES by Les
Daniels.

BATMAN'S DEBUT

THE MAN WHO LIVED IN SHADOWS



It wasn't safe to be around Batman in 1939. In his first adventure, "The Case
of the Chemical Syndicate" and in those that followed it each month in
Detective Comics, criminals who battled against the masked man showed a
disturbing tendency to fall from rooftops or go up in flames.  Batman might
not have consciously caused these mishaps, but they make him bat an eyelash.
He was angry, and this attitude as much as anything kept the series going in
the early days, while its creators decided how much of a menace the hero
should be.
Bob Kane's drawings and Bill Finger's scripts showed almost childlike
simplicity; the most remarkable thing about them was how quickly they got
better. "I really improved fast with Batman," Kane says, adding that it took
"about a year" to get the character looking right. In the same period, Finger
progressed from patchworks of old pulp plots to tight little mysteries with
grandiose visual elements, earning himself a reputation as perhaps the best
comic book writer of his era. Both Kane and Finger felt the pressure almost
at once. "I used to get nosebleeds from working on it sixteen hours a day at
the beginning," says Kane, who supplied pencils, inks and lettering. And
Finger's stories were good, according to Kane, because "he sweated over them.
That was the main reason he never got them in exactly on time."

One of editor Vin Sullivan's last decisions before leaving DC was to recruit
Gardner Fox, a friend from grammar school days. "He became a lawYer," says
Sullivan, "but he never practiced. He liked to write." Fox, who went on to
become one of the most popular and prolific writers in the business, helped
Finger by contributing a two-part story that began in September 1939. For a
fill-in, it proved to be fraught with implications.

Fox sent Batman to a castle in Hungary, where he discovered that the villains
were vampires; he promptly shot them with silver bullets. Fox's Gothic
atmosphere would linger, if in a less European style, but the gun was a
problem. When Bill Finger included another shooting shortly thereafer, the
company's new editorial director called a halt.

"Whitney Ellsworth said to take the gun out," recalls Kane. Most readers were
kids, and DC had begun to develop a sense of responsibility about what was
appropriate. Forbidding heroes to kill was just one of the restrictions that
would give DC a reputation for avoiding excess. The tone of the Batman series
became lighter, and the door was opened for bad guys to return again and
again.

While the vampire story was running, Bob Kane hired an assistant. At a tennis
court, he spotted Jerry Robinson wearing a racket covered with his own
drawings and offered him a job on the spot. Although he was about to enter
college, Robinson got caught up in the Batman saga. He began with lettering
and backgrounds, but gradually his contributions became more significant. As
Kane's pencil drawings improved and Robinson took more control of the inking,
the two achieved a polished combination of cartoon and illustration. Kane had
assembled a superb team with Robinson and Finger, but it was broken up when
DC hired Robinson to work separately "He was a better artist than I," says
Kane, "but he never emulated my style."

Along the way came a little two-page piece for Detective Comics #33 (November
1939) that proved to be the most famous Batman story of all. "Bill Finger and
I decided to give Batman an origin," Kane recalled. "I suggested that maybe
he should be all orphan because it would evoke sympathy for him. Then Bill
and I discussed it and we figured there's nothing more traumatic than having
your parents murdered before your eyes." When Superman's parents were killed
he was adopted by the kind, comfortable Kents, but after Bruce Wayne's
parents are shot down by a cheap thug (identified in 1948 as one Joe Chill),
subsequent panels show the boy entirely alone. His bitter quest for vengeance
is often characterized as the mainspring of the series, but the fact is that
it was an afterthought.
A favorite film of the Batman staff was Orson Welles' classic Citizen Kane
(1941). Its dramatic lighting and camera angles struck a responsive chord, as
did its hero's surname; less obvious is the fact that this film and their
comic book share a similar plot. Psychologists say that it's a common if
transient daydream among children to be rid of their parents, but having it
actually come true is the stuff of nightmares. Neither Charles Foster Kane
nor Bruce Wayne ever recovered, perhaps in part because they experienced
survivor's guilt over the price they paid for wealth and power. We're told
that Batman adopted his dark disguise to scare criminals, but there could be
other reasons why he felt compelled to dress as "a creature of the night,
black, terrible." Consumed by guilt and grief, this was a fellow who needed a
friend. He was lust about to get one.



Transmitted: 95-08-07 13:32:29 EDT (ch11)