Original subtitles

Good morning, guys.

Good morning.

Have you heard of Batman?

Yes.

Just checking and just kidding.

Of course you've heard of Batman.

So I have had the honor

of getting invited to speak all over the world

to tell the story that you're about to hear.

And everywhere I go,

whether it's Tanzania in Africa

or Chile in South America

or Hong Kong or Thailand

or the United Arab Emirates,

everywhere I go, I show that symbol,

and I have not been to a school

anywhere in the world where someone doesn't know it.

Now don't worry if you're not interested in superheroes

because I've done this many times,

and I can guarantee everyone here, including staff,

that you will walk out of this room in an hour

with a different perspective

than you have right now, I guarantee it.

On every Batman story since the first in 1939,

there was only one name in the credit line.

"Batman created by Bob Kane."

Here he is.

And here's the thing about that credit line:

It is not true.

The reason I do explain why

that I like superheroes is a little bit pat,

and it maybe is a little bit disingenuous

because I wasn't thinking like this as a kid.

But I do like stories of selflessness

and I like stories of sacrifice,

and superheroes sacrifice something on a daily basis.

Superheroes are not doing this

to get paid or praised, and it is not about them.

They are doing something for the greater good,

then they disappear into the night.

The notion of that is so rare in real life.

I mean, we know so few people

that can afford to be selfless.

As a six-year-old, I wasn't thinking like that,

even as a 12- or 15-year-old.

I just liked a good story,

a good adventure, and I still do,

so it was a combination of those things,

this purity of purpose

and then just a great cliff-hanging,

rollicking adventure.

Here is the Batman section.

One, two, three, four full... almost full shelves.

And compare that to Superman.

Not knocking Superman,

but just looking at the reality.

Here's Superman up to about there.

Batman is not only the most identifiable

and recognizable and famous

and beloved superhero,

but he is one of the most recognizable

fictional characters of all time.

Can take almost any Batman book off the shelf

and open to the title page.

"Batman created by Bob Kane."

Bob, for the few people who come from another planet,

who may not know what you do,

what is it that you're known for?

You've got to be kidding.

I am, of course.

Bob Kane is the original cartoonist of Batman

and the man who has been credited on Batman

for most of Batman's history.

When I was 18, I tripped across

a character called Batman.

Bat... how do you pronounce that?

- Batman? - B-A-T-man.

It was called "Batman by Robert Kane."

In 1938, two gangly kids

from Cleveland, Ohio

sold an idea for a character named Superman.

Superman was a huge influence on Bob Kane,

not the creative side, the financial side.

So I thought of, yeah,

"How much money is Siegel and Shuster making?"

They were the creators of Superman.

And in those days, in '39,

they were making $800 apiece a week.

When Bob Kane found out how much money

the Superman creators were making on a weekly basis

which was $800 at the time,

he went to an editor at National.

He said, "Listen, Bob, can you do another superhero?"

I said, "For that kind of money",

you'll have it on Monday."

For that kind of money, you'd be the superhero.

Boy, you better believe it.

I'll steal it somewhere.

And I went home, and lo and behold

I thought about all my childhood heroes

when I was a kid and my world of fantasy.

And on Monday, I came up with

a very crude drawing of Batman.

And the rest is history that Batman...

Batman is my claim to infamy.

Well, like most adults that like superheroes,

my interest started when I was a kid.

I just never outgrew it.

And that began a passion that I had most of my life.

I had a little gap in adolescence

when I had to distance myself from things

that could get in the way of girls and life,

but for the most part, I've stuck

with superheroes my whole life.

I am an author of books for young people,

and some of them are books for all ages.

And I've written about 75 books.

This is my first-ever book.

The Felix Activity Book.

Tour de force, I'm sure you remember it well from 1996.

And then here's the epic sequel,

Felix Explores our World.

I think the recurring theme of my nonfiction

is untold stories.

Boys of Steel.

Biography of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster,

creators of Superman.

There are sometimes tragic stories

behind these iconic characters.

Marc loves to bring out the story behind a story,

so he goes deep,

and he's also very persistent also

as a human being.

You got two toothpastes because you didn't know

if I wanted fluoride or not?

- Yeah. - Because they just announced

that fluoride is a toxin now.

I know that.

I told you all along.

It's in the water, it's in the toothpaste.

No, I know it's there, but that doesn't mean

- it's a toxin. - Oh, you're filming us?

I definitely feel sometimes

that I'm not only married to a writer,

but also even more so a detective.

When I decided to write a book

on the story behind Batman, it hadn't been done yet.

Whenever you start a research project,

you can't possibly know how much

or how little you're going to find.

In this case, I was going into the Batman book

knowing that there were secrets

that hadn't been widely discussed,

but I had no way to know it was a lot more than that.

So this story, for me,

was uncovering a big superhero secret

that should have been blown wide decades ago.

In New York in 1965,

was the first official Comic Con,

and the reason that this is considered

the first official Comic Con

is because it was the first time

that professionals showed up,

not just fans in a hotel basement

with some back issues.

This was historic, this was a big deal.

They didn't know it at the time,

but it was a big deal.

There were 200 of us at that Comic Con.

And this place was so sketchy.

And we got there, and my mother freaked

when she saw where we were.

There was literally a guy drunk, unconscious

on the floor in the lobby,

and roaches on the walls, and she just said,

"We're out of here, we're leaving."

The hotel itself, a few months later,

actually, much of it collapsed.

Luckily, it didn't do so while we were in there,

but none of us was particularly surprised

to hear that the Broadway Central had collapsed.

My mom finally said, "Okay, we'll stay,"

and you can go up to this comic book convention,

"but don't touch anything."

And as we went through the bar,

we saw Otto Binder sitting there at the bar

with another guy drinking.

And we go in and we sit down on the stools.

And he goes, "What are you boys drinking?"

We ordered our Cokes.

And Otto turns to me and Bob,

he said, "Boys, how would you like to meet"

the creator of Batman?"

And, like, our jaws dropped,

our eyes had to be wide open,

and we figured we were going to meet Bob Kane,

which was the only name we ever saw

on a comic book, it was always in a box

with a big "O" for Bob.

And Otto said, "Fellas, meet Bill Finger."

So in 1965 at this Comic Con,

in this dingy hotel in New York,

Bill Finger made what is probably his first

and maybe his only public appearance,

and he appeared on a panel

with three other comics' creators.

At this panel, Bill was introduced

by the moderator whose name was Jerry Bails.

And perhaps we'll hear some...

Jerry was the fan, who in 1964 or so,

figured out that it could not be

just this one guy, Bob Kane, writing and drawing

every Batman story every month.

So Jerry did some detective work of his own.

He wrote letters to DC Comics saying,

"Who's really doing all this?"

And in those days, companies would write you back

with a personal letter.

And the name that he saw more than any other

was Bill Finger.

So in 1965, Jerry wrote a two-page article

which was called "If the Truth Be Known,".

"A Finger in Every Plot!"

And this was obviously way before the internet,

so his way of spreading the word

was he made copies of this and sent it out

to Batman fans all over the country.

And that's when...

the controversy erupted.

Bill was given a forum to tell his story

where we could finally become familiar

with all these characters and books

that he wrote over the decades.

It was the first thing that, in writing,

really gave Bill Finger credit

for the co-creation of Batman,

and it was about time.

That fateful Friday in 1939

when Bob told his editor

that he would be able to come up with a superhero

over the weekend,

he apparently did go home that day

and work on a character which he called "Batman."

Bob's idea for Batman was a character

in a red union suit, basically red tights,

a domino mask which is a little mask

like what Robin wears now,

stiff wings attached to the arms,

and, as far as we know, nothing more,

no other distinguishing elements.

And he had enough sense to know

that this was not good enough,

and he knew who to call.

Bill Finger.

They get together.

They're huddling over this drawing,

and Bill looked at the red suit and said,

"This is not suitable for a creature of the night.

"He's got to be darker," so he said,

"Let's darken the whole costume."

He looked at the little mask and said,

"This is not going to intimidate criminals."

Let's cover most of his face with a cowl

and put pointed ears on it,

so that he actually looks like his namesake.

The stiff wings are not practical

for obvious reasons, so let's ditch the wings

and give him a cape with a scalloped edge

which will fly out behind him

"and look like wings."

You set the tone of this character's essence

from his visuals before you know a thing

about his personality and his mission.

So that was all Bill.

Bill reconstructed Batman

into the Batman that we all know today.

Bob apparently went to the company

on Monday morning with this sketch.

Did not mention that there was anyone else involved,

and said, "This is my idea."

I have been told, although I've never been privy,

of course, to the contract,

that that contract included

specifically a stipulation

that Batman would hereafter be listed

as the sole creation of Bob Kane.

Bob went back to Bill and presumably said,

"Great news, they want to buy Batman,"

so you'll write it and I'll draw it,

and my name will be on it

because I sold it, of course,

"and I'll give you a portion of what I get paid."

Nothing was signed, as far as we know,

but it was something that they mutually agreed on.

So Bill was not credited at all from the beginning,

and within a couple of months,

Batman was on the newsstands.

Batman debuted in '39 and, essentially,

it was from 1939 to 1965 where Bill was anonymous.

It's one thing for Bob Kane in 1939

to take full credit for Batman

when Bill Finger agreed to it,

but where the story changes dramatically

is in the '60s when Bill is coaxed out.

At that point, Bob had a decision to make.

"Am I going to own up to this

or am I going to deny it from my position of power?"

He had a chance to take, obviously, the high road

or the low road,

and he took the way low road.

When Jerry's article about what Bill Finger had done

on Batman came out,

of course it made Bob Kane go ballistic

the minute that he saw it,

so he went to the editor of Batmania

and he wrote half a dozen pages of diatribe.

Obviously, Bob Kane did not want.

Bill Finger's story told

and took tremendous offense at it.

"Here, for the first time,"

straight from the horse's mouth,

is the real inside story about myself and Batman.

It seemed to me that Bill Finger

has given out the impression that he and not myself

created the 'Batman' as well as Robin

and all the other leading villains and characters.

"This statement is fraudulent and entirely untrue!"

There was one man's word against the other.

There was no reality show

documenting the birth of Batman, of course.

It was two guys in an apartment

in the Bronx in 1939 when most people had

much bigger things to worry about

than who's coming up with this guy dressed as a bat?

"The truth is that Bill Finger is taking credit"

for much more than he deserves,

and I refute much of his statements here in print.

The fact is that I conceived the 'Batman' figure

and costume entirely by myself.

I created the title, masthead,

the format and concept,

"as well as the Batman figure and costume."

I don't think that Bob Kane ever wanted

anything out in writing

that would admit that anybody else

had a hand in creating anything for Batman.

His whole myth, his contract with DC,

his name on the stories all owed to the fact

that he was the creator of Batman.

When Bob chose to respond

to Bill's coming out by writing a letter

denying Bill's involvement to that degree,

Bob was, in effect, changing the course

of his life with this letter.

He was saying, "I'm going to have to stick"

to this story forever."

We're all born with a natural creative potential.

Every man has it and every woman.

The idea is to find out what that is.

And it's like a little birdie tells you

and whispers in your ear, it's an intuitive thing.

No one can tell you that but God.

And I knew I had that when I was eight or ten

that I wanted to be a famous cartoonist.

Bob Kane was a kid from the Bronx,

and he was an artist with big dreams.

He was a go-getter and he was working

for the company that would become DC Comics

which at that point was called National Periodical.

Bob and Bill met at a party.

They didn't know each other previous to that

even though they went to the same high school.

And Bill was a shoe salesman.

He had aspirations to become a writer.

I said, "Why don't you try writing"

for the new comic book?"

Bob was already working in comics,

drawing stories, and Bob could immediately sense

that Bill was good with narrative, had good ideas.

It sounds like they were

very different types of people,

but I think what they had in common

was their love of the new medium of comics.

In the early days, really, it was Superman

that brought the comic book publishing industry

out of this mire of reprints of comic strips.

It was very much kind of a fly-by-night industry.

You had a comic publisher

which is maybe a couple guys at a couple desks

in a couple of rooms in Midtown somewhere,

and what they largely did is they farmed out

the actual production of comic book stories

to what were known as "shops."

You had guys just laying down the pencil artwork,

you had inkers and finishers that were then putting

permanent artwork on top of that.

There were people doing paste up,

there were people adding word balloons.

Bob Kane and Bill Finger

were, in effect, a sort of shop.

Bob was the only one

dealing with the publisher directly.

Kane had his name on the Batman stories,

but he didn't tell anybody about Bill Finger,

and, of course, you assumed

that he had done the whole thing,

and I think that's just the way Bob wanted it.

From a corporation point of view,

they contract Bob Kane,

Bob Kane is supposed to deliver pages to them,

and that's all they cared about.

They're going, "I don't care how you build it,"

right, just, "I need it built every 30 days"

because we've got a publishing deadline coming here."

So in order to meet the demands

of the hungry audience and feed the machine

and earn money by cranking out

as many different Batman titles as possible,

they would hire ghost writers back in the day.

Bob Kane would get credit for the story.

He'd hand it in, "Here's my Batman story."

They're like, "Bob, you're a genius,"

and, you know, that's how the industry worked

for a long, long time.

Most ghost artists or ghost writers

were there just to execute the vision

or the work directive of the guy hiring them.

They weren't there to sort of create new concepts.

But because Bill Finger was there at the beginning,

he wasn't just a ghost writer.

He wasn't just the guy that was brought on later on

when Batman was already running and successful

and all the tropes were in place.

Bill Finger basically created all those tropes,

but in the actual work hierarchy

as just a ghost writer.

I had never researched a person to this extent.

I mean, this became such a quest,

and there just seemed to be

such a higher moral obligation to this.

You know, this is 700 pages of information on a subject

that some people told me at the beginning,

"There's nothing more to learn about Bill Finger."

I did feel this calling to do this.

Especially with something as

phenomenally successful as Batman,

how could this not have been so well-known?

The first panel of the first Batman story,

just setting up this mysterious,

foreboding character says,

"His identity remains unknown."

Obviously that's Bill writing about Batman,

but it ended up being a prophesy

because Bill was Batman's secret identity.

When I started the research on this project,

there were only two known photos

of Bill in circulation.

It was either him with a baseball cap in profile

or him golfing, half in shadow and not that close.

From seven sources over nine months,

I ended up finding 11 more photos of Bill.

He was interviewed only a few times,

so for a man of Bill's impact

to have only these few recorded interviews

in existence is just staggering,

so the first time was Jerry Bail's in 1965

and then for the 1970 book History of Comics.

And it turns out that in 1972,

a man in California named Robert Porfirio

interviewed Bill on audio.

It took a while, but eventually

we actually did find this audio recording...

Testing, one... do you want to say something, or...?

Yeah, sure.

How are you?

Which was one of the more emotional moments

I would say, for me, because it was

the first time that I heard Bill's voice.

To write this book,

I spoke to more than 250 people.

Of that number, a handful, maybe a dozen,

knew both Bill and Bob personally.

Two of the creators that were hugely helpful

and impactful in this process were Jerry Robinson,

one of the earliest Batman ghost artists,

and Carmine Infantino.

He was the artist that redefined.

Batman's look in the '60s,

and Carmine went on to become the publisher

of DC Comics for a time in the '70s.

He was genius, literally genius.

I believe that.

I know Bob tried to take credit for everything.

He should have been credited as co-creator of Batman.

He said, "I'd like to get some ownership."

No, he didn't say, he said, "I'd like to get"

a piece of that because I did it."

So, but then he said, "I can't afford a lawyer,

and they know that," quote, "They know that."

They told me in, you know, in no uncertain terms,

that they thought Bill Finger

was deprived of his legacy.

He is the Batman, Bill was.

Everything you would think that's good, that's Bill.

They take away their humanity

when you take away their credit.

Basically both of them said,

"Without Bill, there'd be no Batman."

It's that simple.

And that's because Bill did the following:

Bill Finger was the dominant creative force

and original writer of Batman,

Robin, the Joker, Catwoman, the Riddler,

the Penguin, the Scarecrow,

Commissioner Gordon, Bruce Wayne, and Dick Grayson.

He named Gotham City.

He nicknamed Batman "The Dark Knight."

He was the first person to write a story

with the Batmobile and the Batcave

called those things.

He wrote Batman's origin.

It was just a two-page story, but it was seismic.

This eight-year-old boy sees his parents murdered

right before his eyes and makes a vow

that he will not let this happen to other people.

I mean, the guy built this world.

He kept what he called the "gimmick book."

He would fill that up with story ideas,

and he would just sometimes take a bus

around the city to get inspired.

He would just notate and just be an observer.

He would do extensive research for scripts.

He would attach clippings for the artists

so that they would have reference.

He thought very visually.

He thought cinematically.

He would write these big, epic scenes.

One of the things that he's best known for

was writing stories with oversized props,

so Batman and Robin fighting on top

of a giant typewriter with some criminals,

and this stuff was just wildly fun

and inventive to look at.

He had a hero who looked like a villain.

He had a superhero who was also a detective.

He was smart, he wasn't just using brawn,

he was using brains too.

Bill took all this and put it in a crucible

and mixed it together

and brought this deeper sense to stories

that up to that point were considered somewhat frivolous.

The aspects of the character, man,

that Bill brought to it, like the notion

of a little boy in the city with his parents

who get gunned down, and at a young age,

that's what he's going to take with him

for the rest of his life.

And the dude is just a human being

who's just a guy.

That's it, got no superpowers.

He's got some pretty nifty things

in his belt and stuff, but he's relentless.

He's a creature of passion.

It's a character that kind of keeps you reaching.

It's a character that people build

their moral compass upon, or, "That's my guy."

That's what makes Batman so beautiful.

You don't get there without Bill Finger, man.

Week after week, the Caped Crusader

copes with the tricky traps of vicious villains.

The breakout culturally,

as well as simply in the ratings books,

was the 1966 Batman television series.

See the Dynamic Duo

dangle from new heights of danger.

Careful, Robin, it's quite a drop.

This was not the dark and serious

creature of the night

as created by Bob Kane and Bill Finger.

It caused quite a stir in what was the beginning

of the pop art phase of America's culture.

Be with Batman and Robin twice weekly

in color, of course, on ABC.

Starting with the debut of the Batman TV show in 1966,

Bill and Bob's trajectories diverged

even more starkly than ever before.

You know, Bob was just going up, up, up,

and Bill was really plummeting.

The TV show changed Bob's life dramatically

because that's where he got a big payout for Batman

which made him wealthy.

You stopped drawing the comic book in the '60s,

and what happened, did you sell the rights then?

No, it wasn't that, when I stopped drawing,

I never sold all the rights.

I own a piece of the Batman.

And so you still have...

You still have a copyright on Batman?

Well, everyone wants to know that, don't they?

I'll let you figure it... I'll let you figure it out.

I answered it before, a piece of it.

A piece of it, okay.

It's a pie.

It's a pie that's cut up.

After the Batman TV show, Bob was able to parlay that

into some degree of celebrity

without being directly involved.

He was in full-on peacock mode

displaying himself as Batman's real-life alter ego.

He wanted to be famous, right?

I mean, which was odd because most creative people

in our industry just... they did it

for the creative reasons

because they were just manic artists.

But I got a sense outta Mr. Kane,

that it was like a plan and, "Oh, I got to do artwork"

to get the quasi-celebrity,"

which was sort of reverse engineering

from what most of us do.

We just go, "We do art, and oh, by the way",

people think we're famous, oh, cool."

And then I started painting Batman oils

and I have other non-Batman art,

and I've had shows all over the world with my art.

So he starts doing a series of Batman lithographs,

and he's pushing these lithos as his,

and, again, he's got another ghost artist

who's, you know, actually doing these lithographs.

Bob made his careers

by having other people do the work

and putting his name on it.

That was his... That was his strategy.

It was Bob Kane's pictures

you saw in magazines and newspapers.

It was about Bob Kane's art gallery showings.

Bob became one of the first-ever

comic book celebrities.

The Batman TV show did almost nothing for Bill.

The significance of it was

that Bill was the only writer from comics

who wrote an episode of the TV show.

Actually, the Batman show that he co-wrote

with his friend named Charles Sinclair

was his only published Batman credit.

We did a Batman TV thing,

and "The Clock King's Crazy Crimes,"

thank you very much.

And Bill thought of all kinds of gimmicks

for clocks and time.

When we got confirmation

that we had sold to Batman,

Bill was kind of digging his toe in the sand

and hemming and hawing,

and I knew he had something on his mind.

Finally, I said, "Come on, Bill",

what the hell's on your mind?

There's something eating you.

"What is it and how can I help you?"

Well, it was the billing on the show.

Bill said, "Could I just this once get top billing?"

I said, "Sure, why not?"

Bill Finger, at that point in time,

had a little black-and-white TV set.

I said, "Bill, you've got to see this thing"

"in color," you know.

So I called a friend at ABC,

and we went and sat in a client viewing room...

and saw this Batman thing,

Bill and I, on a big color set.

Bill was thunderstruck, you know?

I don't know if he actually had any tears

running down his cheeks, you know,

but I think he came pretty close.

Bang, he saw his name, you know, top billing

in color on a big TV screen.

I mean, this was like the high point

of his creative life.

Most of the Golden Age writers

began to be phased out

by the middle and latter '60s at DC.

A new era of talent were coming in,

fans who were becoming

the new writers of comic books,

the new artists of comic books,

and people from the original generation

were finding it harder and harder

and harder to adapt.

The company was saying, "Just because they may have"

co-created or written these characters back in the '40s,

"we need young, fresh blood."

Who cares if Bill Finger writes Batman?

There seemed to be a lack of respect

for his body of work.

I mean, that's how some people would interpret it.

This was not just a guy who created a character

that we've used a few times.

This is a guy who created an entire world

that we are milking to the bone.

So I can't even imagine what he felt.

He spent the rest of the '60s writing,

but not Batman, not even comics.

He wrote carpentry articles,

he ended up writing for the Army Pictorial Center.

So he was always struggling for money.

He was under strain,

I think he was skimping on medications.

I don't think he was eating well,

and he was sliding,

and I couldn't do too much about it.

He was just getting by and slogging through

and watching his character get bigger

than ever before and being more detached from it

than ever before.

My very first comic convention

was the 1973 New York City

July 4th Com Convention at the Commodore Hotel,

and the keynote speaker of that convention

was Bob Kane, and I was a Batman fan!

And I remember standing in the back

of this packed ballroom

where Bob Kane was a little speck

in the distance on the stage.

But what do I remember hearing?

"I created Batman, I created Robin,

I created the Joker, I created the... ".

"I, I, I, I, I..." that's what I remember.

And the thing is is that we didn't know at the time,

but Bill Finger was still alive

in the summer of '73, probably on his last legs.

So what really upsets me about Bob Kane

is that right up until the time Bill Finger died,

his friend and partner who co-created Batman,

that gave Bob Kane a living and notoriety

for the rest of his life,

he allowed to die penniless and unknown.

And for that, there is no forgiveness

for Bob Kane.

In the early '70s, Bill did begin to write

for comics again and for DC.

He began to write mystery stories,

and he had two stories due on a Friday,

he turned in only one and went home,

presumably to finish the second one.

This was January 18th, 1974.

He was living alone in Manhattan

in a small apartment

in the same building as Charles.

On this particular day, I had not heard from Bill

for like a couple of days,

and I'm carrying a duplicate key

for his apartment.

I went to the apartment,

and he was behind in his rent.

The landlord had eviction notices on his door.

I used my key and went in.

I walked up to him.

He had a blanket like pulled up to about here.

I pulled it down.

Looked, looked, and looked, you know.

No movement, nothing, you know?

And I reached down, shook his shoulder.

Nothing.

Poor Bill had died alone

with his little television set going on.

I thought, you know, what a...

Kind of a sad little end.

The world has lost a very interesting guy.

So when I asked Charles.

"What happened to Bill after he died?"

Charles said, "Marc, I don't think

we want to talk about that."

And I said, "You're probably right."

I know it's difficult, but I do have to ask."

And then Charles said that he thought

that Bill was buried in a potter's field.

It's a graveyard of unmarked graves.

People that don't have someone

to take care of them.

Homeless people... I mean, it's desperately,

desperately sad.

The medical examiner report says,

"natural causes, no family, no history,"

which of course was referring

to his medical history,

but when you read that now, textually,

it's eerie because this medical examiner

had no idea the immensely significant history

that this man had.

So when I heard that, I just thought,

you know, just on a human level

we've got to do something for this guy.

There are so many fans who clamber

for justice for the creators.

I think in the end it takes more

than this amorphous mass of fans.

There has to be one person who steps up

and leads the charge.

When I started this project,

I was already a published author.

I wanted to tell another good story.

And then when I learned

how much there was to reveal about Bill's life

and how much more we could do on his behalf,

it became not only a book but a crusade.

My goal became getting Bill's name on Batman,

to get this man the credit that will never go away,

that will hang over all of this.

I had a couple of people that said,

"What you are trying to do will never happen."

This is a contractually bound line

that's been in place for 70 years,

so what are you going to do about it?

"What is any one person going to do about it?"

And I said to myself, "I have no idea,

but I'm going to try."

Here it is, Poe Park.

So this is Poe Park in the Bronx.

This is where Bill and Bob would come

and brainstorm ideas for stories.

They would sit on park benches here

and discuss Batman.

I had no idea that I would be doing

this kind of digging.

This is the apartment in which Bill was living

in 1965 when he was interviewed by Jerry Bails.

He's also very righteous, and he wants to, you know,

he wants to do right in the world,

and so he is driven.

Bill Finger was the co-creator of Batman.

And I am pretty sure that he was living here

at the moment that he created Batman,

so I think he was living in one of these three units,

and I'd love to see inside

if you could show it.

The parallel was not lost on me

that Bill made Batman a detective,

and I was a detective in pursuit of Bill's legacy.

That was part of the fun of it.

How did you find this out?

I did a lot of research.

I actually went through the New York City phone book

every year from 1930 to 1974 looking for my guy,

and this is where it started.

It became addictive.

I felt like, if I found this big thing

that wasn't known, there's probably more.

When I started the research, we knew this much:

Bill's wife was named Portia,

they were married sometime in the 1940s.

I believe that their marriage fell apart

in the '50s.

To try to legally contest a credit line,

you need an heir.

That was my goal was to find an heir,

so very early in my Bill Finger research,

I learned that Bill had a son named Fred.

I was super pumped that day because I thought

it's going to take me less than a day

to find Fred Finger,

and it took me less than a day

to find out that Fred was Bill's only child,

Fred was gay, and Fred died in 1992,

which to me implied that he was the end

of the Finger family,

that there was nobody left.

And while I'm writing a book to tell a good story

and tell an important story,

at the same time my goal was to do what I could

to see Bill's name added to Batman,

but I knew that to do that, you need to be an heir

and there wasn't one.

So I was then going to look for anybody

who might have had some connection to this man.

Apparently when you are doing detective work,

you find yourself doing things

that you wouldn't expect yourself to do.

For example, I called every Finger

in the phone directory, which was 500 names

asking if they were related to Bill Finger.

Not a one was.

I staked out the apartment building that Portia,

Bill's first wife, lived in at the end of her life.

I figured there could still be people

in the building who knew her.

Next thing I know, I'm sitting in an apartment

with two lovely women in their 70s

who are in their nightgowns at 6 o'clock at night

telling me stories about Portia.

When I didn't know how to reach people

that knew Fred, I posted fliers

in community centers

targeting the gay and lesbian community

saying, "Does anybody remember Fred Finger?"

It was actually a flier

with the little pull-off things,

you know, "I know Fred Finger"

with my phone number.

Yeah, it's crazy.

Bill Finger was a charming guy,

but he was not, I think, a forceful guy.

He was making his own way,

and it was kind of permanently

on the outside looking in a bit.

At some point, Charles said

that Bill and Portia divorced

and Bill was dating other people,

and in the late '60s, he had a lady friend

named Edith Simmons.

That was what Charles said, "a lady friend."

I discovered that Edith

was more than just Bill's lady friend,

she was his second wife.

Someone that nobody in comics had ever heard of.

He was a very amiable, pleasant,

and easy-going man.

He had a good sense of humor,

he... do you want me to tell you

about the things he was interested in?

She was, along with Charles,

the two biggest finds up until that point...

The two people that I thought

would ensure that this was

the first real version of Bill Finger

that we would get to know.

He was interested in a lot of things.

He loved ballet, for instance, I loved it.

We went together.

He was very knowledgeable about theater,

about movies.

He was proud of being a very,

very good comic book writer.

There are several heroes,

in my opinion, in this story.

When Lyn, his second wife,

learned that they were making

a big budget Batman movie,

which would become Tim Burton's 1989 Batman movie,

she tried to get Bill credit in that movie.

This time it is to the big screen.

Warner Brothers is spending millions

to bring millionaire Bruce Wayne

and his alter ego to life.

Is this a gamble for the studio?

Will Batman pay off?

Will there be bat hysteria?

When the first Batman movie was coming out,

my mother got very concerned

that Bill was getting no credit for it.

Estimates are that the final price tag

for the Warner Brothers movie

will be in the 30 to 50 million dollar range.

I thought he should get some credit

on the screen,

and I tried to get in touch with the managers

or whoever it was to tell them

that Bill should get credit.

We weren't interested in suing,

because we weren't seeking money,

we were just seeking credit for Bill.

I really dealt with the legal department

a couple of times.

They weren't disagreeing

with Bill's co-creating Batman,

there was no disagreement there.

They just didn't want to get involved

in something they didn't have to do

that might open up some liability issues for them.

They, I would say, politely declined.

That long-awaited 41 million dollar film,

Batman, got an old-fashioned kickoff last night

when it premiered in Los Angeles.

Thousands of fans, many of whom waited all day

outside the theater in Westwood,

welcomed the scores of stars

who turned out for the opening.

So of course the Batman movie was a juggernaut.

Batman owned 1989.

Are all those people waiting now?

You're kidding!

It's Batmania this summer.

Everyone wants to see this movie.

That movie was stratospheric.

I've been reading comic books

since I was six years old.

They couldn't have done this movie any better.

Day by day, there are more and more signals

that a phenomenon is emerging.

There is even a 1-800-BATMAN number

in here to get your merchandise to you faster.

1989 is when Batman moved

from just another superhero

to a fictional character that everybody knows.

At our first Batman premiere in 1989,

Bob showed up in like this black velour bat cape.

Bob was fun, and Bob was a showman.

He loved the attention, he reveled in the attention.

My autobiography came out, Batman & Me.

At the height of the movie of Batman One,

it sold 250,000 copies.

That's the cover of me.

That's the first Batman I drew in 1939.

Doing the book was interesting.

I helped design the book

and rewrote a lot of the book

based on a lot of interviewing I did with him.

I interviewed him for hours.

For me, the most significant passage is on page 44,

when Bob writes, "Now that my longtime friend"

and collaborator is gone,

I must admit that Bill never received

the fame and recognition he deserved.

"He was an unsung hero."

"I often tell my wife,"

if I could go back 15 years before he died,

I would like to say, quote,

'I'll put your name on it now.

"You deserve it.'"

I remember when I read that,

and several other people told me

they had similar reactions.

They were just dumbstruck, I mean,

it was just like... It's one of those things

that'll just stop you when you're reading it

if you know anything about the situation

because you are looking at a book written...

Allegedly written... By the person

who is totally responsible,

or almost totally responsible,

for the fact that poor Bill Finger

never got the credit he deserved for Batman.

He did have regrets at the end

about Bill not getting credit.

Never sufficient regret to fix it.

I don't think he would've ever put Bill's name

on the strip at that time.

It opens a legal can of worms

when he told me that,

which he wouldn't have wanted to get into,

because then it wouldn't...

It would be not only credit but money.

The other especially notable thing

about Bob's book is this series of sketches,

which are dated January 17th, 1934.

- Yeah. - He has these drawings

that he says were stashed away as a kid

and wasn't sure whether to make it

into a bird or a bat,

and he said that when he was creating

this new superhero, he remembered these drawings

he had made in 1934 in this trunk,

and he went to get them

and this gave him the inspiration

for making a character into a bat.

Wow.

I don't think that's ever been corroborated

that that's an actual 1934 document.

I mean, somebody should do

a Shroud of Turin investigation

on those 1934 sketches.

I mean, right away, the date alone,

it's like you're telling me

that at the dawn of the comic book itself,

which was created in 1933,

before there were superheroes, obviously,

you're telling me that you created

a Batman-like character, Bob Kane.

Looking at the drawing from 1934,

he's wearing a cowl,

and his original Batman drawing didn't have a cowl.

It also... there's a bat emblem on it.

The bat emblem was suggested by Finger.

These are not haphazard sketches.

These are something put together

by someone retrospectively trying to talk about

how they came up with this character.

In this case, for a man to say,

"Bill created a costume,"

but here's my drawing of the same costume

"five years before."

There's just no way to look at that

and not see... see the scam going on,

see a man who's desperately trying

to hold onto something that he knows

is not rightfully his.

At some point, if you tell the story

enough to yourself, then it just...

Your perception is now your reality.

I do think that over time,

Bob started to feel differently

than he felt when he was younger,

but he probably felt trapped by the myth

of Bob Kane, which he created,

and I think he probably thought,

"I'm going to look much worse if I come clean now..."

even if maybe his conscience was saying

it would be the right... Better thing to do,

"than if I just... Let's see how long"

I can ride this out.

Maybe I can get to the grave

"with no one really challenging me on this."

One day, when I'm 120 or so,

I'll look down from the bat cave in the sky

at my little creation that goes on and on and on,

and I'll just say, "Hey, Warner Brothers"

and Leonardo, just send me

the residuals in the sky.

I'll give you my address,

"it's up there where the angels are."

Bob died in 1998.

He got to live through seeing Batman

become a worldwide phenomenon,

and had a proper obituary in newspapers.

He was mentioned on nightly news.

He went on to have a star

on the Hollywood Walk of Fame many years later.

Bill died in 1974 with no obituary,

no funeral, no gravestone...

virtually unrecognized.

And Bob was remembered as the creator of Batman.

His gravestone says, "God bestowed"

a dream upon Bob Kane.

Blessed with divine inspiration

and a rich imagination,

Bob created a legacy known as BATMAN.

Bob Kane, Bruce Wayne, Batman,

they are one and the same.

Bob infused his dual identity character

with his own attributes: Goodness, kindness,

"compassion, sensitivity, generosity..."

I didn't know him, and I'm very careful

to emphasize that.

I don't know what he was like as a son

or a husband or a father,

and I want to think the best.

And, you know, he had a right to be proud

of his role in Batman, but professionally,

he was not Bruce Wayne.

He was not what it says on his gravestone.

Every child grows up with parents

whose jobs become part of their...

The texture of their lives,

and unfortunately for my kids,

that was Bill Finger, so my kids knew more

about Bill Finger at a very young age

than some hardcore Batman fans have known

at the peak of their knowledge.

What about your daddy?

You're my daddy!

- What's my name? - Marc Tyler.

And what do I do all day?

- Work! - What's my job?

Bill Finger.

What do I do?

- Bill Finger. - But what does that mean?

Bill Finger.

- Who's Bill Finger? - Bill Finger.

Is that my friend?

Yes!

My daughter, for all intents, grew up

with Bill Finger as a part of the extended family.

My wife was very patient.

We were young and struggling,

and I was putting in a lot of time for this project

because I did get consumed by this,

and not to the point that I was not showing up

for family events or forgetting

to put my shoes on,

but I was really very focused on this.

Excuse me, Batman!

Can I ask you a couple questions?

- Where's Batman from? - Gotham City.

And what's his real name?

Bruce Wayne.

- And who created him? - Bob Kane.

Just Bob Kane?

When I see people wearing Batman shirts

or Batman clothes, which I do all the time,

yeah, I do smile to myself and think,

"Should I stop that guy and ask him

if he knows who Bill Finger is?"

- Who's Dick Grayson? - Dick Grayson...

He's the first Robin, also Nightwing.

Who's Bill Finger?

Bill Finger?

Him I don't know.

The story is so good,

anyone wearing a Batman shirt

would want to know it.

I have a few Batman T-shirts left

that I would like to give out.

- Does anybody want one? - Sure!

All right.

They probably looked at those shirts

and said, "Wait, this isn't Batman."

This is Bill Finger... Who's that?"

It just got me thinking, well,

the only way this would be possible

is if by some miracle this book can be a part

of the larger groundswell of support

that might be able to overturn the idea

that you need to be an heir to fight for credit.

Maybe there could be enough public support

to say there's enough proof

that this person was involved

that we don't need an heir to make this right,

to make this whole again.

I mean, maybe that can happen,

I mean, laws get overturned, right?

When I started this research,

we knew just about zip about Bill's family

with the exception of the fact

that he had a son named Fred.

So I learned that Fred was a chef,

and I know that he had spent some time

on the west coast, and it also turned out

that Fred had developed AIDS

and died in 1992.

He was the last surviving heir of Bill Finger.

So my next approach was to try to find people

on his first wife's side.

So her name was Portia, and I decided to try

to look through the New York Times obituaries.

Prior to 1981 if you get a hit,

you don't bring up the actual obit,

you bring up the whole page where that obit appears.

So I did this for hours, and I eventually found

the obituary for Portia's mother,

which means Bill's mother-in-law,

and in that obituary there were three names.

Fred, Bill's son, which I already knew, of course,

and two of Fred's cousins, Judy and Eric Flam.

So I searched them, and it was at probably

about 11 o'clock at night on the east coast.

Judy was in Massachusetts, too late to call her,

as excited as I was, but Eric was in Arizona,

so I called him right then.

And when I called Eric, I said, "I'm a writer",

and I'm working on a project

"about a writer named Bill Finger."

And he said, "What did you say?"

And I said, "Bill Finger,"

and he put the phone to the side,

and he called to his wife and said,

"This guy's calling about Bill Finger!"

Uncle Bill, no one's ever called

"about Uncle Bill before!"

And then he came back on the phone and said,

"Well, I don't know much."

My sister Judy would know more,

you can call her tomorrow,

but I think what you really should do

"is talk to Bill's granddaughter."

And I said, "But Bill doesn't have a granddaughter!"

He said, "No, but he does,"

and I said, "Well, he had only one child",

Fred, who was gay, and that was it,"

as if I would know better than the family.

And Eric said, "That is true",

he did have a son Fred who was gay,

"but Fred had a daughter."

When I first heard those words,

"You should look for Bill's granddaughter,"

I feel like I saw a movie marquee,

and it said, "The Heir to Batman."

And it made me feel like this might be

a bigger story than anybody realized.

The next day, I spoke with Judy.

Judy was the one who told me

that her name was Athena.

The best she could do was give me

her last known state, Florida,

so I was back to square one,

looking for an heir that we did not know existed.

I did not find an Athena Finger

in the Florida directory,

so I wasn't even sure that that was accurate,

so I ended up looking online

for any mention of her,

and I found record of her wedding.

She married a man named Zaido Cruz.

So I found mention of a Zaido Cruz

on the website of a drummer

whose name was Lance, if I'm not mistaken.

And I emailed Lance and said,

"Is this the Zaido Cruz

who's married to Athena Finger?"

And he said... he wrote back,

and I never spoke with him,

but this is the voice that I heard, he's like,

"Yeah, man, hey, dude, I know Zaido!

Yeah, he's in my band!"

or "I've played with him, we've jammed",

and you should totally look him up,

and you should find them and, you know,

"Athena should be easy to find!"

And I said, "How's that?"

And he said, "Well, just look her up"

on her Myspace page."

In 2007, I was not thinking Myspace

or Facebook or social media at all.

So that was a revelation, so thanks, Lance!

So I looked Athena up on Myspace,

and when I found the only Athena Finger there,

the first thing I saw was a photo of a dog,

and the caption was, "My Dog, Bruce Wayne."

That was a fist pump moment.

I don't think I literally stood up

and did a fist pump,

that's maybe not my character,

but in my mind I was doing somersaults

and throwing the football down

and doing a dance in the end zone.

That was my moment.

So I had that moment before,

I had that moment with Charles,

I had that moment with Lyn,

but those things filled in gaps.

They didn't completely change the story.

We are en route to see Athena Finger,

the only heir to Bill Finger.

This would be a big shake-up.

If the credit line to Batman was changed

after 72 years, that would be a big deal,

and that would actually be a first.

I can't think of another comics character

whose credit line has been changed.

- Hello... hey! - Hey!

- How are you? - How are you?

- Good, how are you? - Good!

- And here's Bruce Wayne! - That's Bruce Wayne!

How you doing?

I found out about Bill Finger

and his association with Batman

at an early age,

and I knew that my father was excited and thrilled

about what his father had created

with the Batman storyline,

and how he made it what we love today.

Marc had found me,

and he explained what he had been doing

and shared a bunch of information

that he had found that I didn't know

about Bill's family and things like that.

She said to me, you know,

"I never knew my grandfather."

I was born two years after he died,

so you could probably tell me more about him

than I can tell you, but I'm very interested

"in hearing what you have to say."

Bill used to keep copious notes.

He had gimmick books where he would jot down

an idea that he would use in the future,

- and a lot of it was... - It was kind of exciting,

but it also was upsetting.

It brought up a lot of this old stuff

that had been going on before... Around my father's death

and around my grandfather's death,

and just how everything was not really

in its proper place.

I told you that I found an interview with your dad.

- Yes. - And I have it.

Oh, you have it!

He had to write a lot of stories

in order to make any kind of money.

He would get together

with a couple of the other writers...

And I didn't know yet

that there was so much trauma in the family.

It wasn't just a story of a girl

who never knew her grandfather.

It was also a story of a girl

who had issues with her father.

I haven't seen my dad in, like, forever.

My parents split when I was three and a half,

so I didn't grow up with my dad.

I only got to see him

maybe a couple times a year.

It was really like, if we went to New York,

we would go to the restaurant

that he was working at and have dinner,

or he might come up to Massachusetts

and spend a couple days.

It wasn't like I had extended amounts

of time with him,

which kind of sucked, because I only had him

for such a short amount of time.

I was married six years.

I just understood that he was bisexual

from the day that I met him,

and it wasn't a situation

that needed to be spoken of.

It was something that we both understood

and accepted.

I learned that Fred was HIV positive

the summer after I was in the fourth grade,

so that's, what, 10?

I spent a week with him during the summer,

and he and I were at the beach in Long Island,

and he's like, "I got to talk to you."

So he was explaining,

"This is what's going on,

and we don't know how long I have."

And then when he came to visit us

right before he passed away,

he was teeny-tiny, just skin and bones.

I mean, he was down to nothing.

When he came to visit

near the real end of his life,

we asked him not to leave.

How did he respond, what did he say?

He said, "I have to go back."

I have to die in New York."

That year was rough.

Being 15 at the time, not quite an adult,

but had to deal with real adult issues,

and I was very angry about a lot of things.

And then, when he passed away two months later,

I wasn't included, I wasn't informed,

I wasn't...

I just was excluded from everything.

I was really upset about it, very angry about it

because I was his only child

and I should have been there and I wasn't.

AIDS was still very new

and stigmatized

and scary.

There was a lot of comfort

being with people who are experiencing the same thing

and he created a family of friends

that were there when it got tough.

So New York was where he really had to be,

he felt.

I still don't have closure.

I was excluded from everything.

I really was.

Sorry.

I wasn't even there to spread his ashes.

I don't even know where he is.

When Marc Nobleman called me,

I said to him, "I'm not sure that this is beneficial"

to our family welfare,

"for this to be brought up again."

We tried our hardest to do something about it in the past.

I mean, I love Fred and I wanted credit for Bill,

but we had spent years trying to get the credit for him.

Fred really just wanted his father to have recognition.

It was very important for Fred to validate

the existence of his father and his artistic talents

and he gave it his best.

I never went to DC, Fred went to DC alone,

but I understand the way that it was dealt with.

They treated you like you were family

but gave you nothing in return for it.

Anything to make you feel comfortable

but they were keeping everything for themselves.

After about the third attorney,

Fred just said, "We just need to stop this, Bonnie, and go on."

So Fred never got to see his father get, on the screen,

"Co-creator William Finger."

The tradition in our family, unfortunately,

is being excluded from everything.

There is this sense of not being acknowledged,

of what I'm part of and who my family was.

I remember in the third grade

we had to do this book on our lives,

so I included the information about my grandfather

and his involvement with Batman and stuff

and people wouldn't believe me

or they questioned me.

So for a long time I kept quiet about it,

especially after my father passed away.

I always kind of referred to it as, like, the dark cloud

that hung over my head

because it was something that I knew

that needed to be corrected,

just didn't know which avenue to take.

So it was always, like, looming.

I wasted no time in telling Athena

that I would be disappointed in myself

if I didn't tell you that this is your birthright

and I thought for a year that nobody could ever do

anything about this credit line,

and I'm going to write this book,

but if we want a shot at changing that credit line,

"it has to be you."

I had been told for a long time

that it was kind of a dead issue

and I shouldn't really pursue it

and I should just let it be,

and it would take tons of money

and, like, all these other excuses

of why I shouldn't pursue adding Bill's credit.

I encouraged Athena to contact DC

and at first she was not keen on that.

She was a young mom with a career and a life

and she said, "Of course I've thought about this",

but this is too daunting.

"I mean, where do you even start?"

It took some convincing of Marc to,

"Athena, go, talk to them.

Call this person."

I'm like, "Eh, I don't know."

Like, I was really hesitant.

I didn't know what to expect.

But as soon as I spoke to them, they invited me up to come

and take a tour of the office

when it was still in New York City,

which was very cool.

So then after that, we went to the movie premiere

for "The Dark Knight"

and did the whole red carpet and then the after-party.

It was just like, "Woo!"

It was awesome.

It was a really amazing scene seeing all these people

and it was like Hollywood.

Like, it was so cool to be there.

Like, "Oh my gosh, I'm a part of this."

And then they just kept inviting me to things.

You know, just really accepting and, like,

"Please, join in."

PR people got in touch with me

and informed me that they were going to pay for the room

and fly me and my friend out here.

I get to play movie star for a little while.

The whole thing was very fast.

Finding the heir and then DC

being quite cooperative about the whole process.

I was very surprised by how that all happened.

They were very generous

and they did send me a bonus sum of money

for the movie.

It said, you know, "This is," you know,

"for his contributions."

You know, "We're so glad that you're part of the family now."

So I was like, "Oh, this is nice."

The term "Thank you payment,"

it's a case where a company writes a writer

or an artist a check

and says, "We're giving you this"

because you contributed something or other

"to this character."

I guess that's the kind of thing that the companies

have wanted to do in the last few decades

as the things got to be really big business.

There's so much money involved

and nobody wants a lot of lawsuits.

So it just makes a lot of sense

giving a few thousand dollars,

$10,000 or $20,000 to somebody.

You know, somewhere between

creator credit and hush money.

The Bill Finger story has a number of imperatives.

There's the cultural side of this,

there is the moral side of this,

there is the financial side of this.

How much is Batman worth now?

A gob!

What are you talking about?

It's movies, it's toys, it's pajamas,

it's cartoons, it's comi...

I mean, it's a vernacular.

You say "Batman" to a grandma...

This is the greatest brand...

"Batman," grandma knows through attrition.

When you open a comic book, there it says,

"Created by Bob Kane."

When you see the movies, it says, "Created by Bob Kane."

Correcting that is something

that terrified everybody, I think, for decades

because correcting that isn't just a simple matter

of putting Bill Finger's name onto Batman.

It also opens up the floodgates

to a massive conglomerate

for potential revenue tapping.

DC Comics is one spoke in the massive operation

that is Warner Brothers,

which is underneath Time Warner.

So, I mean, it's a huge media company, of course,

and Batman is one of the biggest money makers

in fiction, period.

So DC was under the umbrella of Warner Brothers

but as soon as we got to "The Dark Knight Rises,"

Warner Brothers was really overseeing

all of the corporate side.

Which brings me into in 2012

when "The Dark Knight Rises" came out

and I got an email saying, you know,

"We would like to have you sign this document"

so that we can cut you a check,

"so sign it and please return."

But the gist of it was they wanted me

to terminate my rights to any kind of claim.

They wanted me to close the door

on Bill getting any kind of credit.

They were trying to make me quiet.

Yeah, right?

- So is this for you? - Yes, please.

Alex or Alex...

- Alex. - Okay.

I had this blind faith all along

that I would see the book through to publication.

Although, believe me, there were plenty of roadblocks

and obstacles.

So getting the book out was a huge accomplishment;

Just to see any book through is something I'm proud of.

The book came out in 2012

and with it came a chance to talk about Bill

in an arena that was even bigger than a book.

Secret identities are for superheroes,

not the guys behind them.

I had the chance to do a TED Talk.

Bill Finger's life ended tragically,

but his story isn't over yet.

I was interviewed on NPR.

Now if you've seen "The Dark Knight Rises,"

the name not there is that of Bill Finger.

I had the chance to go on Kevin Smith's podcast.

Does he have heirs, is there a family?

Yeah, well, that was the biggest, uh,

discovery of my research.

Legally I can't do anything to change this,

but she can.

She is Batgirl for heaven's sakes.

When you have somebody who's speaking that loudly,

advocating that loudly on behalf of a cause,

something is going to get done.

It incited this bubbling movement, you know,

where suddenly you started hearing

more and more about Bill Finger.

He had no Batman of his own,

but I think you are Bill Finger's Batman,

for heaven's sakes.

You're the one that's going to find him justice.

I kept talking about raising an army

and groundswell of support,

but I never actually stopped to think about,

"Well, those are people too."

So that did start to really become my driving force

was I can't let all these people down.

So I was doing some groundwork on one level,

but we needed something else to happen

on another level.

It had been a year

since Marc Nobleman's book had been out.

So more people were starting to contact me,

"Are you really Bill's granddaughter?"

And this is her first convention ever.

I brought Athena into the conventions.

Whether we're talking about a Wizard World convention,

or San Diego, or the New York Comic Con,

I brought her into a number that year,

to meet the fans and to get her out

from those curtains that she was staying behind,

to meet other people.

I had never been to a formal convention before,

any of that stuff.

So I did my first panel, I was so nervous.

I'm like, "I don't even know what we're talking about."

The fans would ask her questions and she would say,

"I'm learning about these things from you."

She was learning things about her grandfather

and the legacy and exactly what Bill did

from all of us because she'd grown up

with it being this thing to be uncomfortable about.

Was it not just this wonderful thing to tell everybody,

"Hey, my granddad was one of the co-creators

"of Batman," when you were growing up?

Well, you would think it would be a great thing,

but, um, growing up, no, it wasn't.

I shied away from talking about it.

As I got older...

She's not eager to talk to the crowd herself,

she's eager to get the information out,

so she's doing it anyway.

And I think that's a bit heroic.

Part of Athena's grieving process

is going to Comic Con and talking

about her grandfather and her father.

It's wonderful to see.

And he would be right there with her

because it was something Fred wanted for his father.

- Okay. - There we go.

There was so much support from people.

They really, really wanted to see Bill's name

attached to Batman, as it should be.

Comic book fans, their fights are on the page.

They don't bring it into the real world or anything.

But the fights that they do get involved in,

it's not fisticuffs,

it's battles for what is right.

And how could they not?

Because the characters they read about

all the time do the same thing.

Those are your role models on the page.

So while Bill didn't train people

to fight for him after he was dead,

you have a bunch of people who read

and were influenced by the work of Bill Finger,

like this is what's right, this is what's just.

So that's really where I got a lot of pressure from,

was from the fans.

"Why isn't this happening?"

Why isn't his name attached?

What's happening?

Why... what, what, what?

Tell me, tell me, tell me.

How, how, how?

"Do, do, do."

And so I knew that

something was going to come out of it.

In 2014, WonderCon was held in Anaheim, California,

and there was this Batman panel.

And an audience member gets up to the microphone

and asks this question about,

"Will Bill Finger get credit?"

And there's just silence up there.

One member of the panel says, "Crickets."

And a person working for DC,

Larry Ganem,

gets up and he says that,

"We're all good with Finger and his family."

And that was when, "Okay, we've got to reply to this."

Athena and I put the statement together that,

"No, things are not all good with the Finger family."

Timing is everything.

75th anniversary of Batman's coming up,

it was the hundred year anniversary

of my grandfather's birth,

it was the 25th anniversary of the '89 movie.

Like all this stuff was coming together in 2014.

I called Athena and we had a huge cry

over Fred being gone.

And then we discussed it.

Maybe it's time that Bill Finger

got the recognition he deserved.

And that's when it became a fight.

I felt that the timing was right.

I knew it was either now or never.

And I think I called my sister first.

We have different fathers, she's older than I am.

She felt like it was really a burden in her life

to have inherited this controversy, basically.

Knowing that I was the only one that could do it

was a huge burden.

So it really... I wanted to get it finished

knowing that I only had one chance.

Being an attorney, I... I was able

to assess what resources we had and didn't have.

So she contacted me because she was seeking

a copyright attorney to help her

with the situation.

The copyright law says

that when two people create parts of something

that are intended to be merged

into an inseparable work,

then it's a joint work

and each of them is a co-owner.

So coming into this, one of the most commonly cited facts

of Batman lore is that Bob Kane

negotiated a contract in which he would be

the sole creator in perpetuity of Batman,

he would be the only name listed as creator.

The only thing I've always gotten from the people

that I have talked to at DC is,

"We know what your grandfather did,"

we wish we could put his name on it,

"but we can't because of the contracts that we have."

This infamous Bob Kane contract

has never been publicly disclosed,

as expected.

I mean, these are big characters, big companies,

they have no obligation so share

all of their contents of their vault.

If any company had an agreement

that clearly spelled out their rights

and that shut down a copyright claim,

it seems to me that they would produce that.

I don't know why you wouldn't.

It might be hearsay, it might be a myth

that DC Comics is perpetuating

because it helps them.

Or it might be real

and the original source was Bob.

That is another interesting thing

about the copyright law that was in play here.

Somebody is simply claiming

that they are the sole author when they're not,

that's not really... That doesn't really do it.

So then you look at what did Bill Finger contribute?

Did that make him a joint author

or joint owner of the work?

Marc Tyler Nobleman sort of taking this case on,

delving into the research,

and then, of course, Bob Kane,

you know, eventually kind of helped

by talking about Bill's contribution himself.

Um, that was very important.

If poor Athena, like, had to start

with that threshold issue,

that just would have been really, really difficult.

I mean, this is a huge entertainment company

with an entire department of, you know, attorneys.

And then there's, you know, Athena Finger.

Sadly, for people who are creating stories

about superheroes who are selfless

and saving people's lives,

there's not a whole lot

of generosity going on here.

You've got creators fighting a company over a character.

And, you know, it's a classic David and Goliath story.

And in these cases, usually the underdog doesn't win.

As teenagers in Cleveland in 1933,

these two boys signed a piece of paper

that, in effect, sold their rights,

and they sold them for $130.

Well, they were just kids

and they were so anxious to get published,

so anxious for recognition,

that they signed away their copyright.

Superman became what Superman is

because of DC building Superman

to the industry that it is.

But still, Siegel and Shuster

deserved a lot more than they got.

You know, they made a couple of efforts

to get greater credit.

In their 1947 suit,

Siegel and Shuster did not get ownership of Superman.

They did get $94,000 more,

but National Periodical

then owned Superman and Superboy

and fired Siegel and Shuster.

The creators of Superman

first sued over credit in 1947.

They were still working for the company at the time.

So they lost the lawsuit, they lost their jobs,

and the company that became DC Comics

took their name off Superman.

In 1963, Siegel and Shuster

started another suit,

this one to win back the copyright

when it came up for renewal in 1966.

The court finding,

"Superman belongs to National Periodical."

Long story short is Superman has been

the subject of litigation almost from the beginning,

and it's been going on for decades at this point.

And most of the major players are gone,

so it's passed on to the second generation.

When you're dealing with something so big,

the stakes are big on either side

of a challenge, of a contest.

And, you know, the Superman situation

would not have instilled a lot of confidence

that you can win.

To push this type of a claim further,

you have to have the means

and, frankly, the money to do it.

And no single person, really,

even if you had multi-millions in the bank,

would want to go through that risk.

We would have been possibly investing

five to ten years of our life

entering into a litigation

against a multi-national corporation.

Frankly, it was my strategy to not go down that road,

but to, of course, make it appear that we would.

We're going back so far in time.

If we're going to assume that all of these things

that people said in the press were true

about Bill Finger and about his contribution

and the way it went down,

then they each own half of Batman as a whole.

There could be an argument from the corporation's side

that it's not a joint work because he was employee.

I've never heard of any document

that said that he was.

I never heard of a document that said

he was working under a work for hire.

So, here's step one and step two

and step three and step four

and all this leads to, hypothetically,

yeah, you take it back.

That's the leverage of the copyright law,

to actually allow people to take it back

or to put that large corporation

in the position of having to renegotiate

their royalties or whatever it is.

I do believe that there was risk on both sides

and we had highlighted enough of that risk

to get them to talk to us,

and that was the goal.

I didn't imagine that I would

actually be at the final meeting,

but it took place in July,

it was closed door negotiations,

and it was a big deal on so many different levels.

Somebody has a goal and somebody else has a goal

and how do you negotiate

and maybe not make everybody happy,

but make everyone not horribly miserable.

I don't know if they could tell,

but I was very nervous.

We really wanted to get credit,

but we didn't know which way this was going to go,

we really didn't.

There came a point where I wasn't leading the charge

anymore because I'm not family,

and there's only so far I can go without being family.

Hey, Raf-bear.

- Good to see you, boy. - Hello.

- How's my favorite fuzzball? - Good.

Yeah?

So in the summer of 2015,

everything was building.

I could feel it.

And in September,

it felt like we were getting to that tipping point.

It was September 18th, it was a Friday.

I travel a lot,

but I happened to be home that day,

In fact, I was home alone.

And by chance I had this set of things

I had to do for the day, and, very atypically,

I finished it pretty much before noon.

And the tweets and the emails

and the blog posts and the Facebook posts

started to pour in.

And I had a couple hours to myself

where I was just catatonic almost.

The first person in my family to come home

was my daughter.

Did you see it?

Yeah!

What did it say?

"DC to give Bill Finger official credit

on 'Batman'" versus, I think, "'Superman' and 'Gotham'"?

Mm-hm.

They're giving him the credit?

They're giving him credit now.

What?

What?

How did you do that?

How did you do that?

"You did it, Marc, you got justice for Bill Finger"

and righted a lifetime wrong!

"You are Batman for Bill!"

That's Kevin Smith.

There's quite a big difference between me and Batman,

but I'll accept that as a nice compliment.

"Bill Finger getting his justice."

That's from Kevin Conroy,

who was the voice of Batman

since the beginning of Batman: The Animated Series.

"On my honeymoon in Mexico from Ireland."

Just saw the news.

"Thrilled for you, Bill, and the Finger family."

But I'm pretty sure one person who wasn't thrilled

was his new bride,

whose new husband is tweeting about Batman

on his honeymoon.

But thank you very much, Burke.

"DC Entertainment and the family of Bill Finger"

are pleased to announce

that they have reached an agreement

that recognizes Mr. Finger's significant contributions

to the Batman family of characters.

We are pleased to confirm today

that Bill Finger will be receiving credit

in the Warner Brothers television series 'Gotham'

and in the forthcoming motion picture,

"'Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.'"

Our goal was to get Bill's name attached.

That's what we did.

We changed history.

But in 25 years of writing Batman comics,

1,500 stories in all,

including the first one,

Bill's name appeared in a Batman comic

as the co-creator, or the original writer,

exactly zero times.

Because Bob Kane said...

I have often asked myself,

"Why has he been doing this for all these years?"

And I do believe he's just passionate about it.

He does believe in the causes that he writes about.

You're probably wondering if I found any photos

of Bill Finger in the backyard

mowing the lawn with his shirt off.

And the answer is yes, yes, I did.

You're welcome, ladies.

The driving force though, still,

is to right a wrong

and to try to stay on that good side.

So you can't see Bill too well from where you are,

but he's there in the shadows.

Marc always strives for equality

and it's really his whole being,

I mean, that's him.

He's very brave, he's a very brave person.

He really... if he thinks that something is not fair,

he will go for it.

So I think that this is not the end, to be honest.

There's always more to the story.

I mean, what I always say is that no story

from history ends in a period.

They all end in a dot, dot, dot.

We're just waiting for someone

to find the next part.

Do you want to do lashes as well?

- Sure. - Yeah?

Again, I'm going to be on film and stuff,

- so I want to... - Yeah, we can add

- the lashes if you like. - Okay.

So what are you guys filming for?

It's a documentary about my grandfather.

He was the original writer

and co-creator of Batman.

- No kidding. - Mm-hm.

That is awesome.

I don't have black socks.

Almost there.

All right, Alethia, tell me,

is it okay with the leather?

This is my tenth Batman premiere,

but it's very special because this is the first time

that Bill Finger is getting onscreen credit

in a major motion picture

for his co-creation of Batman.

And that's very, very exciting to me.

It's amazing that so many years later,

we are now en route with his granddaughters

and great-grandson going to a premiere

in which his name finally is going to be up on the screen.

I'm very excited.

It was a curse in our lives.

Bill was unknown, unrespected.

My dad was in the same position.

I was trying to cope with my father's death.

I'm hoping that I've broken that

by getting the closure for Bill,

for myself, and for my son,

so that we can move forward

and not have this dark cloud

following us around.

It's been ten years that I've been telling this story,

and to hear that Bill died and was buried

in a pauper's grave, in a potter's field,

was devastating,

and that was the only story that anybody knew.

Until I found two people who both knew Fred,

Bill's son,

and who both told me a different story.

So what these two people said

was that Fred did come forward after Bill died

and just... he was not there the day that he died,

which is why he doesn't appear

in the medical examiner report.

Fred had his father cremated,

and he was living in Oregon at the time.

And he took the ashes to the shoreline

near where he lived.

Spread them on the sand

in the shape of a bat.

And let the water come in and wash it out to sea.

Have fun.

Uh, one "Batman v Superman" please?