Bob Kane: The Co-Creator of Batman

Written by: Ambroise Desrosiers

The Person Behind Batman

Who is Bob Kane?

Robert Kahn, also known as Bob Kane, who was born 24th of October 1915 and died November 3rd 1998, worked for National Periodical Publications as an artist. Alongside Bill Finger and others he co-created Batman and quite a few other DC Comic characters from the early days. He was introduced to Jack Kirby Hall of Fame in 1993 and in 1996 he was introduced into Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame for his amazing work with comic books.

The Early Life of Bob Kane

Bob Kane was born in New York City, to Augusta and Herman Kahn. His father was an engraver. He went to High School with Will Eisner, who created the series The Spirit. After graduating from DeWitt Clinton High School, he changed his name to Robert Kane. He ended up studying art at Cooper Union, before he became a trainee animator at Max Fleischer Studio in 1934.

Bob Kane and the Comics

It was in 1936 that he entered the world of Comic creation. During this time he was creating freelance original material for Jerry Iger’s comic book Wow, What a Magazine! where he worked on Hiram Hick. Just a year later, he started working at Iger’s studio, Eisner & Iger, which was one of the first places that published comics on demand for the publishers. Some of the other material he created Peter Pupp, which featured a talking animal and was published in Wags and reprinted in Jumbo Comics. He also produced other work through Eisner & Iger for the two companies that would later merge to become DC Comics. Ginger Snap in More Fun Comics, Oscar the Gumshoe in Detective Comics and Professor Doolittle in Adventure Comics.

Bob Kane and the Creation of Batman

It was in the early 1939 that DC began seeing success with comics about Superman in Action Comics. Because of the success, they began to scramble for new heroes and characters that could see the same success as Superman. This made Kane create the Bat-man. The character was influenced by Douglas Fairbanks’ portrayal of Zorro, Leonardo da Vinci’s diagram of the ornihopter, a machine that can fly with bat-like wings and the film The Bat Whispers that came out in 1930. Bill Finger joined the same studio in 1938, and later on gave extra ideas for the character such as a scalloped cape instead of wings, a cowl, giving him gloves, leaving the eyeholes of the mask blank, and removing the red from the original costume, leaving it black-grey. Finger also came up with the name Bruce Wayne, and wrote the first story of Batman, while Kane created the art to it. Originally, Bob Kane was the only person who got credit for the creation of Batman until 2015 where Bill Finger was mentioned as a co-creator. Thanks to their work, Batman could debut in Detective Comics #27 which was in May 1939, and the character became a hit.

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