DC Comics General

So Kane was more of a corporate lapdog than Siegel/Shuster/Finger, I guess.

Wow.

Kane sounds like a massive asshole.

I say we shake our heads at his ghost.

One Strip! One Strip!

No, if he was a corporate lapdog, he wouldn't have claimed to have been underage when he signed his contract. He was just straight up greedy.

Even though Siegel and Shuster were also kinda screwed, I have to say in the matter of their heirs vs. DC a few years back I sided with DC. The heirs had no part in Superman's creation and seemed quite greedy themselves from what I remember. Did they even plan to do anything with the character, or were they just going to sit on the rights and watch the dough roll in?

edited 30th Aug '16 9:49:30 PM by HamburgerTime

It may have been less about screwing Finger than getting what he could for himself. In a similar vein, the reason that Mel Blanc is the only voice artist credited on the old Looney Tunes cartoons is because he's the only one whose contract said that he'd receive onscreen credit (which WB, for reasons of their own, chose to interpret as "Blanc'll be the the only voice artist we credit, period, a situation which held until "The Three Little Bops," a cartoon that Blanc wasn't in). He didn't intentionally screw anybody, he just negotiated his own deal and figured others would do the same. I don't defend anything Kane did, far from it, but I think it was less of a case of his actively screwing Finger over so much as he just grabbed what he could for himself and left Finger to fend for himself.

edited 30th Aug '16 9:59:04 PM by Robbery

The difference is that Kane did screw other creators — his contract specifically mentioned that he would be the only one credited for Batman, which is why Bill Finger was never credited until recently.

I mean...making public statements that dismiss Finger as a creative input kinda makes that hard to buy. He was really determined to have all of the credit and all of the profit from Batman, and seemed quite active in ensuring that.

Jim Steranko should have slapped Kane at least a dozen more times for his douchebaggery.

edited 31st Aug '16 12:55:37 AM by Nightwire

Kane also claimed to be drawing the majority of Batman comics right up to the point when artists finally got credited for each issue. We're talking at Bob Kane falsely trying to take direct credit for more than 20 years of work done by an entire team of artists.

You're just in time. Bayble Cuber's going to watch an inkle dribble adventure from days of old on my holo-pyramid viewer.

It says something that some of the guys in charge of these characters act much like the super villains themselves.

Even worse, Kane's original concept for the character was extremely stupid-looking and likely wouldn't have been a hit had Finger not redesigned him.

What it would be like if Bob Kane created Bat-Man without Bill Finger◊

Batman Ninja more like Batman's Bizarre Adventure

I can totally see the movies and tv shows withat loser in it xd

" I did the right thing, didn't I? It all worked out in the end." "In the end? Nothing ends, Adrian. Nothing ever ends."

That looks like a kid that wanted to play Batman but onlu had red fabric and halloween batwong props.

Kane was a douchebag, but his being credited as the sole writer/artist of Batman stories (this is separate from his being credited as the sole creator) was a function of the studio contract that was in place. He had a studio of artists who supplied DC with Batman stuff, and the only person who got credited was Kane himself. The same sort of contract was in place with Seigel and Shuster for Superman (up until DC screwed them out of their rights) which is why the earliest Superman stories are all credited as being drawn by Joe Shuster, even if they were drawn by Joe Sikela, Jack Burnley, or Wayne Boring (which the vast majority of them were; Seigel was frequently upset with Shuster over how little actual drawing, or even art directing, he did). Will Eisner had the same sort of studio for turning out Spirit stories, as did Jack Cole for Plastic Man. The same sort of thing goes on today with cartoonists who work with assistants in that the assistant seldom if ever gets credited (Garfield hasn't been drawn by Jim Davis in years, but he's in charge of the studio that puts out the stip and contractually is the only name that appears on the credits). None of their artists were credited for their work until fairly recently. The point of all this is that, while Kane was indeed a douche, his not crediting his team is not at all unusual, and was probably contractually mandated for copyright reasons (though I'm sure he didn't lose any sleep over it).

Kane's case was unique at DC in that he was never forced out and remained in charge of Batman until he chose to retire. DC apparently didn't even know all the artists he employed until after he retired (Sheldon Moldoff, apparently, didn't want it known that he worked for Kane). How Kane was able to negotiate such a deal when so many other creators lost the rights to their work is a bit of a mystery. It's telling that when Julius Schwartz became the editor after Kane retired, he slowly began dismantling Kane's Batman and building his own (which resulted in the Frank Springer/ Denny O'Neill Batman).

edited 31st Aug '16 11:42:20 AM by Robbery

DC editorial was very happy when they could put Finger's name on books around Batman Day last year with the first in Batman and Robin Eternal. The fact Kane's estate and family fought to keep the deal excluding Finger all these years is really sad.

More talent signed to DC.

Kane worked with Will Eisner before creating Batman, and Eisner was one of the first creators to ever secure exclusive rights on his characters. I think Kane learned a lot of business savvy from him, even if nothing of Eisner's genuine artistic talent, and then added a lot of unescrupulousness to the mix.

Eisner was no stranger to using uncredited artists, but to be fair he seemed to treat them well, and unlike Kane, he gave them full credit shortly after ending Spirit— heck, he alredy was fully crediting Wally Wood by the end of Spirit's run. As far as I know, Eisner never spoke ill of Kane either, but that might have been just him trying to be a gentleman about the whole situation. Kane never semed to have screwed him over, but then it might just be Kane knew how to pick his fights, Steranko incident aside.

I doubt Kane was ever in a position to screw over Eisner.

Eisner was generally a gentleman when discussing past associates. The one odd little slip that can really be attributed to him is in regards to the testimony he gave when DC sued Fox over the character of Wonder Man. Victor Fox had specifically instructed Eisner to imitate Superman as much as possible, but when the court hearing came up, he told Eisner to say that the character had been entirely Eisner's idea. Every time Eisner told the story in subsequent years, he said that he told the truth about Fox's instructions, that Fox told him to copy Superman. The court transcripts (which were rediscovered only recently) say, however, that in court Eisner did what Fox asked and said Wonder Man was entirely his, Eisner's, idea.

edited 31st Aug '16 10:28:43 PM by Robbery

New books:

• Justice League vs Suicide Squad(or Batman V Waller) miniseries going Dec-Jan. 6 weekly issues and 2 tie-ins with Justice League and Suicide Squad. JLA spins out of it much like Super Sons will be spun out of that Superman arc with Damian and Bruce.
• The Jetsons by Palmiotti and Conner.

edited 1st Sep '16 6:37:15 AM by LordofLore

> Making Rosie slim and curvy.

Sigh. Why.

Ah, so DC is finally going the Marvel route.

She's a robot.

edited 1st Sep '16 6:57:38 AM by alliterator

When events happen all the time they stop being events. This won't end well.

At least they're keeping it to one book and few tie-ins.

One Batman, Superman, Earth and Cosmic event(for example) each year is better than 4 events taking place in every book.

edited 1st Sep '16 7:19:33 AM by LordofLore

DC doing smaller crossover miniseries like this, or Batfamily crossovers like Night of the Monster Men, seems way better than what Marvel's currently doing (derailing most of their books with 6 months of crossover tie-ins about heroes fighting each other).

I think the faster publishing schedule should lend itself well to team-ups like this.

You're just in time. Bayble Cuber's going to watch an inkle dribble adventure from days of old on my holo-pyramid viewer.