Batman

Batman (originally referred to as the Bat-Man and still referred to at times as the Batman) is a DC Comics fictional superhero who first appeared in Detective Comics #27 in May 1939. more...

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He has since become, along with Superman and Spider-Man, one of the world's most recognized superheroes. Batman was co-created by artist Bob Kane and writer Bill Finger, although only Kane receives official credit for the character. Batman's secret identity is Bruce Wayne, a billionaire industrialist, playboy, and philanthropist. Witnessing the murder of his parents as a child leads him to train himself to the peak of physical and intellectual perfection, don a bat-themed costume, and fight crime. Unlike most superheroes, he does not possess superhuman powers or abilities; he makes use of intellect, detective skills, science and technology, wealth, physical prowess, and intimidation in his war on crime.

Publication history

Creation

In early 1939, the success of Superman in Action Comics prompted editors at the comic book division of National Publications (later DC Comics; D.C. is short for Detective Comics, now a subsidiary of Time Warner) to request more superheroes for their titles. In response, Bob Kane created a character called "the Bat-Man". His collaborator Bill Finger offered such suggestions as giving the character a cowl instead of a simple domino mask, wearing a cape instead of wings, wearing gloves, and removing the red sections from the original costume. Finger came up with the name Bruce Wayne for the character's secret identity. In Jim Steranko's History of the Comics, vol. 1, Bill Finger reveals, "Bruce Wayne's first name came from Robert Bruce, the Scottish patriot. Wayne, being a playboy, was a man of gentry. I searched for a name that would suggest colonialism. I tried Adams, Hancock...then I thought of Mad Anthony Wayne." Inspirations for Batman's personality, character history, visual design and equipment include movies such as Douglas Fairbanks' The Mark of Zorro, The Bat, and Dracula; characters such as The Shadow, The Phantom, Sherlock Holmes, Dick Tracy, Jimmie Dale, The Green Hornet, Spring Heeled Jack; and Leonardo Da Vinci's drawings of a flying machine.

Kane signed away any ownership that he might have in the character in exchange for, among other compensation, a mandatory byline on all Batman comics. This by-line did not, originally, say "Batman created by Bob Kane"; his name was simply written on the title page of each story. The name disappeared from the comic book in the mid-1960s, replaced by credits for the artists and writers who actually worked on the stories. In the late 1970s, at the same time as Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster began receiving a "created by" credit on the Superman titles, Batman stories began saying "created by Bob Kane" in addition to the other credits. Finger did not receive the same recognition. Although Finger did receive credit for other work done for the same publisher in the 1940s, he began to receive limited acknowledgement for his work on Batman in the pages of the comic book only in the 1960s, as a script-writer (for example, "Letters to the Batcave", Batman no. 169, Feb. 1965, where editor Julius Schwartz names him as the creator of The Riddler, one of Batman's recurring villains). However, his contract, in contrast to Kane's, left him only with his page rate for the stories he wrote and no by-line even on most of the Batman stories he had written. Finger, like Joe Shuster, Jerry Siegel, and some other creators during and after the Golden Age of Comic Books, would resent National's denying him the money and credit that, he felt, he was owed for his creations. At the time of Finger's death, in 1974, he had not been officially credited as a co-creator of the character. Kane himself, however, in later years willingly acknowledged Finger's contributions to the character while also insisting on his own role.

Read more at Wikipedia.org