Widow Wants ‘Batman’ Writer to Get Credit

Lost and forgotten in the seemingly unceasing “Batman” hoopla is the name of the man who wrote the first Batman comic book stories.

Bill Finger, who died in 1974, collaborated with artist Bob Kane on the original “The Bat-man” comic book that appeared in May, 1939, according to “The World Encyclopedia of Comic Books.”

Kane, the recognized creator of Batman, received a credit on the film as the creator of the Batman comic characters. Finger’s name is nowhere to be found.

“I’m annoyed at the whole thing because people should get what they deserve,” said Lyn Simmons, Finger’s widow, who asked Warner Bros. and the film’s producers, Jon Peters and Peter Guber, to include Finger in the film’s credits.

But Kane told The Times in an interview that while Finger deserves his due for being the “first and best writer” of the early Batman comic books, it is erroneous to call him the co-creator. Kane said that he alone created the Batman character, based on Zorro’s dual identity and Leonardo da Vinci’s drawing of a flying machine and sold it to DC Comics before Finger ever saw it. Only Kane’s name went on the strip.

“Bill was a friend and I needed a writer and he looked at the character and wrote the first story,” Kane said. “He was a writer for hire, who came in after the fact, after the character was drawn.”

Kane said that he had no objection to Finger getting a film credit as the first writer of the Batman comic strip, but he said Warner Bros. decided against that idea because “if Bill got a credit, then all the other writers could come out of the woodwork and want their name on the screen too. We had two or three writers other than Bill that first year alone.” (Credits run 3 minutes, 3 seconds on the 2-hour, 6-minute film, according to a studio spokesman.)

Simmons said she had no monetary interest in the film and agreed to sign a Warner Bros. contract waiving all her rights.

“I only wanted to see his name entered in all the Batman hoopla,” Simmons said. “I thought it was just an oversight that would be quickly corrected. I thought finally Bill would get the recognition he deserves. And that’s not happenning.”