Since we don't have Hulu here in Germany, I hope there'll be a release here. I really wanna watch this.
Batman and Bill - Hulu Documentary on Bill Finger
- Thread starter Kai "the spy"
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Since we don't have Hulu here in Germany, I hope there'll be a release here. I really wanna watch this.
Looks great. Bill Finger is the unsung hero of the Batman saga. Glad he's getting the credit he deserves lately. And finally being credited in all the Batman comic books and movies.
I no longer have Hulu, but I really want to see this. I plan on renewing my Hulu subscription when Runaways drops, so hopefully it will still be available then.
If you're interested in this, I'd recommend Marc Tyler Nobleman's Bill the Boy Wonder, an illustrated biography of Finger that Nobleman and artist Ty Templeton published five years ago. Finger was the unsung hero of DC's Golden Age, someone who did his job, did it quietly and without any desire for glory or fame, but for those who knew what he did Finger was a legend.
NPR's All Things Considered did a segment on Bill the Boy Wonder when the book came out.
NPR's All Things Considered did a segment on Bill the Boy Wonder when the book came out.
There is also a wealth of online material documenting this (and Bob Kane's crookedness).
Bob Kane did exactly what Stan Lee did in Marvel. But at least Kane, in his later years, acknowledged Bill Finger's great contribution and was asking for him to be "co-credited".
Kirby's name was right up there with Stan's from the beginning, as was Ditko's. The letters were addressed to "Stan and Jack" and "Stan and Steve" acknowledging that they were teams. Lee was always mentioning both artists in letter columns and Bulletin pages. That continued until Ditko and Kirby left Marvel.
Yeah, as opposed to Kane, who by most of the accounts I've read/heard fought to keep Finger from getting anything, at least for a long time. I don't believe in most of the bad things some people say about Stan Lee (I think he had a lot more to do with the characters he created then some of his detractors claim), but even if the worse accusers were right, he still gave more recognition to his co-creators then Bob Kane did, and treated them a lot better.
Kane acknowledged, sure. But he didn't revisit his contract with DC Comics that required the publisher to name him as the sole creator of Batman. The only person with the power to see that Finger received the proper credit for Batman's creation was Bob Kane, and Kane didn't do a single thing to allow that to happen. So, while Kane reaped the PR benefit in comics fandom of acknowledging Finger's role, he steadfastly used his contract to keep Finger from receiving the credit he deserved in the comics, television series, and films he deserved.
For a longer explanation, see Chris Sims' Comics Alliance column.
Yeah, this part of the story smells fishy to me. That DC (and it's parent company Warner) wanted wholeheartedly to give credit to Bill Finger but it was Bob Kane and Bob Kane's contract alone that stopped them. I call that BS. Bob Kane died in 1998. That's 19 years ago! IMO DC stalled on purpose because they didn't want to see a repetition of what happened with Siegel and Shuster and Superman/Superboy. Even now after 70 years the estates and heirs of Siegel and Shuster are still at courts with DC and WB for ownership and rights of Superman and Superboy. Read more about that here:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superman_ownership_disputes
WB and DC probably stalled to make sure that couldn't be repeated with Finger's heirs as well. Perhaps that's why there's no "and Bill Finger" but "with Bill Finger" credit in all new material. Bob Kane did what Stan Lee has done in Marvel and is continuing to do for all these years. Nevertheless I'm really glad that Bill Finger is getting the credit he deserves for Batman.
What exactly do you mean by this? Stan's position at Marvel was different than Kane's at DC.
How Stan Lee got a lot of credit that belonged to other people. How Stan Lee treated Jack "The King" Kirby and Steve Ditko. There are many parallels with the Kane/Finger/Batman story.
Stan was actually involved with writing the books. He didn't just sit back and take credit. He never denied Kirby or Ditko credit. Not saying that Kirby couldn't have gotten a better deal, but Stan is nowhere near Kane's level of despicable.
Not according to Steve Ditko and Jack Kirby themselves.
Steve Ditko is still claiming that Stan Lee had only the most threadbare initial ideas for Spider-Man, (i.e. the name and teenage boy angle) and that he is the one who fleshed the iconic character out into what he is today, then came up with most of the plot beats in any given story. Just like Bob Kane who came up with the Batman name and batwings and Bill Finger who fleshed out the character and came up with the plots.
Jack Kirby, up until his death in 1994, swore up and down that Lee was a fraud on an even larger scale! Kirby said he himself was the one who had all the ideas for the Hulk, Iron Man, Thor, and the rest, and that Lee was outright lying about having anything to do with them! What’s more, he said Lee was little more than a copy boy, filling in dialogue bubbles after Kirby had done the lion’s share of the conceptual and writing work for any given issue. "Stan Lee and I never collaborated on anything", Kirby told in an interview in 1989. "It wasn’t possible for a man like Stan Lee to come up with new things — or old things, for that matter. Stan Lee wasn’t a guy that read or that told stories."
Stan Lee's number one creation is Stan Lee.
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I am far from a huge Marvel fan but I know enough to realize Stan Lee's contributions to characters he is preceived and claimed to mostly created is flatly wrong. His cameos in the movies where cute in the beginning but added to the public perception that he did far more than he deserves credit for. Fans always question where his cameo is even for characters he had no involvement in at all.
Exactly. Like Stan Lee's cameos in all three Captain America films. A character whose creation he had no involvement at all. Jack Kirby and Joe Simon where the ones who created Captain America back in 1941.
Is it possible that, just maybe, jack kirby, by 1989, was a little bitter? I can believe Kirby and Ditko did more then people think with the characters, but I don't think Stan Lee did as little as Kirby claimed. By the time that Kirby quote happened, he'd had a long career and was probably not in the best relationship with the industry. I don't believe he was being fair to Lee. Same with Ditko. They probably deserve some more recognition, but I still think Lee was a lot more critical to the creation of the characters then those two claimed. Remember, neither of them were exactly objective. They had years to color their opinions. They're both legends and extremely talented but not automatically always correct or talking objective truth.
As for Stan Lee, like I said I think he did a lot more then his detractors try to claim, plus when he was in charge and writing at Marvel its when it became the second of the Big 2, and I don't think it could have happened without him. The comic industry wouldn't be the same without him, and he's an essential part of both Marvel's history and growth along with the industry in general.
As for his cameos, they're great. Who cares if its in movies with characters he didn't create, like Captain America? One of my favorite Stan Lee cameos is in Deadpool, and he has no connection to it at all. He's just kind of the figurehead for Marvel Comics, I hope he keeps cameoing in everything until he either gets too old or doesn't feel like doing it (and from what he's said, he'll probably keep doing cameos until he physically can't).
As for Stan Lee, like I said I think he did a lot more then his detractors try to claim, plus when he was in charge and writing at Marvel its when it became the second of the Big 2, and I don't think it could have happened without him. The comic industry wouldn't be the same without him, and he's an essential part of both Marvel's history and growth along with the industry in general.
As for his cameos, they're great. Who cares if its in movies with characters he didn't create, like Captain America? One of my favorite Stan Lee cameos is in Deadpool, and he has no connection to it at all. He's just kind of the figurehead for Marvel Comics, I hope he keeps cameoing in everything until he either gets too old or doesn't feel like doing it (and from what he's said, he'll probably keep doing cameos until he physically can't).
It's not only according to Steve Ditko or Jack Kirby themselves, but also from people who knew and worked with them.
"Stan's gotten far too much credit", said legendary comics writer Gerry Conway, who’s known Lee since 1970. "People have said Stan was out for No. 1, and to a very large degree, that's true" Conway continues.
"Unfortunately, from day one, Jack was doing part of Stan’s job, and Stan was not doing part of Jack’s job", says comics historian Mark Evanier, who worked as Kirby’s assistant and has worked with Lee since the 1970s.
Dark Horse founder and The Mask creator Mike Richardson has said "To me, there’s no doubt that Jack Kirby was the truly brilliant creative genius behind the success of Marvel."
Iron Fist's creator Gil Kane's opinion of Stan Lee is apparently similar, "On each page, from 1964 – 1970 next to every single panel Jack wrote extensive margin notes explaining to Lee what was taking place in the story."
Legendary writer, artist and publisher Wally Wood goes even further "Stan Lee DID come up with two sure fire ideas… the first one was "Why not let the artists WRITE the stories as well as draw them?"… And the second was… ALWAYS SIGN YOUR NAME ON TOP… BIG". "And the rest is history… Stan, of course became rich and famous… over the bodies of people like Bill Everett and Jack Kirby"!
Even Colleen Doran, who drew Stan Lee's autobiographical graphic novel "Amazing Fantastic Incredible Stan Lee" admits that “I don't know of anyone who knows Stan and doesn't love him, even if they hate things he's done.”
Stan Lee himself has said "Some artists, such as Jack Kirby, need no plot at all. I mean I’ll just say to Jack, "Let’s let the next villain be Dr. Doom"… or I may not even say that. He may tell me."
Now, can we be 100% certain of what really happened and who did what? No, of course not! But we do know that both before and after the early 1960s, Stan Lee didn't produce any other great new ideas. Jack "The King" Kirby, on the other hand, was always producing big ideas, even before working with Lee, such as Captain America and the Newsboy Legion (with Joe Simon), 2001: A Space Odyssey for Marvel and the Fourth World series and Kamandi for DC entirely on his own after leaving Marvel. And that's a fact.
Excelsior!
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I respect Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, etc a lot, but I don't believe they were particularly fair to Lee. It also stands out that, on a personal level, I never found their post-Lee work to be all that great (Kirby did better then Ditko, but even his New Gods I think were done better by later writers). Two extremely talented guys, but I don't take them or people like Conway, whose opinion is no less subjective then theirs on the subject, all that seriously when it comes to Stan Lee. In the end, Lee is a person and as such probably did unfair things on occasion. He probably did intentionally take the spotlight, although part of that I think was just his personality and style making that easier. But, I'd still list him as the driving creative force on almost all the characters he's credited. Now some characters, like the X-Men or She-Hulk (who he really just did one issue on so barely counts), really only work and stuck around because of later writers (the X-Men specifically would have died without other writers doing it better), but most of the characters Lee worked on succeeded and stuck around because of his work on them.
Anyway, this is a topic about Bob Kane, not Stan Lee. Last time I checked, stan Lee always mentioned the co-creators and never made a contract to specifically force Marvel to screw over people like Kirby or Ditko. Even if I agreed with your assessment of him, which I don't, Bob Kane would still be much, much worse then Stan Lee.
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