Marc Tyler Nobleman's Blog, page 58

Speaking to graduate students about nonfiction

Thank you, Susannah Richards, for inviting me to talk with your Eastern Connecticut State University students on 10/20/15 about the blurred lines of nonfiction.

Favorite topic! Fun group! Let’s do it again!

And special thanks for your most kind comment here:

First Bill Finger credits on TV and in comic books

On 10/10/15, we got our first glimpse of the newly worded Batman credit “Batman created by Bob Kane with Bill Finger.” It is from what some called a house ad but what actually seems to be a title page.

A little more than a week later, the credits are coming fast and furious now.

On 10/18/15 (technically 10/19/15, since the show aired at midnight), the first known Bill credit in a TV show ran—Robot Chicken DC Comics Special III: Magical Friendship:


Later on 10/19/15, in the end credits of the fifth episode of the second season of Gotham (“Scarification”), we first saw the credit in a television series where said credit will now appear each time:


Today, on 10/21/15, we encounter the first three credit appearances in comic book series: 

Batman & Robin Eternal #3

Batman: Arkham Knight—Genesis #3

Gotham Academy #11
  We’ve come a long way.

My book dedications

The Felix Activity Book (1996): To Darby, in the spirit of all the games I used to make for you when you were little [sister]


Felix Explores Our World (1999): To Leslie Moseley and Dan Tucker [two of my three first bosses, who became friends; Leslie was also co-author of The Felix Activity Book]


Boys of Steel: The Creators of Superman (2008): To Daniela and Lara, my Girls of Steel [wife and daughter]


Quick Nonfiction Writing Activities That Really Work! (2009): To Andrew, whose word is always true [friend from college]


Vanished: True Stories of the Missing (2010): To Christian, who knows too much about missing someone and who has not vanished after all these years [friend since 4th grade]


Bill the Boy Wonder: The Secret Co-Creator of Batman (2012): To Charles, Lyn, and Athena, who respectively revealed the soul, heart, and hope of Bill Finger [Charles Sinclair, longtime friend/writing partner of Bill’s; Lyn Simmons, Bill’s second wife; Athena Finger, Bill’s only grandchild]


Brave Like My Brother (2016): to be revealed…

Thirty Minutes Over Oregon (2016): to be revealed…

The Chupacabra Ate the Candelabra (2017): to be revealed…

Fairy Spell (2018): to be revealed…

Bill Finger action figure!

Don’t miss the choking hazard.



Thanks to Derek Wolfford (yet again) and Steven Szaplicki.

“Boys” and “Boy Wonder” “equally riveting”

Gathering Books gathered a series of kind words for Bill the Boy Wonder: The Secret Co-Creator of Batman:

“equally riveting” (compared to Boys of Steel: The Creators of Superman)“The very extensive Author’s Note is a study in first-class sleuthing, dedicated investigation, and single-minded relentlessness in pursuing every lead he could find to look for Bill Finger’s surviving heir. Not only is this a tribute to a brilliant man’s legacy, it also honors his memory by potentially changing the life of his granddaughter whom very few people knew even existed. Truly an amazing work of investigative and comic art. Find it and add this to your library.”
I also especially appreciated this:

“Bill struck me as a man who would rather concern himself with creating and writing—his head [so] bursting with brilliant ideas that perhaps it was just way too much effort for him to stand up to Bob Kane and claim what is rightfully his.”

Thank you, GB, for lending your voice to the effort to preserve the legacy of Bill Finger.

Insulting Bill Finger early (1946) and posthumously (1976)

The calculated campaign to bury Bill Finger’s role in Batman began earlier than some realize...and, in a particularly egregious manner, continued after his death.

Real Facts Comics was a DC Comics series featuring biographies of notable people. Real Facts #5 (1946) was apparently the only time the series profiled the creator of a superhero...the alleged creator, anyway.

The story was called “The True Story of Batman and Robin: How a Big-Time Comic Is Born!” (Thanks to Bill Wormstedt, Bill Jourdain, and John Wells for the scans.)







In this case, a more appropriate title for the series would have been Real Fake Comics. Not only is there no mention of Bill, but the events attributed to Bob Kane are preposterous. The capper: when Bob asks a friend to model a Batman costume his mother made.

Others including Bill Jourdain and Arlen Schumer have already covered this topic well.

Bill Finger died in 1974. Not even two years later, Amazing World of DC Comics #10 (1/76) ran a distasteful story called “Through the Wringer” about a chronically late writer named Phil Binger (get it?) who (spoiler in more ways than one) dies at the end. Even now would be too soon.








Again, others including the incomparable Robby Reed at Dial B for Blog have covered this.

Of course, since 9/18/15, this is all even more moot than before.

Showing you how big my “Brave” is...

(In other words, about 6x8.)

A novel of World War II, told in letters. Due from Scholastic in early 2016.

Bill Finger co-credit - first time in print!

On 10/10/15, I first saw the new normal...Bill Finger’s name on Batman. Not just on Batman stories Bill wrote. On BATMAN.

It appears in Dark Knight Universe Presents: The Atom #1 (a mini-comic correlated to Dark Knight III: The Master Race). Small hero. Big deal.

And the language is better than what I speculated. 


(Too bad Jerry Siegel’s name is spelled wrong. Twice.)

My history with history: visiting world-famous sites

In 6/15, I had the privilege of seeing in person one of the most beloved buildings in the world, the Taj Mahal in Agra, India. It made me wonder how many other wonders of the world I have visited. Here are the ones at which I was photographed:

 Lincoln Memorial, 1984
 Washington Monument, 1984 (with my dad)
 Niagara Falls, 1987 (with my dad, my sister, and a rainbow)
 Eiffel Tower, 1993 (with a shockingly bad shirt)

 Notre Dame, 1993 (with my friend Seth,who would also accompany me to Easter Islandalmost 20 years later)
 Leaning Tower of Pisa, 1993
 Colosseum, 1993
 The Vatican, 1993
 Berlin Wall, 1993
 Berlin Wall, east side
 Berlin Wall, west side (yes, dirtier than east)
 Little Mermaid statue, Copenhagen, 1993
 Stonehenge, 1993
 Strawberry Fields, 1993
 Major Oak (Robin Hood hideout), Sherwood Forest, 1993 (with my friend Phil)
 Empire State Building, 1995 (with friends and other people whose names I don’t remember)
 Washington Monument, 1995 (with my friend Drew)
 Kitty Hawk, NC, 1996 (where the Wright Brothers first flew)
 Liberty Bell, 1998(with my best friends)
 Hollywood Walk of Fame, 1998 (with my mom and that tourist)
 Gateway Arch, St. Louis, 2008
 Easter Island, 2012

 Burj Khalifa, Dubai, 2014(then the world’s tallest building)
 La Sagrada Família church, Barcelona, 2014(with my wife)
Taj Mahal, 2015

The first Bill Finger panel since the credit announcement

It wasn’t billed as a Bill Finger panel, but isn’t any Batman panel simultaneously a Bill Finger panel?

On 10/3/15, at Wizard World Fort Lauderdale, I took the stage with author/maestro of ceremonies Travis Langley, writer Russell Lissau, advocate Jamie Walton, and the Finger family themselves, Bill’s granddaughter Athena and great-grandson Benjamin.


photo courtesy of J.J. Sedelmaier

For the last time slot of the day, and on a Saturday evening no less, we had a decent turnout in terms of both numbers and engagement. After the fact I found out that one of them was animator J.J. Sedelmaier (Saturday Night Live’s “Saturday TV Funhouse”), who asked me what the people I interviewed said about Bob Kane. Wish I had known at the time who was asking.

I’d done panels with Travis and Athena in San Diego in 2014, but this was the first time we were together since the historic announcement of 9/18.

Some of the people in the audience did not know that DC Entertainment announced that Bill will begin receiving credit on Batman stories. Some did not know who Bill is. (Therein lies the problem that the credit announcement will begin to solve.)

This guy, however, was not one of them; Patty Hawkins showed us in the flesh (for the second time) what Batman would’ve looked like if there were no Bill:

photo courtesy of Travis Langley
Jamie injected a sense of real-world heroism in describing her work with the Wayne Foundation (the name inspired by what you think), which works to protect children from predatory situations. After seeing the crowd response, I now feel most any comic panel could benefit by including a person like Jamie; take advantage of all of these captive audiences to spread the word about worthy causes.

While planning for Florida, I also tried to get us scheduled for New York Comic Con the following weekend so we could discuss the big news in the city where Bill built the Bat-world, but the credit announcement was only weeks earlier…in other words, too late; NYCC finalized its schedule months ago. 

However, Fort Lauderdale gave us an enthusiastic reception. And it was a peerless thrill slash honor to be with the Fingers the first time they publicly spoke about this life-changing milestone. Nine years ago, when I started researching Bill the Boy Wonder: The Secret Co-Creator of Batman, it was, of course, just me and a dream. Now the dream is a secret the whole world knows, or soon will.