Marc Tyler Nobleman's Blog, page 87

Pine Road Elementary, Huntingdon Valley, PA

Of late I have been spoiled by superb school visits, and met no exception on 2/19/14 at Pine Road School in Pennsylvania (my first author appearance in the state). 


  Special thanks to librarian Keith Crowell, who was an absolute pleasure to work with.

This school was the second ever at which students and staff dressed as superheroes for my visit. As it happens, the first was precisely a week prior.

Pine Road sold a pine tree's worth (sorry) of books, including Vanished: True Stories of the Missing. I'd not thought about the fact that the opening story in the book (about 2nd grader Erica Pratt) took place in Pennsylvania.

 
After my Superman/Batman/Siegel/Shuster/Finger talk, a 4th grade girl came up to me and said that she thought she was going to start crying while I told the saddest parts of the Bill Finger story. I told her that it would have been okay and that others have, including me. 

A 4th grade boy asked me, "What is your perspective on misery and what is your perspective on joy?"

Definitely a first for me, and a profound one at that. I stammered out an answer-by-blindside that did not involve Bill, though in retrospect it could have. His story is that odd blend of both.

 photo by Ellen Zschunke; note Batgirl

Best of the blog 2013

This blog launched on 2/19/08.

Every February 19, I share what I feel have been the best posts of the previous twelve months.

This year's medalists:

speaking
at a school visit in Tanzania, what made an especially big impact—literallythe aftermath of the Tanzania UFOdelivering Chris Crutcher's keynotea Plum Creek Literacy Festival attendee's reaction to my presentationbeing welcomed by trumpetsBill Finger and I go to Texas
promotion
74 years after he co-created Batman in New York City, Bill Finger makes the New York TimesBill the Boy Wonder: The Secret Co-Creator of Batman on NBC News/Today Show/MSNtalking Bill Finger on Kevin Smith's Fat Man on Batman podcastThe Very Hungry Caterpillar meets BatmanBill the Boy Wonder around the worldone way to get people talking about the subject of your book
research
Facebook is also Findbooksecrets hidden in Bill the Boy Wondertrying to reach Jerry Siegel in 1994original (and in some cases final) interviews with eight writers/artists of the Golden/Silver Age of ComicsBill Finger and gay culturethe sole Bill Finger screen credit...for Superman
publishing
kidlit authors read aloud a bad review of their own booksis Bill the Boy Wonder a children's book?rules I broke in Boys of Steel: The Creators of Supermanguess the picture bookunused covers for Bill the Boy Wondernonfiction invasion at International Reading Association Convention 2013
miscellaneous
why Bill the Boy Wonder should have received an Eisner nominationdespite significant support from both the public and the press, Google did not give Bill Finger a doodle on his 100th birthdayoriginal interviews with ingenues of iconic 1980s music videoscomic book scripts I wrote for Batman: The Brave and the Boldghost hunting authorsproposing a Bill Finger memorial in New York CityJerry Siegel and Joe Shuster are not heroesBill Finger's sole granddaughter and great-grandson meet their publickids write letters to Bob Kane as Bill Finger's son (warning: profound thoughts)solving the mystery of the Wonder Twins movie posterSuperman turns 75funny signs from my travelswhere art tells the story in Bill the Boy WonderBoys of Steel with Boys of Steel"The Bloodhound Gang" - where are they now?my earliest published workthe first actor to play Bill Fingerthree junctures at which Bob Kane could have acted noblythe eeriness of a music video produced four days before 9/11the shape of the border of Bill Finger's yearbook portrait

Bill the Boy Republican

Interesting email over the transom recently: the man who wrote this article—who happens to be the father of the then-9-year-old boy the article is about—asked me if Bill the Boy Wonder: The Secret Co-Creator of Batman is suitable for a now-12-year-old. Meaning is he too old for it.


My all-purpose answer: you’re never too old for Batman.

Nice to meet you, Darren, and thanks for writing. Ari, please let me know what you think of the book.

Compound word schools in Connecticut

On 2/11/14, I had the pleasure of speaking at Buttonball Elementary School in Glastonbury and the next day at Wintergreen Interdistrict Magnet School in Hamden; both in Connecticut, both wonderful experiences, both arranged by longtime friends (thank you, Rachel Kramer Cohen and Ingrid Ellinger Doviak), and both, as noted in the post title, compound words.

At Buttonball, a class summarized what they got out of the presentation (and this is, of course, heartening):


At Wintergreen, both students and staff dressed as superheroes for my visit; schools often create dynamic displays to welcome authors, but this was the first time any school got into the spirit sartorially:



with Ingird/Batgirl and her daughter/Supergirl


Thank you again to all who made these visits possible.

Welles-Turner Memorial Library, Glastonbury, CT

  2/10/14

Dispatch from Tanzania: influencer list

My kind host from my January 2014 visit to an international school in Tanzania sent me the following a few weeks after:


It is at once humbling and heartening. I am most thrilled about seeing Bill, Jerry, and Joe on the list, in such distinguished company (not including me).

Comic Book Resources: "Bill Finger is not forgotten"

Thank you again, Robot 6.

"Thirty Minutes Over Oregon": spring 2016

Japanese pilot Nobuo Fujita’s flight over a U.S. state in 1942 was historic yet little-known; it was also quick—the title of my book about this postulates that it lasted only thirty minutes.

My journey to publish this book has lasted seven years.

And on 1/10/14, I finally reached the horizon: Jennifer Greene of Clarion Books made an offer.

I’m beyond thrilled to announce that the book will land in spring 2016. 

Thank you to all who have believed in this story. 

The best part of it starts now.

From Publishers Marketplace (2/10/14):

Boys of Steel author Marc Tyler Nobleman’s Thirty Minutes Over Oregon, the true story of Nobuo Fujita, the Japanese WWII pilot who became the first and still only person to bomb the United States mainland from a plane—and who returned twenty years later to apologize—to Jennifer Greene at Clarion, for publication in Spring 2016, by Emily van Beek at Folio Literary Management.

Bombs—and jaws—will drop.

A talk on Bill Finger's 100th birthday

More lack of Bill Finger Google doodle backlash

Why no Google doodle for Batman co-creator Bill Finger on his 100th birthday yesterday?

Google has not responded to that question.

Possibilities:

Because the campaign, however fervent and far-reaching, started too late for Google to design/schedule it?Because Bill is not officially credited?Because DC Comics got involved?Because Google prefers to acknowledge non-milestone birthdays (82nd, 103rd, etc.)?Because Google somehow didn’t see this as a cultural and moral obligation the way the thousands of fans who emailed them do?Because despite their motto, Google is evil after all?
Stepping up where Google let us down, the Bill Finger Appreciation Group not only produced a Google-esque doodle…


…but also a clever rationale behind it:

“We can certainly understand Google’s Olympic-themed doodle as it stands against injustice and discrimination but…that’s exactly what Bill wrote about in his stories. With that in mind, we’ve repurposed the shape of [the 2/7/14] doodle to say thanks to Bill once again for his immense contributions to our culture.”

More protest tweets:

No Google doodle for Bill Finger. That’s busted.So, wait, not only did we not get a Bill Finger Google Doodle, but there wasn’t even ANY Google Doodle today? That is some Finger luckI guess Google would rather have no doodle than one about the creator of #Batman, Bill Finger. And just when I was happy with them.Given the choice of doing a Google Doodle for Bill Finger or just giving us the finger, it looks like Google opted for the latter?It’s incredibly frustrating that Google didn’t recognize the importance of Bill Finger. So disappointing! Thank you for fighting this good fight & bringing Bill Finger’s story to the world!Shame Google didn’t come through, but in any case it you did a lot of good work putting the word out there.A shame Google didn’t do anything for Bill Finger’s birthdayThat’s truly a shame.I keep checking google just in case #BillFingerDoodle #UnreasonablyOptimisticMy 8th grade students & I are Bill Finger fans! I share your book to inspire them to change the world & follow the truth!Way to drop the ball Google.Happy belated Bill Finger. No Google Doodle for Bill Finger. Still, let’s celebrate the co-creator of Batman (or the Bat-Man).you know this won’t deter batfans, resolve is everything from this point on #justiceforfinger now we go bigger than google!We did not get a Bill Finger Google Doodle today, but he still deserves one, so keep asking for it.
Thank you yet again to the untold thousands who joined this grassroots movement.

I am thinking we should keep the effort going now to try again for next year…if all of us tweeted about this and sent an email, and asked our networks to do the same, so that Google is getting emails weekly about this…