13 COVERS: Saluting the Ghosts of BOB KANE

Posted By Dan Greenfield on Oct 24, 2016 | 1 comment

It’s Bob Kane’s birthday. How best to remember him?

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Bob Kane was born Oct. 24, 1915 and died Nov. 3, 1998. Credit where credit’s due: He came up with the idea of Batman. And there’s no changing that.

But everything after that is worth questioning — especially since he spent decades taking the credit for the work of others by landing a deal that assured that his name would be on all Batman comics and, later, other media. Hell, it was only this year, 77 years later, that Bill Finger’s name was added to official, boilerplate DC and Warner Brothers credits. (Click here for more on that.)

And then there were the artists who signed their work with Kane’s name into the ’60s.

The way we typically celebrate someone’s birthday here is with a 13 COVERS celebration. Yet even if Kane did do some early Batman covers, I just feel compelled to recognize the artists who never got the proper credit when they were working. Some of those names — like Jerry Robinson and Dick Sprang — have become well-known to comics fans. Others are remembered mostly by the more die-hard Bat-devotees.

So here are 13 COVERS by Bob Kane’s ghosts.

Seems appropriate.