In 2008, I discovered a picture book I loved in Marc Tyler Nobleman's Boys of Steel: The Creators of Superman.  The nonfiction biography of Jerry Siegel and Joe Schuster got at the heart of those teens and how they created a cultural icon.  That book was a good balance of biography and history and comic book nerdiness that was engaging for fans of Superman old and young, and was able to teach even longtime geeks like me a few new things too.  This month, Nobleman's newest book makes a great companion to Boys of Steel, if not exactly a sequel.  Bill the Boy Wonder: The Secret Co-Creator of Batman tells the story of a man who was forgotten for decades, but who should loom as large in popular culture as the Dark Knight himself.

At the end of every Superman cartoon, movie, television show, or on the title page of every Superman comic, it says something like "Superman was created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Schuster."  Part of the contract to use Superman in your media.  Batman movies (television shows, comics, etc.) have a similar clause in their contract, saying "Batman was created by Bob Kane." And that's what I grew up hearing, just like I knew that Spider-Man was created by Stan Lee.  What most of us didn't know is that there was another creator of Batman--and that's what Bill the Boy Wonder is about.   

Nobleman did a lot of research on this co-creator, a guy by the name of Bill Finger.  Finger has been known by the comic book community since the 1960s, but for decades was the silent partner and writer of most of Batman's stories.  Batman was created by Bob Kane and Bill Finger in 1939, but Finger ended up letting Kane take the credit.  Nobleman explains how that happened, and details exactly what Finger's contributions were to the Batman mythos.  That was the most revelatory part of the book to me--I won't list them here, but while Bob Kane might have come up with the idea of a superhero "Bat-Man," it was Bill Finger who came up with most of the details that make Batman the hero that he is--and a lot of the villains too.  Nobleman's evidence that he reels off that Finger should get a co-creator credit on Bat-projects is overwhelming, and he lays it out well enough that I was convinced.   

The final third of the of the book has both sadness and triumph, with Finger finally starting to see some recognition for his contributions to Batman and comic books in general--and then dying prematurely in 1974.  Posthumously, his significance among fans has grown, to the point that the Awards for Excellence in Comic Book Writing have been named afer him since 2005.  

The book is illustrated by Ty Templeton, a fan favorite who has written and drawn for countless comic books, including Batman.  He illustrated some of my favorite Batman: The Animated Series stories in the 1990s, and it was fun to see his interpretation of the Bill Finger era of Batman and other characters here.  The illustrations are colorful, and even when the story seems like it would lack visual power, he finds a way to make Bill Finger's biography live.  

The author includes six pages of notes that flesh out Finger's story further.  The reasons that Bill might not have pressed harder for credit, and the problem with getting him credit today.  Nobleman goes on to explain some of his research process in writing the book, which involved quite a bit of detective work of his own.  I've known this book was coming for a few years now, and it was inspiring to see the effort that went into Bill the Boy Wonder.

Ultimately, the story of Bill Finger doesn't really have a happy ending.  After reading it with my 7 and 10 year old sons, they were both very thoughtful.  They thought it was cool that one guy came up with so many of the things they loved about Batman, and for the ten year old in particular, it got him thinking about who the creators were of other favorite characters.  In a household where we celebrate the creativity of Jim Henson and Walt Disney and others remembered for their contributions to childhood (and adulthood), this book and Bill Finger will have a special place.

Recommended: Yes