Bill Finger in Poland

In early December 2013, I received an email that lifted my spirit:

Dear Sir Nobleman,

I’m writing to you because of your book Bill the Boy Wonder. 

I’m 22 years old, I live in Poland and Batman is my most favourite fictional character for as long I can remember. It started with Tim Burton’s first movie and Batman: The Animated Series. When I was 10 I started collecting comic books, but Polish publisher which published Batman comic books in my language didn’t exist anymore. Few years later I learned about other publisher (which is publishing for today, but only TPBs/graphic novels format) and about buying older comics in special shops and at the Internet. Then I started looking for every information about Batman I could find. In this search, I found first (and only one for almost 10 years) Polish Batman fansite and few years later I joined its team. Now I’m one of main writers and editors. After over 10 years I learned a lot about Batman, read and bought (and still buying) comic books, played video games, watched movies and cartoons and so on...

...and for most of the time, I was very angry about how little informations there were about Bill Finger and that a lot of people who are interested in Batman and/or comic books, don’t know about him. Some time ago I learned about that you are working on book about Bill Finger (from Ty Templeton blog) and I was very excited. I was waiting for it, but I didn’t buy it at once (you know, you never have money for all things you want...). Now there’s Christmas coming and my parents wanted to know what I want. I was thinking about that case for a long time and I remembered about Bill the Boy Wonder and as you can suspect, I will have it for this year Christmas.

Today I explored some parts of your blog and I felt the need to thank you for work you have done about Bill Finger (and not only about him). I learnt a lot thanks to you and I gained a lot of inspiration and energy for writing for BatCave (it’s the name of the Polish site I write for that I mentioned earlier) more about Finger. Especially that next year will be special, as you mentioned on your blog and Twitter—I will definitely spread the word about Google doodle idea.

I hope I didn’t bother you with my mail. Now I will just wait for Christmas...

P.S. For few year I also go for Polish cons and do as much lectures about Batman as I can to promote him and comic books in general (comic books are not very popular in our country—it was big think in 80s/90s—but it’s changing every year for better). One day I was invited to a school to make a special lecture about Batman for kindergarten and elementary school children. I did it and of course I mentioned Bill Finger and how much we owe him in case of Batman.

I asked this young man if he had photos and sure enough he did:

12/26/13 addendum:

Christmas came through!