Comic Book Resources: "Bill Finger is not forgotten"

Thank you again, Robot 6.

More backlash on lack of Bill Finger Google doodle

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 luck
• I 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 birthday
• That’s truly a shame.
• I keep checking google just in case #BillFingerDoodle #UnreasonablyOptimistic
• My 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…

No Google doodle for Bill Finger’s 100th birthday

At precisely midnight overlooking today, February 8, I tweeted this:

 

But as the world can see, the passionate movement to get Bill Finger the Google doodle for this milestone did not succeed.

Greatly appreciated support from The Hollywood Reporter, USA Today, Washington Post, Spectator Tribune, Tablet, The Beat, Comic Book Resources, IGN, Bleeding Cool, Comics Alliance, Den of Geek, ComicBook.com, many more sites, Kevin Smith (and his popular podcast Fat Man on Batman), Brad Meltzer, and other notables was not enough to convince Google how culturally significant this day—this man—is.

Most bafflingly, the tremendous outpouring of support from the public was not enough. I cannot thank you all enough. A sampling of early-morning tweets:

• Is there really no Google Doodle at all on Bill Finger’s birthday? Very disappointing.
• So sad that google didn’t come through.
• Insult to injury, @GoogleDoodles. All those proposals for Bill Finger’s 100th and you go with no doodle at all today.
• Your efforts for the likes of Finger, Siegel and Shuster remain incredible and admirable. Sorry Google didn’t come through.
• Well Happy 100th Birthday to Bill Finger. Pretty disappointed @google didn’t do a doodle to celebrate and honor the true Batman creator.
• So, Google hasn’t heeded the petition to have a Google Doodle to celebrate Bill Finger’s 100th birthday.
• happy birthday to Bill Finger, although google didn’t produce, you however did sir!
• Booooooogle

When I saw the (cool) Olympics opening day doodle yesterday, February 7, I worried.

So I did a quick study.

• The only years Google ran an Olympic doodle daily were 2000 and 2012 (both times for the summer games).
• In 2002, they ran a winter doodle on only some of the days.
• In 2010, they ran a winter doodle only on opening day.
• I reasoned that although this doodle actually went online on the evening of February 6, it was probably not technically running two days in a row. I believe it posted when it did because it was already the next day in Russia, where the Olympics are taking place.

It is bummer enough that there is no Bill doodle but somehow even worse that it’s not because there is an Olympic doodle. Seeing the regular Google logo sit motionlessly on the screen stings like a snub.

To be clear, I don’t feel Google owed me anything. But I do feel that we all owe Bill Finger something—and I thought Google was a bunch of geeks (term used lovingly)? Shouldn’t they have wanted to do this even without the massive petition?

Excerpt of my 1/31/14 email to the Google Doodle team leader Ryan Germick:

With only a week and a day till the proposed date for a doodle in honor of the 100th birthday of Batman co-creator Bill Finger, I realize that if it isn’t already in the works, it may be too late. But I’m an optimist.

Thus a brief update on the wildly enthusiastic and pervasive coverage this campaign has generated in the media (not to mention the thousands of tweets/posts/comments/etc.). As of the last time I wrote, the coverage was primarily in the pop culture press, but in the weeks since, it has crossed over into the mainstream. [I listed the press.]

Even some of the coverage is getting coverage. And I’m even seeing quite a few referrals on my blog from foreign-language sites that have run a story.

Huge, sincere thanks for your consideration. Fingers still crossed...

The e-mail I sent today:

Thank you for considering a doodle for Bill Finger, uncredited co-creator of Batman, on his 100th birthday (today). Many people are already contacting me disappointed that the campaign did not work.

Know you’re busy, and know it’s the weekend, but willing to squeeze in a two-minute interview for my blog to give the fans (including me) a pinch of rationale? If so, here are the questions:

• I tried to keep up with the many hundreds of tweets, posts, comments, etc., but do you have a sense of roughly how many emails you got requesting a doodle for Bill Finger?
• I didn’t find trace of any other doodle campaign that seemed to grow as large. In terms of size, how did this grassroots effort compare to others you’ve seen?
• Why did you decide not to do a doodle for Bill today?
• What about next year?

And a tweet to him (in response to a Batman-related tweet of his from just a week ago):

[IMPORTANT NOTE: For Bill’s sake, please do not also tweet him!]

Ultimately, Athena Finger, Bill’s lone grandchild, said something that made me feel a little better: “It would have been super cool if it happened but I really love the attention it brought to Bill and our cause; I have met some of the most amazing people in the last month and hearing their stories trumps anything Google did or didn’t do.”

 

art by Ty Templeton 

More response/backlash.

Bill Finger Google doodle: Den of Geek

Den of Geek kindly ran an interview with me about Bill Finger, Google doodles, and other doodles.

 

Talk to us about the campaign to get Bill Finger a Google Doodle in honor of his 100th birthday. Why a Google Doodle?

It would mean that literally tens of millions of people would learn the name “Bill Finger” in a single day.

Devil’s advocate—and you can take that as literally as you would like—but does it diminish Bob Kane’s contributions to Batman when you classify him as the villain? And if that is the point, what informs the recent remarks that you made to the Spectator Tribune about Kane’s creative contribution to Batman, in which you said “maybe the name “Bat-Man,” but even that is disputed; besides, between pulps and film, bat-themed characters were nothing new by 1939. Finger gave Kane credit for Two-Face. Creatively, that’s about it.”

I am not diminishing Bob’s contributions; he did that himself—unintentionally, of course. When writing Bill the Boy Wonder, I realized that in simply spelling out what Bill did, it makes it all the more striking just how much Bob did not do.

The rest of the interview.

Bill Finger Google doodle: The Beat

Thank you, Heidi MacDonald, for aiding the campaign.

Bill Finger Google doodle: "Hollywood Reporter"

Bill Finger never saw California in person, but now, forty years after his death, he is going Hollywood.

Hollywood Reporter, that is.

Batman supports the underdog so let’s keep supporting the underdog behind Batman...

Bill Finger Google doodle: Comic Book Resources on "Washington Post" coverage

A week after first covering my push to honor Bill Finger with the Google doodle on 2/8/14, his 100th birthday, the Robot 6 column on Comic Book Resources again covered it, this time focusing on the Washington Post coverage of the same!

Bill Finger Google doodle: "USA Today"

“I hope Finger gets his day, even if the attention comes several decades too late. Props to Marc for working so hard to make sure he's remembered.”

On 1/21/14, Whitney Matheson of USA Today’s “Pop Candy” kindly threw heavyweight support behind my home-stretch effort to honor Bill Finger’s 100th birthday slash staggering cultural contribution with the 2/8/14 Google doodle.

 

Thank you again, Whitney. So appreciated.

Kevin Smith and I talk about Bill Finger for an hour

KEVIN SMITH.

That is all.

Who am I kidding? That is not all.

I was the guest for the 1/20/14 Fat Man on Batman podcast—first of the new year, first of the year of Bill’s 100th birthday.

Though Kevin prefers in-studio interviews, we have tried and failed for months to be in the same city at the same time; given the time-sensitive nature of lobbying Google about my idea for the 2/8/14 doodle, Kevin for the first time recorded over Skype.

We had the video on for only a moment before shutting it off to improve sound quality. In that one moment, I did not look good:

Apparently, kibitzing with Kevin about one’s book does wonders for one’s Amazon rank (screen shot from a few hours after the podcast went online):

 

(Before the show, it was six figures.)

And, if one of the comments can be taken as omen, it could also be good for one’s nonexistent film career:

“This has to be a film. Starring and directed by Ben Affleck. Guaranteed Oscar gold.”

People seemed to like the podcast.

Thank you again, Kevin (and Meg, Will, and Ashley). I look forward to seeing you soon...

Bill Finger Google doodle: "Washington Post" coverage

Thank you, Michael Cavna, for covering in the Washington Post the campaign to score Bill Finger the Google doodle for his 100th birthday (and clever to run it on the 40th anniversary on his death):

The day in Bill Finger Google doodle news

The campaign to get Bill Finger the Google doodle for his 100th birthday (2/8/14) continues to expand/blow me away.

On 1/13/14, it was covered by the following:

 

Comic Book Resources (Robot 6); 

love the ending of this one

Spectator Tribune (Manitoba, Canada); 

love the format of this one; I was told that it was the 
most read article on the entire site that day

And I was interviewed by the Washington Post; that story should post this week.

Thank you again to the world at large for supporting this effort. Join the movement simply by emailing proposals@google.com ASAP (that birthday is hurtling toward us).

Bill Finger Goodle doodle: the movement grows

First Brad Meltzer and Kevin Smith tweeted and IGN covered my effort to get Bill Finger the Google doodle for his 100th birthday, 2/8/14. Now some other major players have entered the fray:

Comics Alliance

Note: Most people seeing this headline are asking “Who now?”—
and not in reference to Finger.

Bleeding Cool

ComicBook.com

And of the hundreds of tweets I have skimmed, here is one I especially like:

This tweeter also interviewed me for a Canadian newspaper.

Some people who emailed Google copied me. Here are two choice excerpts:

#1

I’m with Marc Nobleman. It’s time for Bill Finger to get some recognition for his long-standing contributions to pop culture. And it’s not the doodle that so important, but the link.

Millions of users will go to Google to search the Internet, they’ll see a Batman-themed doodle and click it, and it will link to Finger’s story. Normally your doodles highlight someone who is recognized for his achievements, but a doodle for Bill Finger would actually help give him the recognition he’s never had. I hope you’ll consider it.

Thanks and I’m looking forward to the doodle.

#2

Please consider a Google doodle for this poor man who made millions of people happy and died penniless without the fame deserved of him.

To join the movement yourself, email proposals@google.com. We can do this! Maybe we already have...

Big names campaign for Bill Finger Google doodle

Some big Batman fans who also happen to be big names are spreading the word about my effort to get Bill Finger a Google doodle for what would have been his 100th birthday, February 8, 2014. 

Thank you Kevin Smith, Brad Meltzer, and IGN (and all who have emailed proposals@google.com as a result):

Google doodle: Bill Finger

As anyone with a computer knows, Google is one of those rare brands willing to vary its logo. They have tweaked it to pay tribute to everyone and everything from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry to Pac-Man.


 
So on 3/27/12, I pitched them (proposals@google.com) this:

You'd be lavished with undying praise by legions of geeks everywhere if you did a doodle in honor of writer Bill Finger (2/8/14 - 1/18/74), the uncredited co-creator (and, objectively, dominant creative force) behind Batman, even though cartoonist Bob Kane unconscionably took all the credit. Bill is widely considered to be the greatest comics writer of his generation (the Golden Age)...and the biggest martyr in comics history.

Bill died alone, poor, and unrecognized (no obituary, no funeral). I wrote a book on him to help preserve his culturally significant legacy.

While we are too late for this year's birth and death anniversaries, I think a date that would make an even bigger statement would be July 20—the date The Dark Knight Rises, the next Batman movie, comes out. It would be poignantly appropriate since it was Bill who first called Batman the "Dark Knight" back in Batman #1 in 1940...yet Bill’s name will not be in the film credits...

To be continued…I hope.

I'm feeling lucky.

12/9/13 addendum: I have since proposed this again, now emphasizing that 2014 is a triple Batman anniversary:

• 75th anniversary of Batman
• 100th anniversary of birth of Bill Finger
• 40th anniversary of death of Bill Finger

Please show your support for this idea by emailing proposals@google.com.