Unveiling of "Bill Finger Way" street sign in New York

Bill Finger made history…multiple times. Including three times (to date) after his death.

• In 1939, he wrote the first Batman story (after designing the costume).
• He was the only comic book writer to write an episode of the 1966 TV show.
• In 2015, he was officially (and finally) named a co-creator of Batman. This is the first time in comics history that the credit line of an A-list character has been corrected.
• He became the focus of Hulu's first original documentary (Batman & Bill, 2017) which is also the first film based on a nonfiction picture book.

On 12/8/17, Bill Finger made history yet again. He is now the first superhero creator with a street named after him in New York City.

Bill Finger Way runs along the southern border of Poe Park in the Bronx. The street sign is at the corner of East 192nd Street and the Grand Concourse. (To get there using GPS, put in the address right across the street: 2580 Grand Concourse, Bronx.)

Here is the big moment:

The event began at 10 am and lasted about an hour. The speakers:

• New York Councilmember Ritchie Torres, whom some predict is a future mayor of New York
• me
• Athena Finger, Bill's lone known grandchild
• Steve Simmons, Bill's stepson (his mother was Bill's second wife, Lyn)
• Kevin Conroy, voice of Batman in Batman: The Animated Series and multiple series since
• Angel Hernandez, Director of Programs and External Relations, Bronx Historical Society 
• a student from PS 46

Here is my speech (courtesy of Steve Ostrower):

Here are all the speeches.

The press/coverage included the following:

• ABC
• CBS
• New York Times
• New York Daily News
• Vulture
• News 12 Brooklyn (TV segment)
• Den of Geek
• Midtown Comics

Attendees included the following:

• Benjamin Cruz, Bill's great-grandson
• Alethia Mariotta, Athena's half-sister
• Jens Robinson, son of Jerry Robinson, co-creator of Robin and the Joker
• Travis Langley
• Lenny Schwartz, playwright, Co-Creator
• Roberto Williams, playwright, Fathers of the Dark Knight
• Julian Voloj
• George Gene Gustines, New York Times 
• Abraham Riesman, Vulture
• Rocco Staino, School Library Journal
• Danny Fingeroth
• Paul Castiglia 
• Thomas Sciacca
• Art Cloos
• Lucy Aponte, Director of the Poe Park Visitor Center
• Delmo Walters, Jr.
• Scout and her mom Stephanie, who came the farthest: Utah
• my college buddies Mark Lehman and Steve Ostrower

At least two attendees reminded me that I was a bit pushy (my word, not theirs) when I was researching…but they said it with a smile and now have a greater understanding of my rationale. 

After the unveiling, a group (Athena, Benjamin, Alethia, Danny, Travis, and Art) took a tour of Poe's cottage.

Glimpses:

amNewYork 12/7/17

Councilmember Ritchie Torres

Athena Finger

Steve Simmons

Kevin Conroy

Looks like I'm grinning back at Bill.

Steve and Athena pulled the string to

unveil the sign.

The joy visible here is precious.

Bill's great-grandson Benjamin

Steve and fellow Finger advocate Travis Langley meeting

George Gene Gustines of the New York Times

Councilmember Torres received this letter from DC Comics

the night before the unveiling. No DC reps that I know of attended.

I was the last person from the unveiling to leave. 

I turned around to take one last photo of the site and

did not see till I checked the photos later that I 

inadvertently captured someone taking a photo of the 

hours-old sign.

Some photos are courtesy of Julian Voloj…who is in the process of making some Bill Finger history of his own…

I have been lobbying for a NYC memorial to Bill Finger even before my book was out. This process was not easy. But like so much else about this story, persistence finds a way.

My remarks:

My name is Marc Tyler Nobleman. I'm the author of Bill the Boy Wonder: The Secret Co-Creator of Batman, the 2012 biography of writer Bill Finger, and I appear in this year's Batman movie. No, not Justice League. Not The Lego Batman Movie. Not the direct-to-video Batman vs. Two-Face. I'm in the Hulu documentary Batman & Bill. 

For years I said "Batman's biggest secret is not Bruce Wayne." Not anymore.

Bill Finger wrote the first Batman story in 1939 and hundreds more over the next 25 years—including his heartbreaking (and groundbreaking) origin. He even designed the costume. But his name never appeared in the credit line in his lifetime. Meanwhile cartoonist Bob Kane drew only a fraction of the stories and for only the first few years and did not write a single Batman story in his life, but from the start, he was the sole person credited. Holy fake news, Batman!

This street renaming is a love letter to four B's: Bill, Batman, the Big Apple, and, of course, the Bronx. Bill wasn't born in the Bronx, but Batman was. According to my research, it happened on Kelly Street. Then Bill built the Bat-world from all over the borough.

In 1940-41, Bill lived at 2754 Grand Concourse. In that period, he wrote the first stories with Robin, the Joker, and Catwoman and he named the Batmobile and Gotham City. In 1941-42, he lived at 50 East 196th Street, during which time he wrote the first appearances of the Scarecrow and the Penguin and introduced what he would later name the Batcave. Right here in Poe Park, he and Bob would sit on benches and brainstorm Batman adventures.

But when Bill passed away in 1974 at age 59, many if not most Batmanians had never heard his name. He had no mainstream obituary. No funeral. No gravestone. No kidding.

When I began my book in 2006, I was led to believe he also had no heir. His only child, his son Fred, died in 1992, leaving no offspring known to comics historians.

The biggest moment of my research was when I learned that was not true: Fred did have a child, a daughter, which meant Bill had a granddaughter. I found Athena Finger, then she found the courage to fight along with her sister Alethia for her family's birthright. In 2015, after 76 years of inaccuracy, DC Comics added Bill's name to Batman. Justice has no expiration date.

One of the most instrumental people in my research was Bill's longtime writing partner Charles Sinclair. Charles gave of his time many times to articulately tell me about Bill. Yesterday I learned that on November 15, at age 93, Charles passed away. Let's take a moment to honor Bill's old friend and my new friend Charles.

Thank you all for joining us to celebrate. Fingerheads have come from as far as Utah—anyone farther? Special thanks to Athena and Benjamin for flying in from Florida. We're all indebted to New York Councilmember Ritchie Torres and his staff, especially three R's—Ronn, Rafael, and Raymond—for spearheading this tribute to two of the Bronx's most distinguished sons: the Dark Knight and the mind behind him. Batman is more than one of the world's most successful superheroes. He's one of the most iconic fictional characters of any kind of all time. That makes Bill Finger one of the most influential creators of all time.

He died too soon to see that family and fans have reclaimed his legacy, so the unveiling of "Bill Finger Way" is bittersweet. Bill Finger made history. Team Finger corrected history. Now the Bronx takes lead in honoring that history by installing this sign, the first memorial to a superhero creator in New York, the Superhero Capital of the World. Next step: a statue!

The three coincidences of Steve

Before I began researching Bill the Boy Wonder: The Secret Co-Creator of Batman, it was not known among comics people that Bill Finger had married a second time (after divorcing Portia).

I found his second wife, Lyn Simmons, in June 2006. She had three children. One is named Steve.

Oddly, Lyn had only one photo of Bill—and not a good one.

Steve, however, had a great one. Only he didn’t know where it was. That was July 2006. He found it…in March 2007.

But it was worth the wait.

The photo is included in the author’s note of Bill the Boy Wonder. It was probably the clearest (and certainly the quirkiest) of the eleven “new” photos I found.

Adding to this excitement, three coincidences surrounded Steve:

• Lyn (who was living in California at the time) had been visiting on the East Coast (where I live) and had flown home the day I found her.
• I lived in Connecticut at the time…specifically, as it turned out, in the same town as Steve. In other words, the best photo of Bill Finger I uncovered during a many-month search was five minutes from me the entire time.
• Steve was a businessman, but he had published several children’s books…with Charlesbridge, the publisher who would go on to acquire Bill the Boy Wonder in 2010.

Steve Simmons previously unpublished interview, 7/7/06

Steve Simmons is the son of Lyn Simmons, who was Bill Finger’s companion in the 1960s and his second wife from 1968 to 1971.

Steve Simmons

What was your relationship with Bill Finger?

I knew him when I was in high school, growing up. He married my mother, I was probably in 12th grade, maybe a freshman in college. I knew him around the house. He would talk about how he was very proud of his work on the various comic books he worked on. I think he not only did work on the storyline, which he did an impressive amount with, [but] also I think I remember him saying was responsible for how Batman looked, like maybe his cape, and how the mask covered Batman’s face? I think he also talked about doing something with the Batmobile, maybe he came up with that idea, too. … He was very proud of his work.

I remember him bringing Batman and other comics home. We had a whole stack of comic books at the house which would probably be very valuable today but have since been lost. He would have us read them and react to them. As kids, we were, of course, thrilled.

He was a man with a great sense of humor. He was very smart. He was very worldly to a young kid. He liked opera and classical music and reading the New York Times and travel. He was a sharp dresser, I’d say, very nattily dressed. [Irwin Hasen also described Bill with the ten-dollar word “nattily.”]

You were how old when you met him?

I was probably thirteen maybe. [this would’ve been 1959]

Do you remember Freddie?

Yes.

How old was he in relation to you?

I think he was a little older than me. I could be wrong about that. I met Freddie maybe once or twice. I really never knew him very well. … [Bill] was everything from showing me how to tie a tie to talking about college. He also wrote for television. When I went to California with my real father (Bill, of course, was stepfather), [he said] I should just drop by one of the Hollywood studios on his behalf just to say hi.

Did you consider him your stepfather?

It wasn’t the type of thing where he was a stepfather from when I was very young. It was more a late-blooming thing. I think they married when I was probably a freshman in college.

Your mom said ‘68.

Then it was even later. Then it was when I was a junior or senior in college. [Steve graduated Cornell in ‘68]

Did you and your siblings have a sense of his significance in the comic industry at the time?

I would say we didn’t. And I think also the comic industry as a whole and the people who created it are now looked upon very very differently than they were at that day. I also can remember calling Warner Bros. when the first Batman—my mom wanted me to do this—first Batman movie came out to try and see if we could get Bill credit. I talked to the people there. They acknowledged Bill was instrumental but they weren’t willing to put—for legal reasons—didn’t want to give him credit on the film. I told them I’m not looking for money, I’ll sign a release, but they didn’t want to do it.

You wouldn’t happen to have anything left of Bill’s? Photos, mementos, letters?

I may have a photo. Let me take a look. … [He] talked about how he worked on other characters. I think on Superman, he was pretty instrumental in some of the stuff there. He told me that some of the things Superman is known for he helped create. Was there something called the Green Hornet?
 
Green Lantern. He co-created him.

Yes, he did that, too. He probably did a lot that Bob Kane took credit for, quite frankly. I don’t think he was paid as much as he should have.

Did he ever talk to you about that? That he was cheated?

I think he once said something to the effect that Bob Kane took more credit than he should have. Put it this way, Bob Kane was getting credit, he wasn’t. Something to that effect. I never heard him talking about not making enough money. Maybe once I did, that Kane got most of the money.

Do you remember him getting asked to write the Superman movie script?

Vaguely. I remember we’d all sit in front of the TV set and watch the television stuff he would write. We’d all be very proud when his name came on at the end. My mom was a friend of Reggie Rose, too, so Bill got to know Reggie. [Rose wrote 12 Angry Men]

You remember nothing more specific about the Superman script?

I do not but I believe that did happen. He worked very hard on this stuff and probably bounced stuff off my mother. My mother was very creative, still is. She’s a great artist. Always has been an artist. My guess is that during all those years Bill would—not all the time—would bounce ideas for comics off of my mother. So in some small way, I can’t give you chapter and verse, I’m sure she contributed a little bit to all of this.

She did say that he would run things by her.

I’m absolutely positive that happened. Another thing I remember is Bill showing me his muscles. He worked out. He was a short, not short short, but relatively short guy. But his muscles, I’d always brag to my friends about how strong his muscles are. He’d make a muscle and me and my young friends would all go—this was when we were 13 or 12—we’d all go feel his muscle.

Do you know why he didn’t serve in the war? Because of his heart?

There was something but I just don’t know. Sorry.

He was not overweight toward the end of his life?

Not that, no. Well, he certainly wasn’t when I saw him in 1970. He was never overweight that I saw. Always very muscular. 

Do you remember hearing about his death?

I do. I remember once he had a heart attack. I visited him in the hospital and he told me he was very touched by that.

When was that?

Probably 1970ish, something like that. I probably knew him from the late ‘50s through [his death in] ‘74.

Was that the last time you saw him?

Probably whenever that heart attack was when I visited him in the hospital.

Was he working [on scripts] in the hospital?

When I saw him he wasn’t.