“School Library Journal” article: complex subjects in children’s nonfiction

Betsy Bird writing for School Library Journal asked me and fellow authors including Candace Fleming, Chris Barton, Deborah Heiligman, and Carole Boston Weatherford some trenchant questions on an important topic: addressing mature subjects when writing true stories for young readers.

That topic has long been of interest to me [see my many posts with the tag “nonfiction”], so I would have participated even if Betsy had not used the phrase “successfully discussed subject matter that no one else has ever dared to consider.”

Here’s the collected insight. Thank you again, Betsy, for covering this.

And here is some of the content from my interview that is not in the article:

The through line of my nonfiction is high-profile hook plus mystery in the background. Everyone knows Batman. Few [even among comics geeks like me] knew the full tragedy of his “secret” co-creator. Everyone knows that the Japanese attacked the U.S. at Pearl Harbor in WWII. Few knew that the Japanese also bombed the mainland.

 

But that hook/mystery combo alone isn’t enough—to sustain it, you need drama. Yes, Batman is absurdly popular, but that doesn’t mean that his creation can sustain a book. At school visits, kids clamor “Do a book on the Flash! Do Black Panther! Do Deadpool!” [Yes, some second graders have seen that R-rated movie.] But sometimes a character [or an invention, or an idea] is conceived without friction by a person at a desk. That won’t fill 32 pages. For me, no suspense means no go. Bill the Boy Wonder, however, involved betrayal.

 

And that betrayal involved something I hadn’t seen in nonfiction picture books: a singular “villain.” Often in biographical picture books, the antagonist is a group—Nazis, intolerant white people, men [in books about misbehaving women making history]. In Bill the Boy Wonder, artist Bob Kane, while not full-on evil, lies and mistreats his professional partner, writer Bill Finger. A friend becomes an enemy. You root for Bill—and against Bob. That dynamic gave me delicious grist. Thirty Minutes Over Oregon also had an element that felt new to the format—redemption. An enemy becomes a friend.

 

These stories are not about household names or famous incidents. And they have an underlying darkness to them. Therefore, they were not easy sells to publishers. I find that paradoxical—we well know that kids are drawn to stories with edge. They can handle glimpses of the complexity of the human condition. I feel we need to push kids a little.

 

As I research, I build a list of essential moments to include as well as moments that are like ice cream toppings—I don’t need them, but they’ll make a sweet story sweeter.

 

You can tell with almost scientific accuracy that certain details will be irresistible to kids [and adults!]. Boys of Steel—young Jerry Siegel is so excited to tell his friend Joe Shuster about the character [ahem, Superman] he dreamed up overnight that he doesn’t take off his pajamas but tugs clothes on over them and runs nine blocks to Joe’s apartment. Bill the Boy Wonder—Batman’s cringey initial design [red union suit, stiff wings]. Thirty Minutes Over Oregon—a Japanese naval pilot bringing a 400-year-old samurai sword on every mission for good luck. Fairy Spell— nine-year-old Frances and 16-year-old Elsie claiming fairies emerged only when no adults were around.

 

I strive to write up at kids to show them I respect their intelligence. Part of that is not shying away from unpleasantness. In Thirty Minutes Over Oregon, aimed at upper elementary and older, I mention seppuku—ritual suicide—a single time. [That was a stated reason for at least one of the rejections.] Obviously it’s a highly sensitive topic, even though no character follows through, but it’s relevant to establish the severity of the WWII-era Japanese military sense of honor.

 

In Fairy Spell, Frances and Elsie lie about photographs they take of what they claim are real fairies. But when you factor in the larger context of the story, they don’t seem like liars. The reason they lie in the first place is understandable; I’d argue their “crime” is victimless. A big reason they keep up the lie, revealed at the end, is surprisingly touching.

 

It’s often said that kids need to see themselves in books, which of course is true—but it’s not the only imperative. Kids also need to see characters in books who give them something to aspire to. Or who show them behavior to avoid.

 

Some kids may feel momentarily disillusioned to learn that some adults do icky things to each other, like take credit for something good that they didn’t actually do. Many kids who read Bill the Boy Wonder react indignantly to the way Bob treated Bill—and some fault Bill for not speaking up enough in his own defense.

 

Yes, yes, a thousand times yes! We want these reactions!

 

When kids decry injustice, it gives hope that they will go on to fight injustice on some level. When kids hold the de facto “hero” of a story at least partly accountable for his own fate, that helps them realize that they must hold themselves to the same standard. In other words, when you’re wronged or mistaken, don’t wait around for a hero to save the day. Instead be the hero. Or, more precisely, be the one who tries to improve a situation, hard as that will be sometimes.

 

When kids learn that the duo who created Superman were awkward teens who endured 3.5 years of rejection for their idea, it may inspire other young people [or awkward people of any age] to also try to overcome adversity.

 

When kids learn that a soldier who attempted to bomb civilians as part of his wartime obligation later felt remorse and apologized to those civilians—and they accepted his apology—that is a lesson wrapped in a lesson sprinkled with yet more lessons.

8/27/25 addendum: Here is the extended edition of all of the interviews.

Bill Finger's ashes

On 3/7/07, I got good news about a bad situation.

Bonnie Burrell, ex-wife of Bill Finger’s son Fred Finger, told me what really happened to Bill after he died. Prior to that, the only info I could find about Bill’s final resting place was this: he was buried in a potter’s field (AKA a pauper’s grave). 

Seemed plausible. But turned out to be merely a rumor, one whose source I didn’t trace (if that’s even possible). 

Bonnie said that Fred went to the beach in Manzanita, an Oregon coastal town within driving distance of Portland, and spread Bill’s ashes at the shoreline in the shape of a bat.

Poignant, visually striking—and relieving. The thought of Bill Finger ending up in a potter’s field after his hard life was heartbreaking.  

Since then, at least two others have independently verified the ashes story—or at least their memory of it. But since it’s so specific, I believe it has only two possible explanations: either Fred (or someone else) made it up after Bill’s death and the false story spread, or it is true. I see no incentive to make up something like that, especially because Bill was hardly known to the public, so I have considered the story to be true from the moment I heard it.

It took me years to be able to describe the scene to audiences without choking up a bit.

It was first depicted five years later, in Bill the Boy Wonder: The Secret Co-Creator of Batman, courtesy of Ty Templeton:

It next appeared, animated, in the documentary Batman & Bill:

Then it was interpreted for a Brazilian graphic biography, Bill Finger—A verdadeira história do Cavaleiro das Trevas:

It was most recently seen in Bill Finger, dans l'ombre du mythe, a French-language graphic memoir illustrated by Erez Zadok:

This was such a fabled image in my mind from the moment I learned of it, and it’s been a moving experience to see each new interpretation. It’s also been surreal because for years, the scene existed only in memory and imagination. 

Students spotlighting little-known true stories

On 2/4/22—rescheduled from spring 2020—I finally spoke at Robious Elementary in Midlothian, VA.

My visit was the kickoff for a student project that is up, down, and all around my alley. 

As my kind host, librarian Melissa West, explained (lightly edited):

we are using [your visit] as a jumping off point for our 4th graders who will embark on a research project looking for an untold story [all tied to Virginia except *]. The project is built on the idea that certain individuals have been recognized, honored, and studied in school for the work that they did, while others who did much the same went unnoticed. Their project that will be part of a museum exhibit at the Virginia Museum of History and Culture.

Funding was provided by Partners in the Arts.

Slides from the presentation about the project:

Here is a partial list, in no order, of people whose stories these kids brought to light (I added the links; they were not necessarily sources the kids used):

Claudette Colvin

Ana Edwards

Sister Rosetta Thorpe

Barbara Rose Johns

Joseph Endom Jones

Mercy Otis Warren

Mad Ann Bailey

Evelyn Thomas Butts

three enslaved teens in the household of Thomas Jefferson: Ursula, Edith, and Frances

Acoustic Kitty (CIA operation)

Laverne Charmayne Byrd Smith

members of the Richmond 34 (1960 sit-in): Woodrow Benjamin Grant Jr., Elizabeth Johnson

Dick Morgan

Al Foster 

John Randolph

Claude Hopkins

Sally Hemings

Charles Rasnick

William Ferguson Reid Sr. 

Florence Neal Cooper Smith

Willie Dell

Robert R. Moton

Henry L. Marsh III

Hamilton Glass

Wilton Crawley

Daisy Bates *

Napi Ippolito

Edith Hern Fossett

Pearl Bailey

Maggie Walker

Chloe Edwards

Thank you again to Melissa and Robious for promoting the value of research and the thrill of untold stories.

signing the author wall

Bill Finger’s birth hospital and first address (in Denver!)

Bill Finger co-created Batman (and lived most of his life) in New York. But Bill was created in Denver...at this address. 

(That house, at 1526 Lowell Boulevard, was built in 1980. Fingers crossed I can find a photo of what stood there in 1914...) 

It is around the corner from this synagogue-turned-church (a situation I also saw in the Cleveland neighborhood where Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster created Superman).

How did I find out the address where Bill’s family was living when he was born?

From Bill’s birth certificate (what Colorado calls a testimonial letter), which I first requested in 2013—but did not receive till 2022. (There were several requests and setbacks during that period.)

It also indicates that Bill was born in Mercy Hospital, which opened in 1901 and was seemingly demolished in 1966. Photos courtesy of Denver Public Library Special Collections:

sometime between 1901 and 1910

1917

According to Dr. Jeanne Abrams, Professor and Director, RMJHS and Beck Archives at the Center for Judaic Studies and University Libraries at the University of Denver: 

1526 Lowell was then in the heart of the West Side Eastern European Jewish community. The area was filled with small Orthodox synagogues, Jewish-run businesses including grocery stores and bakeries, etc. Around that time, [future Israeli prime minister] Golda Meir lived in the neighborhood in a typical West Side duplex for about a year and a half. She had run away from her parents so she could continue her schooling. She was staying with her married sister, who had moved to Denver because she had tuberculosis. Denver featured two Jewish TB sanatoriums that were national in nature of support and patients.

This is not the first time that chasing Bill has led me to other notables.

2/11/22 addendum: History Colorado, Denver Public Library, the University of Denver, and the Beck Archives of Rocky Mountain Jewish History at the University of Denver could find a photo of the house site circa 1914 nor any other info related to the site or Bill Finger. This is no surprise, since Bill Finger was not an infant when he co-created Batman, and in fact would not be publicly notable till years after his death.

Changing a cartoon depicting an Indigenous ceremony

In 2005, the first of my two books called Vocabulary Cartoon of the Day came out, featuring 180 single panel cartoons for grades 4-6. To get the joke, kids must learn the bolded word in each caption.

In 2020, my publisher, Scholastic, told me that a reader in Canada had contacted them to report a cartoon that he/she/they felt was a “stereotypical representation of Indigenous people.” My editor asked me to replace it with a new cartoon for future printings.

 

* Please do not repost without a link to this post, for context. *

I have no doubt I referred to photos and images of rain dances to create this cartoon, for two reasons. One, I go to significant lengths to ensure my work is accurate, including art (even when I am not the one illustrating, as with all of my picture books). Two, then and now, I couldn’t even begin to pull from my brain what such a scene should look like. 

But in this case, I neglected to save my sources—which is both regrettable and uncharacteristic, since I keep meticulous notes on sources for my writing. 

Admitting that glaring lapse, I sought perspective from tribal chairpeople and organizational directors of multiple Indigenous nations whose customs have included rain dances. 

The feedback I got included differing opinions, some with historical frameworks—all tremendously helpful and equally appreciated. I suspect you’ll also find them illuminating. Quoted verbatim:

1)

The cartoon is not acceptable and is disrespectful. Do not incorporate it into your work.

—Osage Nation Wahzhazhe Cultural Center

2)

Perhaps the complaining person thought the immediate rain might was disrespectful. The rain dance is done as a spiritual ceremony. I suppose some Indians would say that the head dress does not depict their traditions. It is so with the Potawatomi Nations containing 10 Indian Tribes. All tribes that I know of were long pants, not short pants.  Even so, I can’t imagine anyone complaining about a picture cartoon. Also, all Tribes that I know wear long pants, not short pants. 

I don’t think it is in good taste to complain about a picture cartoon in a children’s book. I would not do so, but there are “different strokes for different folks” all around the world. 

—Citizen Potawatomi Nation

3)

Since Rain Dances are really prayer dances, some may have taken exception to a humorous portrayal of a religious ceremony. Personally, I do not find the cartoon offensive, given your intent to demonstrate or illustrate a vocabulary word for educational purposes. People need to lighten up a bit on ethnic outrage. Your cartoon was not intended to offend, and did not.

—Citizen Potawatomi Nation [different person than previous]

4)

Insulting.

—Osage Nation Historic Preservation Office

5)

I would state that “rainmaking” is an old trope that marginalizes the realities of complex Native science and religion. This perpetuates harmful stereotypes that infantilizes Native ceremony by removing all context of Native ceremonial life and imposes Western concepts of dance as entertainment.

Also, your cartoon depiction of Native dress is not accurate. “Rain Dance” ceremonies were not practiced by the Osage. From your cartoon it seems you are using an amalgam of Plains tribe stereotypes, but the majority of ceremonies of that nature were practiced by indigenous people of the southwest.

Overall, given the criminal lack of basic cultural sensitivity and knowledge of Native history, using any tribal ceremony as a vehicle for children to learn English vocabulary is offensive. The majority of children are not even taught whose land they live on. At most, they would see your work and continue to think of Native peoples as cartoons and their ceremonial life as silly.

—Osage Nation Historic Preservation Office [different person than previous]

6)

With greater public awareness of cultural appropriation, and its effects on Indigenous people, we do not endorse the depiction of Cherokee ceremony by non-tribal citizens. Furthermore, upon reviewing your piece, it does not appear to depict Cherokee people, but rather a pan-Indian notion of all “Indians” with feathers and headdress. We cannot verify if you correctly depicted any sort of North American Indigenous “Rain Dance.” 

It may have been considered palatable by the general public in the past. However, Indigenous people have been advocating heavily for accurate cultural representation, and ending harmful stereotypes for many years. Today, many long held stereotypes are being dismantled and it appears that is the case with this piece. Going forward, we encourage non-Indigenous people to fully research a culture before attempting to characterize it, and consider the notion that the people of that culture prefer to represent themselves, rather than have a person from a different culture do it for them.

—Cherokee Heritage Center

I don’t imagine I’ll be making any more cartoon books, but regardless of the project, now I do my due diligence better than I did with this cartoon. I continue to learn...

The replacement:

caption: 

Her juggling skills are inimitable. Obviously I’m just a beginner.

I’ve always (and sometimes explicitly) welcomed readers notifying me about any mistakes or insensitivities in my work. Keep it up, citizen editors!

Bob Kane’s claim that Leonardo da Vinci inspired Batman

Recently a fellow writer asked me about Bob Kane’s assertion that his idea for Batman’s bat-like wings/cape was in part inspired by Leonardo da Vinci’s flying machine.

I knew enough offhand to say that this is an almost certainly false nugget that some Batman fans have accepted simply because it is frequently referenced online and in print. By now it’s well established that Bob and the truth were often not well acquainted. See the scene in the documentary Batman & Bill in which I dissect the suspiciously-dated 1934 sketches published in Bob’s autobiography Batman & Me.

But I realized I could not say for sure when this fishy LDV claim was first floated, so I went back through my sources. 

A da Vinci name-drop does not appear in the earliest (1940) Kane bio I’ve seen nor in the preposterous fever dream origin of Batman’s creation that DC published in 1946 nor in The Great Comic Book Heroes by Jules Feiffer (1965) nor, conspicuously, in The Steranko History of Comics, Volume 1 (1970). Up till that point, those were the primary published sources on Kane and/or comics history. Meanwhile, Bob had stated that he took some inspiration from the Winged Bird-Men of the Flash Gordon comic strip, which indeed seems more likely given Bob’s interests. So I speculated that (in a bid to seem more cultured) Bob concocted the LDV connection sometime after 1970.

In my material, Bob’s first known mention of da Vinci was in an unusual 1985 comic book called Fifty Who Made DC Great. (Side note: some choices have not aged well. Superman peanut butter made the list, but only two women, both actresses.) 

After that, the claim appeared in almost every book or article about the creation of Batman.

But I was missing something! The incomparable comics historian John Wells called to my attention multiple articles published on the eve of the debut of the 1966 TV show Batman in which Bob cites Leo. Here is one:

Thank you as ever, John!

It’s possible for a major detail like this to go unreported for decades—for example, so much about Bill Finger’s story. But it does seem like the kind of major detail that would have come out sooner than 1965…and it is curious that it is not mentioned in the Steranko passage that delineates other influences for Batman (Shadow, the Phantom, Doc Savage).

In other words, to quote comics language, it’s not canon. At least not from where I flit.

NOTE: There is more to my theory that did not make it into the post because I am flawed. See comment from Boswell and my reply.

6/10/25 addendum: In the original post, somehow I failed to point out that the third-to-last paragraph of that 1965 article mentions Bill Finger...specifically that he had been uncredited for 24 years.

Finger family mysteries: Bill’s mother(s) and “sisters”

No one in this blog post is as s/he seems…

Prologue:

The book Bill the Boy Wonder: The Secret Co-Creator of Batman came out in 2012. DC Comics corrected the Batman credit line in 2015. The documentary Batman & Bill came out in 2017.

Yet here I am, in the here and now, still researching Bill Finger. 

In particular his family.

Because there are so many unusual unknowns. 

(To be precise, I am not actively researching. But now that I am perhaps the most prominent living Bill Finger advocate who is not a family member, sometimes research comes to me, and that sends me into the Batcave all over again.)

Below is a consolidation of significant findings I have not yet revealed publicly. Some of it I learned after my book came out. Some of it I learned only weeks ago. But some of it goes back to the beginning of my Bill Finger experience (2006). Between the making of the documentary, other projects, and life itself, I did not make time till now for this long overdue info dump:

BILL’S MOTHERS

In 2013, I received Bill’s short-form birth certificate (i.e. a contemporarily typed version, not a copy of the original), and with it, a stunner. 

It turns out that Bill’s biological mother was not Tessie as I had been told but rather a woman named Rosa. On Bill’s birth certificate, Rosa’s last name is spelled “Rosenblodt” but on her marriage license, it’s clearly “Rosenblatt.”

Louis and Rosa were married by a rabbi (possibly in the rabbi’s apartment) in New York on 11/27/1912, Bill was born in Denver in 1914, and Louis married Tessie Stromberg back in New York on 12/24/1916 (possibly in a more traditional ceremony). 

Therefore, Tessie was Bill’s stepmother. I don’t know when—or if—he learned that. 

Tessie circa 1945; 

I have no photos of Louis

Yet on the marriage certificate for Louis and Tessie, Louis claimed that it was his first marriage. 

Alexandra (Allie) Orton, story producer for Batman & Bill (and a hella beast of a researcher), said “Typically when…a man [did] that, it’s a clue that he [was] a bigamist and he walked out on his first wife. But it is a bit odd considering he seems to take the kid with him. In divorce cases back then, fathers got the children a lot more readily, so that might be it (or he might be widowed), but then why lie?”

The 1913 Denver directory states Louis was a tailor (and still was in the 1930s in the Bronx, when Bill the Boy Wonder starts); Rosa was listed as “Rose.” They lived at 1581 Hooker Street. (Thank you to Meghan O’Sullivan for finding and sending me a scan of this.)

Was Bill born at that address? His birth certificate doesn’t say. (2/9/22 addendum: His long-form birth certificate does: no. He was born in a hospital.) Did Rosa die in childbirth or when Bill was an infant? Or did she and Louis divorce? I don’t know. 

Allie checked for Rosa in Colorado and New York death indexes and cemetery records, but did not pick up her trail. Rosa may have died outside of those states. Allie even tried to determine the synagogue of the rabbi (Joseph Handelman) named on the marriage record. No luck.

I’ve also yet to uncover why Louis lived for that short spell in Denver. It might have been for tuberculosis treatment.

The fact that Rosa was Bill’s biological mom means that Emily, ostensibly born to Louis and Tessie in 1918, was Bill’s half-sister. This implies that Gilda (born circa 1920) is also his half-sister...or another relative, or perhaps even unrelated. (More below on Gilda.)

BILL’S FATHER LOUIS

According to Bill’s birth certificate, when Bill was born in 1914, Louis was 20…but that does not align with Louis’s birth year (1890) as provided on his draft registration cards for both World War I and World War II. 

In other words, in 1914, Louis would’ve been 24 (and therefore older than Rosa, who was 23). But the birth certificate has at least two other typos, so perhaps it’s simply another clerical goof.

Yet another inconsistency: apparently Louis sometimes changed his mind about where he was born. Most sources I have (Rosa/Tessie marriage licenses, naturalization petition, WWI/WWII draft cards, 1920 census, 1940 census) say Austria, but Bill’s birth certificate says Russia (perhaps another typo) and on the 1930 census, Austria is crossed out and Poland written in. Perhaps that has to do with border changes because of the war?

Zoomed in:

And still more weirdness: the 1930 census says Bill was born in New York (correct answer: Denver) and lists Emily first, even though Bill was older. Maybe there’s nothing to read into there, but somehow I think there is.

BILL’S YOUNGER “SISTER” EMILY

In 2007, I heard something that I brushed off at the time because it seemed like a mistake and because I was more focused on a simultaneous discovery, but now I see that it was probably true—and if so, it whispers of even more Finger family secrets. 

The 1930 and 1940 censuses indicate that Louis and Tessie had a daughter named Emily, born in New York. But she was mentioned nowhere else in my research. 

In my quest to figure out what happened to her, I called the New Jersey cemetery where Louis and Tessie (who died about a month apart in 1961) are buried. I was told that the person responsible for tending to their graves was named Emily.

The rub: the cemetery record listed Emily not as their daughter but their niece. 

Second, bigger shock: after a quick search of an online directory, I learned that Emily was still alive.

With immense excitement, I called her. She, however, was the opposite of excited to hear from someone like me. 

2009

She said she did not really remember Bill and could not help. But I did delicately glean a bit from her, and more from her daughter-in-law B and granddaughter T, who went out of their way to try to get Emily to open up:

• T said Emily referred to herself as an only child 
• Emily once told B that she didn’t really have a brother (by which she could’ve meant that they had no relationship…or that they were actually cousins)
• Emily once said that Bill had disappeared off the face of the Earth and she didn’t know if he married or had kids; she had not seen him since before her wedding (and she married young)
• when she last knew Bill, he was still Milton (he changed his name from Milton to Bill sometime between 1933 and 1939, probably closer to ‘39)
• yet Emily said she’d heard Bill was a writer and B remembers Emily saying she was proud of Batman
• I asked if the Finger family had Shabbat dinner when she was growing up and she said something to the effect of “not as a habit”; the family was not religious but did have mezuzahs 
• I asked if Bill moved out after high school and Emily didn’t remember the timeline 
• T thought it sounded like Bill and Emily didn’t live together for long
• when Bill died Emily did not wish him ill, but didn’t go to his funeral (I said that there wasn’t one)

Emily does not appear with Louis and Tessie on the 1920 census—even though she was born in 1918. This seems like further proof that she was their niece (or at least not their biological daughter). If so, I don’t know who her birth parents were or why she moved in with Louis and Tessie.

Further complicating the issue, both the 1930 census and Emily herself said that her mother was born New York...but according to the 1920 census, Tessie was born in Russia.

B later told me that Emily wanted nothing to do with “that side of the family”—which I think means her father’s side. Bill was definitively estranged from his parents, and when Emily told me (in so many words) that she was estranged from Bill, I assumed that there had been a specific rift and Emily had taken her parents’ side. It later occurred to me that perhaps both Bill and Emily had distanced themselves from Louis and Tessie. 

From at least one Finger cousin, I knew the Finger family was fractured...and that now seems like an understatement. 

With her memory vault still mostly sealed, Emily passed away at age 99 in 2018.

BILL’S SECOND YOUNGER “SISTER” GILDA

In 2012, the year Bill the Boy Wonder came out, the 1940 census was released to the public. (Why it takes so long.) 

And it contained another Finger bombshell. Now appearing in the Louis and Tessie household is a second daughter—Gilda. Yet if I’m reading it right, it shows that Gilda had completed four years of high school and was 20 in 1940—so where was she on the 1930 census?

This suggests that Gilda was also not Louis and Tessie’s biological daughter but rather a niece, a boarder (census takers sometimes mislabeled temporary residents as family members), or maybe even the result of an affair that either Louis or Tessie had. One reader of this blog tantalizingly speculated that Gilda could have been a wife of Bill’s before Portia (whom he married in 1943, see below). 

Yet what still seems most likely to me is that Gilda was a niece. Louis had about twelve siblings (I don’t know about Tessie); it is plausible—especially during the Great Depression—that certain kids in the large family could have been forced to change homes. 

Emily graduated from Theodore Roosevelt High School in the Bronx in 1937, so I am now checking yearbooks there for Gilda. If I do find proof that Gilda also attended, it almost surely won’t help determine what happened to her after high school…but at least it’ll mean a photo. [5/17/21 update: two contacts at the school checked the yearbooks from 1937 to 1940 and did not find Gilda.]

Speaking of which, here’s Emily’s yearbook entry (with Harry photobombing):

Allie scoured New York for trace of Gilda, but found no marriage records (either with the Finger surname or with a Gilda marrying a Finger), death records, or cemetery records. Gilda also doesn’t appear on any of the other family records.

BILL’S FIRST (KNOWN) MARRIAGE

Bill married Portia (born Ethel) Epstein in New York on 4/24/1943. (Thanks again to Meghan O’Sullivan, in this case for finding and sending me a scans of the bride/groom ledger.)

IN SUM

Mystery lingers with the Fingers. Rosa…Gilda…even Emily. You all remain in the shadows. For now…

Emily Manasch (Bill Finger's younger sister), 1918-2018

This week, I learned that Emily Manasch, Bill Finger’s younger sister, died on 9/27/18, a week shy of her 100th birthday. (Biologically, she was his half-sister.)

In 2006, while researching for Bill the Boy Wonder: The Secret Co-Creator of Batman, I was stunned to learn that Bill had a sibling (stunned because I’d misinterpreted a statement in a 1941 comic book article). 

Seven months later, I was stunned to learn that she was still alive. 

I was stunned yet again when I found her, then stunned for the fourth time when she explained she and Bill had been estranged since before Batman (so before 1939). 

She declined to answer even the most basic of questions, as did her daughter. (Her son had predeceased her.)

Over the years I tried to earn Emily’s trust in multiple ways, including by speaking pro bono at the schools her daughter-in-law and granddaughter taught at, but she never agreed to talk with me. It is frustrating to think of the knowledge she chose not to share. 

RIP Emily.

Stun #5: in 2012, upon the release of the 1940 census, I learned that Bill had a second younger sister, Gilda. 

I still have not found her…

Back where Batman was born

On 4/23/19, sandwiched between school visits, I had half a day to tool around New York City. My primary destinations were Bill Finger-related.

Second, I went to Bill Finger Way alongside Poe Park in the Bronx. It was the first time I’d been there since the sign unveiling ceremony in December 2017.

The only difference: now a pair of sneakers hangs from the adjoining streetlight. (This is not, as sometimes said, automatically a sign that drugs are sold nearby. Search it.)

And first, I went to one of the twelve addresses I found (oh those many years ago) for Bill, and perhaps the most storied (for reasons beyond Bill). He lived at 45 Grove Street in Greenwich Village from late 1943 or 1944 to 1950. While living in that building, he co-created the Riddler.

A previous time I was there with Don Argott and Sheena Joyce, directors of Batman & Bill, when, mere moments after (or before?) the camera was rolling, a mother and child walked by. What makes that memorable: the child was wearing a Batman shirt. Would have made a wonderful little moment on film.

This time, another fortuitous occurrence happened during the few minutes I was in the vicinity. A tour group stopped in front of the building.

I lingered and eavesdropped. The tour guide didn’t mention Bill/Batman, so when she asked if anyone had questions, I raised my hand...with a comment. 

(She didn’t seem to appreciate it, but some members of the tour did.)