All known Bill Finger photos (as of now)

Prior to the start of my Bill Finger research in 2006, only two photos of Bill were generally known, the only two that the few books on Batman's history had used and reused. A third Bill photo had been published in 1941 in Green Lantern #1, but that's not an issue most people have on their coffee tables so it was mostly forgotten (plus very grainy). A fourth was published in a 1965 comic convention program, but it, too, is too grainy for its own good.

Despite what some comics folks told me, there were more photos of Bill...quite a few more. To date I have turned up 12, plus a 13th surfaced in DC Vault, a 2008 book. This makes for a current total of 17. 

Speaking of 2008, starting then I've posted most of the ones I uncovered. Here are all 17 in one shot: 

There is at least one other we know of that may be Bill, but I didn't include it because both Bill's longtime writing partner Charles Sinclair and his second wife Lyn Simmons independently said that it is not Bill. Still, you may see it this fall...

Oh, and these fellows are not Bill.

Public service announcement: this is NOT Bill Finger

Multiple sites—including Google, perpetually—identify this as Bill Finger:

Multiple times I've notified them that it is actually Gardner Fox—and I've already mentioned it here—yet it remains unchanged. Hence this PSA.

While we're on the subject, this isn't Bill, either:

It's comics writer Robert Kanigher. (Thanks Mark Evanier.)

Oh, also often labeled as Bill but not? Him:

(Steve Ditko.)

It's bad enough that Bill remains officially uncredited for his work, so the least we can do is properly credit his face.

For the record, this is Bill Finger…17 times.

The SECOND “new” Bill Finger photo of 2014

If you are here because I just announced at the “Spotlight on Bill Finger” Comic-Con panel that Athena Finger discovered the second “new” photo of her grandfather this year, shout out “Milton” (Bill’s name at the time)!

Take a quick look at the photo, then go back to paying attention to the Fingerphiles up front.

 

The back of the photo says “37” (presumably meaning 1937, 

and the hairstyle corroborates that). 

I do not know the woman.

P.S. Since 2014 marks the...

• 75th anniversary of Batman
• 100th birthday of Bill Finger
• 40th anniversary of Bill’s death

...it is especially apropos that this is the first year since 2007 when new Bill photos turned up. (Here is the first, found in February.)

And since it’s a triple bativersary, and since things mystically happen in threes, could a third previously unseen Bill pic present itself before year’s end?

“New,” previously unpublished Bill Finger photo 6 of 6

The title of my post way back on 7/21/08, five months after I launched this blog, was “‘New’ Bill Finger photo 1 of 9.”
 
But there were no subsequent posts unveiling photos 2-9.

Until now.

(Less three I published in Bill the Boy Wonder: The Secret Co-Creator of Batman, plus one I have found since.)

Bill (standing) at the (second) wedding of his friend 
Charles Sinclair (not pictured), 1964

“New,” previously unpublished Bill Finger photo 5 of 6

The title of my post way back on 7/21/08, five months after I launched this blog, was “‘New’ Bill Finger photo 1 of 9.”
 
But there were no subsequent posts unveiling photos 2-9.

Until now.

(Less three I published in Bill the Boy Wonder: The Secret Co-Creator of Batman, plus one I have found since.)

Bill and son Fred, Bronx Zoo, 1951 or 1952

Tune in tomorrow to see the sixth and final glimpse of Bill that has never been published.

“New,” previously unpublished Bill Finger photo 4 of 6

The title of my post way back on 7/21/08, five months after I launched this blog, was “‘New’ Bill Finger photo 1 of 9.”
 
But there were no subsequent posts unveiling photos 2-9.

Until now.

(Less three I published in Bill the Boy Wonder: The Secret Co-Creator of Batman, plus one I have found since.)

Bill (right) with sister-in-law Irene Flam, 

Ellis Epstein (Bill’s wife Portia’s grandfather), 

and James Epstein (Bill’s father-in-law), 1950s

Tune in for the next two days to see two more glimpses of Bill that have never been published.

“New,” previously unpublished Bill Finger photo 3 of 6

The title of my post way back on 7/21/08, five months after I launched this blog, was “‘New’ Bill Finger photo 1 of 9.”
 
But there were no subsequent posts unveiling photos 2-9.

Until now.

(Less three I published in Bill the Boy Wonder: The Secret Co-Creator of Batman, plus one I have found since.)

Bill with his first wife Portia, son Fred, and Portia’s father James, 1949

Tune in for the next three days to see three more glimpses of Bill that have never been published.

“New,” previously unpublished Bill Finger photo 2 of 6

The title of my post way back on 7/21/08, five months after I launched this blog, was “‘New’ Bill Finger photo 1 of 9.”
 
But there were no subsequent posts unveiling photos 2-9.

Until now.

(Less three I published in Bill the Boy Wonder: The Secret Co-Creator of Batman, plus one I have found since.)

Bill and his first wife Portia, Provincetown, MA, 1940s

Tune in for the next four days to see four more glimpses of Bill that have never been published.

“New,” previously unpublished Bill Finger photo 1 of 6

Since Bill Finger’s death in 1974, only two photos of him had been commonly published and republished, so people began to say that those were the only two photos of Bill that existed.

Rather they were the only two photos that were known to exist.

No one had looked hard enough yet.

So I set out to remedy that. 

And from seven sources over nine months, I found a bunch more.

The title of my post back on 7/21/08, five months after I launched this blog, was “‘New’ Bill Finger photo 1 of 9.”

But there were no subsequent posts unveiling photos 2-9.

Part of this was oversight.

Part of this was forethought, since I eventually published three of those original nine in Bill the Boy Wonder: The Secret Co-Creator of Batman.

For some time now, I have been intending to reveal the remaining five. What is finally motivating me to do so is that I recently

found

yet 

another.

It has been years since I last uncovered a Finger photo that had been buried in a private collection, but no amount of time will make me forget the high.

I did not uncover this one personally—Bill’s only grandchild Athena did.

Of the six “new” photos I will share here over the next six days, this latest discovery dates back the earliest:

A great photo (and not just because Bill Finger is in it, second from left).

Based on his hair, it’s almost certainly in the 1930s—pre-Batman. It’s almost certainly at Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx, where Bill would golf. (The giveaway—the golf clubs.) 

I don’t know who the other three people are. Do you?

Tune in for the next five days to see five more glimpses of Bill that have never been published.

7/19/14 addendum: Athena just turned up a second new photo this year.

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.

The farthest Bill Finger traveled

Kids are sometimes quick to point out that Batman doesn’t fly. 

Neither did Bill Finger.

He lived in New York most of his life, and as far as we know, usually did not wander too far. We know he vacationed in Provincetown (Cape Cod), MA.

 
We know he took the train to Washington DC when writing for the Army Pictorial Center circa 1969-70; he was apparently thrilled to get Pentagon clearance. 

But he never took a plane anywhere.

The farthest I’ve tracked him is an unlikely destination for an unlikely reason. At one point, probably in the 1950s, Bill went to a seder…in Texas.

Yes, Bill the non-observant Jew celebrated Passover in the Lone Star State—probably not the first you think of when you think matzah and maror.

And on 4/8/13, I went to Texas for the first time since Bill the Boy Wonder: The Secret Co-Creator of Batman came out to speak to the sixth graders at Gregory-Portland Intermediate School in the Corpus Christi suburb of Portland. The district’s theme for the year is superheroes. I was honored to be asked to be a part of it. (They did not know the Bill Finger connection before I came.)

It was the first time I’ve presented flanked by two bodyguards.

Favorite question of the day: “If you didn’t write this book on Bill Finger, do you think anyone else would have?”

Thank you, GPI, for allowing me to symbolically follow in the footsteps of Bill Finger, and for hosting such a lovely visit.

 more evidence of the market for this book

Hey girl, this humor was pinned to board in the teachers’ lounge.

GPI sent me a thick stack of thank-you letters and they contained an unusually large number of irresistible quotables:

• “I can’t believe you went to other states just to get information.”
• “I am now part of the Bill [Finger] army! I will go around and spread the word.”
• “I liked how you had clarity, and great eye contact. Just keep on doing that and you won’t have anything to worry about.”
• “Could you consider writing a book about a superhero piglet? Maybe it could be a winning idea for a children’s series.”
• “It was a privilege to see where the first Superman comic was typed.”
• “from the third kid in the first row”
• “You kinda look like my Uncle, but with hair.”
• “What did you think about us as an audience?”
• “I am sure someday you and I will be famous writers.”
• “You inspired me not just to do your best but also be unique in what I love to do.”
• “The part with the paperweight really teared me up. I almost cried!”
• “Maybe I will write a book about you and you can give me the paperweight?”
• “When my dad was little he loved to watch Superman movies or read comics. I told my dad all the information and he was amazed and I thank you for that.”
• “If they could, I bet Jerry, Joe, and Bill would say thank you.”

All of these either made me laugh or moved me. Especially that last one.

Bill Finger's yearbook photo...

...is not here.

Where you can see it is in the author's note of Bill the Boy Wonder: The Secret Co-Creator of Batman, which is the first time it has appeared in print since the yearbook itself. However, what is not there is the text accompanying it, so that I am posting here:

 
This is from the June 1933 yearbook of the storied DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx. (As you can see in Bill the Boy Wonder, it was not Bill but rather his parents who wanted him to be a doctor. And "CCNY" is City College New York. I was not able to find out if Bill did go on to attend, but I suspect not. It was the Great Depression so I assume he went right to work.)

Astute readers have already noticed why I missed Bill's yearbook entry the first time I looked: he was not yet Bill.

But before I had learned Bill's given name, I thought I knew why I could not find him in any yearbook of the period. My faithful contact at DWC, the incomparable school historian Gerard Pelisson, had told me that some students did not appear in the yearbook because their families could not afford to have a portrait taken.

In 2010, Gerard wrote me "When your book comes out, you are going to have the photo the whole world wants." Though I do think a good number will be interested, he was being generous. In any case, it is now the earliest known photo of Bill...so early that he was still Milton.

Bill Finger in “75 Years of DC Comics”

In November, the coffee table book 75 Years of DC Comics: The Art of Modern Mythmaking by Paul Levitz came out.

© Jeremiah Wilson

It’s far too big for your backpack—and, possibly, your coffee table—yet unfortunately not big enough to properly acknowledge Bill Finger’s substantial role in creating Batman.

Of course, DC doesn’t officially credit Finger.

Yet even previous DC-sanctioned books including Batman: The Complete History (1999) have told the story more fairly.

And granted, in a book of this scope, space for elaboration is at a premium.

Yet “co-creator” (even if that exact term is not used) is hardly a negligible detail.

This language diminishes (practically extinguishes) Finger’s involvement:

 
Further, in stating that editor Vin Sullivan suggested that cartoonist Bob Kane bring in Finger as writer, the book also contradicts every other source on this that I've seen, including Sullivan himself in Alter Ego #27 (8/03):
 

[Who wrote the comics I edited] would have been outside my range of interests. If they [MTN: seemingly meaning Bill Finger and anyone else] were writing for Bob Kane or working with him, I had nothing to do with it. As long as he brought in the completed feature.

And
 

…a lot of the fellas had their own writers, you might say, or writers would get with the artists. I would have nothing to do with them. I would take the finished product. If the finished product was assembled by two or three people, it didn’t matter to me as long as it was a good-looking page.

Jerry Robinson is another who has corroborated this, multiple times; one instance is in his interview in The Comics Journal #271 (10/05): “Nobody knew anything about Bill or myself until later on [MTN: specifically, at least several months after the debut of Batman].”

Therefore, it seems the book is trying to imply that Finger was—from the get-go—a DC work-for-hire with respect to Batman. If true, that would be significant because the estates of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster successfully argued in court that their original Superman strip was not work-for-hire, entitling them to a portion of profits generated by that material.

But, worth repeating, this claim that Sullivan suggested Finger is not true.

Though it doesn't make up for these oversights, the book does contains a Finger photo I’d not seen before, and a stellar one at that—a dinner gathering (circa 1945) of comics luminaries:



Close-up:

Finger is toward the bottom on the left, sporting a bow tie.

Published Finger photos are few and far between—by my obsessive tally, this is only the fifth. (I'm not counting the first of eleven Finger photos I uncovered, which I loaned to Alter Ego for issue #84 [3/09]; in 2012, I will reveal the rest of these “new” Finger photos, divided between my book and this blog.)

4/7/11 update: I recently learned that this photo was previously published in, appropriately enough, the 2008 book The DC Vault.

"New" Bill Finger photo 1 of 9

In honor of...

a) the imminent release of Boys of Steel: The Creators of Superman (7/22/08—tomorrow!)
b) the imminent start of Comic-Con 2008
c) the success of The Dark Knight (a term Bill Finger first used for Batman)

...I am making good on a commitment I made soon after I started this blog in February 2008. I posted a "new" but murky image of Bill Finger (uncredited co-creator of Batman), saying that around now I would begin to post the nine better "new" photos of him I found while researching a book. Only three photos of Finger have previously been published, one only once, in 1941.

Here's the deal: linking to these images is more than appreciated but please do not re-post or use any of them in any way without permission. If anyone breaks the deal, no more photos! Given the subject is Bill Finger, I'm sure the unspoken parallel is clear.

First, to wade in slow, a photo of one of Finger's aunts and his mother on a beach in the 1940s:

photo courtesy of Bill Finger's first cousin

Now "new" Bill Finger photo 1 of 9 (I don't officially count the one from that previous post since it's virtually unrecognizable), also on a beach and also probably from the 1940s:

photo courtesy of Bill Finger's granddaughter

That's Portia, his first wife, with him. The scene gives a wee look at a side of Finger's personality that hasn't been seen; they are hamming for the camera.

And yes, the second Finger photo I've shown is also the second in which he's topless. (I actually have a third topless Finger shot, which happens to be the best of all the "new" photos, topless or otherwise.)

Rebuilding Bill Finger

Let's take a side trip from Cleveland to the Bronx, from Metropolis to Gotham.

Even before I sold Boys of Steel, I knew what I wanted to write about next: Batman. More precisely, the creation of Batman. Even more precisely, the co-creator of Batman whose name is not on every Batman story.

Bill Finger.

Fragments of his story have been told, notably in Men of Tomorrow. But like the hero he molded, so much about Bill remains unprinted: his upbringing, his personal life, the truth about his death, the family he left behind. He died in 1974, too soon to see fandom unite in his honor and demand what they feel is justice: a co-creator credit—or at least more than he's currently getting. (The realities of that will be the topic of future posts.)

I talked to or e-mailed with more than 200 people during an intensive year of research; I've got the Palm entries to prove it. Many of them knew Bill personally. Some, such as Bill's old friend and champion Arnold Drake, have since passed away.

I staked out his former residences, scrolled through decades of New York Times obituaries and microfiched phone books, cold-called every Finger in Florida.

In a series of increasingly more exciting moments, I found the Bill Finger no fan has yet discovered.

I found the one time Bill was quoted in The New Yorker.

I found his only known handwritten note, including signature (more revealing than the 1963 promise to Julius Schwartz that he would not ask for advance checks).

And I found the family no writers before me had talked to, let alone known about. Not first cousins—though I did find two of those, and incredibly nice ones at that—but rather intimates:

• His longtime writing partner and friend and class A gentleman Charles Sinclair.
• His heretofore unmentioned second wife.
• His sister—who was still alive at age 88 when I found her a year ago this week.
• His only granddaughter, who is a few years younger than I am.

If you know anything about Bill's immediate family, this last one will make no sense to you. Yet.

This is my plan: as we get close to the August publication of Boys of Steel, I will begin to reveal these never-before-heard stories about the first son of Gotham, Bill Finger.

You've probably seen the only two photographs of him that are perpetually recycled (these scans from Batman: The Complete History and DC Comics: A Celebration of the World's Favorite Comic Book Heroes, respectively):

© DC Comics

There's a third, a grainy photo of him from Green Lantern #1 (1940), but that's rarely seen.

More than a couple comics historians told me with authority that those are the only Finger photos in existence. What they meant is those are the only known Finger photos in existence. There are more. You just have to ask everyone you talk to.

Of those 200+ people, seven sent me never-published photos of Bill, totalling ten "new" images at Bill Finger from the early 1930s to the late 1960s (even one of his desk). All but one are better quality than the three that have been published.

Here's the one that is not:

I will share more when the time is right.

3/25/08 addendum: I forgot to mention that I got this photo from Bill's second wife. It's the only one she had. "We weren't photo people," she said.