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.

75 years ago today, the Boys of Steel changed pop culture

A week that brought horror in Boston and shame in Washington also includes an unlikely positive: according to court records, it was 75 years ago today when Superman debuted in Action Comics #1.

Thanks to the Boys of Steel for changing everything, even still: this month inaugurates an (admittedly clunky) tweak to the credit line in Superman stories: 

 from Justice League #19 (first appeared in Action Comics #19, 4/3/13)

If you think it trivializes real-life struggles to juxtapose them with a fictional character, go back to 1938: when America was caught between two of its greatest challenges (the Depression and WWII), Superman brought hope literally to millions...

It couldn't hurt to give the sky more than a passing glance today.

Jewish Museum of Maryland

On 3/31/13, I had the honor of speaking about the mystery behind the majority creator of Batman at the Jewish Museum of Maryland.

The museum hosted the traveling Jewish-creators-of-superheroes exhibit, which includes a Bill Finger script that Jerry Robinson donated. The bio on this placard gets a few details wrong (starting with the city in which Bill was born), but I am thrilled that such an exhibit exists:

Note that address.

Jerry Robinson

The only three celebrities

Having lived in New York for seven years and Los Angeles for almost three, I have come across a few celebrities (not counting musicians at concerts, participants in my "Super '70s and 80s" interview series, famous faces at fancy functions, or fellow kidlit authors). I must admit that I have not kept in touch with any of them.

But I did get my picture taken with three (only one of whom was in NYC or LA at the time). How is this for an unlikely trio?

Elle MacPherson, 1991, New Haven (I had just had my wisdom teeth out)

Dan Aykroyd, 1994, Los Angeles (I had just had a bad haircut, apparently)

Sumner Redstone, 1994 (yes, he counts!), Waltham, MA

Some of the ones who got away (italics = now deceased)...

New York:

• Donald Trump (I held door for him...at Trump Tower) 1994
• Adrian Zmed (supermarket) 1995
• Ric Ocasek (street) circa 1995
• Jennifer Aniston (street) circa 1996
• Abe Vigoda (restaurant) 1996
• Kevin Spacey (hotel lobby) 2002
• Christopher Lloyd (sidewalk café) circa 2002
• Allison Mack (street) 2006
• Paul Simon (street) 2007
• Spike Lee (driving) 2008
• Tyra Banks (I held door for her at Barney's) 2008
• Josh Hartnett (coming out of A&E) 2010
• Rick Springfield (BookExpo America)
• Emma Thompson (near the Plaza Hotel) 2016

Los Angeles:

• Scott Valentine (supermarket) 1997 or 1998 (but see 2/28/18 below)
• Michael Keaton (going into tanning place) 1998
• Paul Reiser 1998
• Norm MacDonald (outside a cinema) 1998
• Donald Sutherland (post office) 1998
• Mark Harmon 1998
• George Clooney (restaurant; table next to me) circa 1999
• Cindy Crawford (same restaurant, same night!) circa 1999
• Woody Harrelson (driving) circa 1999
• Barry Manilow (in a glossy stage outfit…in a Borders) circa 1999
• Michael Crighton (also in a bookstore) circa 1999
• Zach Galifianakis (Tanner's Coffee, Culver City) 2018

on a plane/in an airport:

• Al Gore circa 2002
• Ice Cube 2007
• Donny Osmond 2008
• LeAnn Rimes 2012
• Michael Shannon 2015

other:

• Debbie Gibson (at a CT amusement park where I worked) 1989
• Dustin Diamond (Las Vegas hotel lobby) 2007
• Lindsay Lohan (Las Vegas restaurant) 2008
• Micky Dolenz (DC hotel bar) 2012

Will you be next?

8/13/13 addendum: 

Huey Lewis, Wolf Trap, Virginia; he is only my favorite of all time

2/13/14 addendum:

Ally Sheedy, New York

5/5/14 addendum:

Kevin Smith, New York (selfie!)

12/8/17 addendum:

Kevin Conroy (Batman in Batman: The Animated Series), New York

2/28/18 addendum:

Scott Valentine (Nick on Family Ties), Los Angeles

11/7/23 addendum:

Henry Winkler (and my lifelong friend Kevin), Washington DC

8/13/26 addendum:

three of the four siblings who make up the Irish band the Corrs, 

of which I've been a fan since their 1996 debut;

concert, Jerez, Spain

Andrea Corr

Jim Corr

Sharon Corr 

(along with my wife Daniela in red and sister-in-law Stephanie)

Here are figures from '70s-'80s entertainment, most of whom are not household names, I interviewed, then got to meet in person.

The Pulitzer and “Bill the Boy Wonder”

Here is a photo of Junot Diaz, winner of the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, posing near Bill the Boy Wonder: The Secret Co-Creator of Batman…and numerous other titles he is also not paying attention to:

Comics Alliance

Congratulations to today's Pulitzer Prize winners.

Kevin Smith tweeted me about Bill Finger

Now word is really spreading:

I wanna get Fingered on FAT MAN ON BATMAN. Hear @marctnobleman is just the man to do it! amazon.com/Bill-Boy-Wonde… Wanna talk Bill Finger, sir?
— KevinSmith (@ThatKevinSmith) April 15, 2013

Another tweeter responded that he'd rather be Fingered than Kaned. Ain't that the truth (not something Kane was known for...).

The date of a paperweight

As an author of nonfiction, authenticity is my co-pilot. But co-pilots make mistakes.

Half a year after Bill the Boy Wonder: The Secret Co-Creator of Batman came out, I realized that my determination to visually include a particular detail obscured the possibility that I was including that accurate detail in an inaccurate period.

Among my most treasured possessions is my lone possession that Bill Finger used to own: a bronze-colored scarab paperweight his second wife Lyn purchased for him at the American Museum of Natural History.

I asked Ty Templeton, artist of Bill the Boy Wonder, to show the paperweight in a scene of Bill at his desk, and the illustration was based on a photo of Bill’s actual desk circa mid- to late-1940s.

However, Bill and Lyn were not married at that time; in fact, they may not have even met yet.

So the paperweight is an authentic detail…only a decade or two too soon.

Though not a goof that will jeopardize the integrity of the book as a whole, it did make me shake my head for a moment. However, it’s such a lovely little piece of the real Bill that, even had I realized the chronological misstep before we went to print, I think I would have left it in.

A flourish like that is worth its (paper)weight in gold (or bronze).

IRA 2013: Invasion of Nonfiction Picture Book Authors

Chris Barton.

Shana Corey.

Brian Floca.

Megan McCarthy.

Me. (I am still in alphabetical order this way.)

On 4/21/13, from 3 to 5:45 p.m. (yes, almost three hours!), at the International Reading Association Convention in San Antonio, we five authors, moderated by Susannah Richards, Associate Professor of Education at Eastern Connecticut State University, will panel-discuss the importance of unconventional nonfiction...the stories that are not yet widely known, the people who are not textbook names.

Please join us. This group has never assembled before, and may never again. Therefore—and speaking of nonfiction—history will be witnessed. Unconventional nonfiction will be glorified.

And, of course, books will be signed:

I am signing two more times on Monday 4/22/13: 

• Anderson's, booth 1003, 10-11 a.m.
• Overlooked Books booth, booth 2519, 11 a.m.-12 p.m.

Facebook is also Findbook

When authors need to track down specific people to interview, quite possibly the best tool these days is Facebook. I’ve been using it for this purpose for about five years. (Funnily, in 2007, I reached the most pivotal figure I would uncover in my Bill Finger research…via MySpace.)

Sometimes Facebook instantly leads to direct hits. More often it takes some detective work to wend your way to who you want, especially with common names (like Howard Murphy) or with people who aren’t on Facebook under their own names, not to mention people with some degree of celebrity.

Facebook may not always get you all the way to your target, but it sure can help shorten the route quickly. The person you seek may not be on Facebook—or may not even be alive—but people who know that person are…and they may agree to put you in touch (if the person is indeed alive).

Looking for more than one person (i.e. members of a former band) is almost easier; there is a greater chance that any potential contact will know at least one from the group. This is, for example, how I found some of the Sea World skiers.

In such a case, finding only one can be all the lead you need; the first can then point you toward others s/he knew, and the leapfrogging begins. You can also skim his/her friends list for other names on your scavenger hunt.

If I don’t hear back from certain people, I may randomly ask some of their friends if they would help. You do encounter a lot of non-responders (unfortunately, there is sometimes a perception that a person in my position is after more than he says—the telemarketer syndrome). But as mentioned, it takes only one hit.

Speaking of which…

Recently, on a quest to find certain people, I tried using Facebook in a different way. This way is less time-consuming, but also riskier.

And my first experiment with it was a resounding success.

Facebook helped me find two women who had non-speaking roles in a 1984 music video—and whose names I didn’t know.

I’d been searching for them on and off for several weeks without luck. So on the morning of 2/27/13, I simply posted a photo of each woman and asked if any of my 1,800 Facebook friends knew either of them, or even just either name. I also asked people to share this query. And they did.

Within three hours, I had both names. Within three more hours, I had contact info for both. I was astounded, not to mention grateful. The power of social media grows ever more staggering.

So why is this a risky approach to research?  

One reason: it is hard to keep your project-in-progress confidential when you publicly poll almost everyone you know. 

Another: people often ask favors of their friends on Facebook—donate here, sign this, forward that—and many of those causes are truly worthy. This one, however, while part of my job, is not exactly a matter of life and death. I don’t want to barge into people’s feeds with a pursuit that can be seen as frivolous by comparison. Luckily in this case, many people were willing to help, and as I promised, it took very little time to do so.

Not everyone is online. And not everyone online is easily findable, even when you know his/her name. (And not everyone findable wants to be found, but that’s another story.)

Yet Facebook is a game-changer when it comes to looking for (nameless) needles in haystacks. For all the talk of how social networking sites are turning us into real-world strangers, Facebook does shrink the gap between human connections. Call it eighteen hundred degrees of separation.

As for why I was searching for two people from a 1984 video, stayed tuned (and see hint in the Labels)...

Readers choosing book covers

Best-selling author Elizabeth Gilbert took to the net to determine which of three covers would grace her latest, a novel called The Signature of All Things.

(The winner.)

I love when we do this. Not like it happens very much at all.

I sort of did it for Vanished: True Stories of the Missing; I had only one cover to show, but I was asking for readers’ opinions. (Namely, if it was too creepy.)

I also sort of did it with Thirty Minutes Over Oregon; that time I had seven covers to show (one of which is immediately below), but I was asking for readers to weigh in not on those covers but on the project as a whole.

And if given the chance, I’d love to make like Gilbert in the future, since the web allows publishing to be more collaborative than ever. Readers as co-creators.

Do you know of any other authors who polled the public on a choice of book covers?

Reinventing white superheroes as nonwhite

In 2005, I wrote what is, so far, my only magazine cover story.

The Weekly Reader publication Know Your World Extra ran it.

Hard-hitting, it was not. But it did have a good angle. 

The article addressed the trend (still in effect) of comic book companies (particularly the one with which I’m most familiar, DC Comics) taking the name of an established white superhero and creating a new, nonwhite version.

Firestorm became black.

Blue Beetle became Hispanic.

The Atom became Asian.

The Crimson Avenger became (no, not crimson) black…and female. Now female in the New 52: the Atom (Hispanic, too), Shadow-Thief, Wotan...

Numerous other examples exist.

The Justice League of All of America.

Election Day surprise

On 11/6/12, AKA Election Day in America, I made my second appearance at the annual conference of New York City school librarians. 

The day’s duties comprised a presentation on Bill the Boy Wonder: The Secret Co-Creator of Batman (in the city where it took place), a book signing, and author speed dating. I’ve long wanted to do that. In this case, it was six or seven tables of librarians, six or seven rotating authors, sixty minutes of madcap Q&A.

The conference was held in a high school and the book sales/signings were in the gym. I was thrilled to see that a gym teacher there not only gets blood pumping but also gets minds whirring: s/he has the students write. In gym class.

If that had been part of my high school gym class, maybe I would not have been so anxious to be there.

Harvey Awards 2013: a beg for a vote

The Harvey Awards are the only industry awards both nominated and selected by comic book pros.

If this sounds like you, please consider Bill the Boy Wonder: The Secret Co-Creator of Batman for these categories:

• Best Original Graphic Publication for Younger Readers
• Best Biographical, Historical, or Journalistic Presentation

And please spread the word to your own kind.

Vote by 5/6/13.
 
I would be most grateful. If you don’t believe me, check back for the gushy blog post as proof.

Last thing I remember winning was at my high school graduation party. It was a cheap, plastic hot dog cooker. It did not involve a vote.

The hot dog cooker, perched inexplicably on the hood of my old car.

Bill Finger returns to radio (again)

On 1/11/13, at 11:30 p.m., I was interviewed for the second time by a radio show out of New York called Destinies: The Voice of Science Fiction.

The topic was Bill the Boy Wonder: The Secret Co-Creator of Batman; though Batman is not sci-fi, the show host, Dr. Howard Margolin, is good to me. This is the second time he has had me on...and my Boy Wonder illustrator, Ty Templeton, beat me to it by, oh, 21 years. Yes, he was first interviewed by Howard in 1987. 

• Bill the Boy Wonder interview 1/11/13
• Boys of Steel: The Creators of Superman interview 10/10/08
• Ty Templeton interview 8/21/87

Thank you again, Howard.

Highest known rank on Amazon for "Bill the Boy Wonder"

The week after my appearance on NPR (August 2012), I ritualistically checked my Amazon ranking for Bill the Boy Wonder: The Secret Co-Creator of Batman.

The highest rank I saw:

It may never go higher. But then there’s the thing with Batman. He’s a loose cannon. Unpredictable. Could sneak up on you and you wouldn’t know it till your front two teeth were whirligigging across the sidewalk.

Delivering Chris Crutcher’s keynote

You are a middle school teacher.

You signed up for the Kennesaw (GA) State University Children’s Literature Conference.

You are excited for the three author keynotes spread over the course of a day.

You are especially excited for the first keynote—Chris Crutcher.

But only after you get there do you learn you will miss Crutcher.

Because even Chris Crutcher gets sick sometimes.

*    *    *

I was honored to be asked to deliver one of the other Kennesaw keynotes. The first day of the conference (3/20/13) was aimed at elementary educators, the second at middle and secondary educators. Three keynotes were scheduled per day; mine was on the first day.

The night before, Bryan Gillis, the infinitely thoughtful conference organizer, emailed to ask if I would also be willing to fill in for a keynoter on the second day. While en route, Chris Crutcher (whom I’ve not met) had started to feel unwell and was advised to turn back.

When you’re asked to pinch-hit for a legend in your industry, you do two things:

1. Say you’re not worthy.
2. Say yes.

The first day, I was the second of the three keynotes. I focused on two fliers—Superman and Nobuo Fujita.

The second day, I was the last of the three keynotes. The topic that time was Batman.

Being the last keynote of the day is typically challenging; people are tired and eager to go.

Being the last keynote of the conference amplifies the challenge.

And being the last keynote of the conference when people were expecting an A-list author is a challenge wrapped up in a Come to Georgia moment.

But with Batman on my side, I took on that challenge with enthusiasm.

And the audience was most gracious. (It helped that Bryan gave me one of the most humbling intros I can recall receiving.)

Plus I got to see my photo inside a waterfall:

Even before my first keynote, Chris was feeling better, which I was relieved to hear. I’m sorry I didn’t get to meet him but did get to meet three other authors and spend time getting to know a fourth I already knew.

Thank you to Bryan and his wife Nancy for their tireless efforts, genuine interest, and trusting manner. Thank you to the conference attendees for not running me off the stage—and for expressing considerable support for my work, notably my Fujita project.
 

 
And with full respect, thank you to Chris Crutcher for the opportunity you didn’t plan nor want to give me. I’ll sub for you anytime…though I’d rather meet you.

Ad for new magazine called..."Nickelodeon"

In 1990, an ad that ran in comic books announced the launch of a magazine based on a TV channel...

Just over a decade later, I began to write for that magazine, and continued doing so until it was canceled almost a decade after that, in 2009.

I love discovering modern artifacts like this, especially when they relate to an institution whose creators were charmingly unaware of the cultural impact they were about to unleash.