10 Shocking Cover Ups DC Comics Wants You To Forget
8. Screwing Over Bill Finger
If you have a recent Batman book nearby, open it up to see who is credited with creating Batman. If the book was printed recently, it's going to say the character was created by Bob Kane with Bill Finger, but for more than 70 years, the only name given credit belonged to Kane.
DC Comics has never been great of giving credit where credit was due, and that's especially true in Finger's case. He was responsible for designing the look, which has remained mostly untouched since the very beginning. Kane did come up with the character initially, but as Finger once described his original concept, it's not one that came to fruition:
"[Kane] had an idea for a character called 'Batman', and he'd like me to see the drawings. I went over to Kane's, and he had drawn a character who looked very much like Superman with kind of ... reddish tights, I believe, with boots ... no gloves, no gauntlets ... with a small domino mask, swinging on a rope. He had two stiff wings that were sticking out, looking like bat wings. And under it was a big sign ... BATMAN."
Finger offered up the cape instead of wings, gloves, and he removed the color red. DC didn't credit Finger for his help in creating the character, and that was the status quo for decades. Finally, in 2015, which was 41 years after Finger's death, his family campaigned to have his work recognized. They succeeded, and now the creation of Batman is credited to Bob Kane and Bill Finger in all major DC works.