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BOB KANE
KANE, BOB (1916- ) He began drawing for comic books in the middle 1930's and did a variety of features, both serious and humorous, but Kane will always be best known for cocreating Batman in 1939.
Born in the Bronx, he studied at the Art Students League and Cooper Union. Kane began his professional career in 1936, drawing a funny feature for a short-lived comic book titled Wow! The editor was Jerry Iger and when the Eisner-Iger shop was formed the following year, the 21-year-old Kane was invited to join. He drew gag cartoons, under such titles as Jest Laffs, and a comedy-adventure strip called Peter Pupp for Jumbo Comics. In the Pupp feature, which was inspired by Floyd Gottfredson's Mickey Mouse newspaper strip, Kane first dealt with elements he'd be handling more seriously in Batman. Pete was a daring little fellow, and a typical four--page sequence had him going up in a fighter plane to combat a giant robot controlled by a satanic villain with one eye in the middle of his forehead. Kane also assisted Iger on Bobby, a kid filler page that ran in Famous funnies.
His first sales to DC were also humorous, one- and two-page fillers. There were Professor Doolittle, a pantomime effort for Adventure Comics, Ginger Snap, about a wise little girl, for More Fun, and Oscar the Gumshoe for Detective. Kane also began trying his hand at more serious fare. In his entry in Jerry Bails' Who's Who of American Comic Books Kane listed the artists who had a major influence on him as Alex Raymond, Billy DeBeck, and Milton Caniff. His first serious feature, Rusty and his pals, showed the Caniff influence. It started in Adventure in 1938and dealt with three boys, Rusty, Specs, and Tubby, and their Pat Ryan-type mentor, Steve Carter. Like Caniff's Terry, Rusty and company tangled with pirates and sinister Orientals. Kane's drawing was cartoony on the early episodes, but he grew a bit more serious as Rusty progressed, even emulating Caniff's style of inking.
The scripts on his first adventurous ventures were provided by Kane's Bronx neighbor Bill Finger. Two years older than Kane and working as a shoe salesman, finger was a dedicated reader of pulp fiction and a movie fan. After the two met at a party, they decided to collaborate. They also produced Clip Carson, which dealt with a soldier of fortune, for Action Comics. And for detective Comics, starting in the spring of 1939, there was Batman.
Kane's early work on Batman had a distinctive look that fit the melodramatic nighttime in the big city stories he and Finger liked to tell. As his old high school chum, Will Eisner, had done, though on a smaller scale, Kane set up a shop of his own early on to meet the increasing demand for Batman and Robin material. Finger was the chief writer and youthful Jerry Robinson the chief assistant artist. Others who worked on the art over the years were George Roussos, Charlie Paris, Jack Burnley, Lew Schwartz, and Sheldon Moldoff.
Kane left comics in the late 1960's, about the same time that the Batman television show left the air. He has also been involved with TV animation- Courageous Cat, Cool McCool, etc.- and has dabbled in gallery painting of the pop art sort. He was associated with the phenomenally successful 1989 Batman movie in a public relations capacity.
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