The Dark Knights Ghost
History is haunted with the ghosts of unknown artists. Takeo Nagamatsu created the very first superhero, Ogon Batto, and was buried by it. Ub Iwerks drew Mickey Mouse, and was buried by him. Two men who built IP worth fortunes, now largely lost to history. Today we are headed to Gotham City.
That's right Batman, we all know just how prolific this DC character is and well he has at least one skeleton hidden in that bat cave. Bob Kane is widely acknowledged as the sole creator of Batman. As it turns out, it was a dynamic duo that created the character. The sidekick likely responsible for the lion's share of it. The ghost is named Bill Finger.
Bill Finger initially found work as a shoe salesman. At some point he met Bob Kane at a party. The duo actually first worked together on a comic called Rusty and his Pals, which, when I looked at it, appears to be Archie meets Pirate Adventure. Finger worked as the ghost writer on this project. After working on Rusty, Kane wanted to start a new project.
You'll have heard this before, similar to how Disney had a rough idea that Iwerks fleshed out fully. It's the same thing with Bill Finger, Kane had an idea for a character named Batman. He'd even done a rough sketch of what he was envisioning. Finger recalled the initial sketch: "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" Kinda like Superman with actual bat wings and a rope. If you have actual bat wings, it makes you wonder why he'd need a rope.. It's a good thing Finger added his input, a hooded mask with pointed ears, gloves, substituting the red color for grey.
He was also influential in designing Batman's most widely known nemesis The Joker. Finger remarked that Kane had initially drawn the villain as a clown. Finger is the one who affixed the Joker's eternal grin, being inspired by Victor Hugo's "The Man Who Laughs". Although Kane contests it, Finger also asserts he created two of Batman's most enduring villains: The Penguin and The Scarecrow. Aside from the Villains, Finger also conjured Batman's Alter Ego Bruce Wayne, and Gotham City itself.
If we look at Bill Finger's contributions as a whole, it's fair to say he was a defining factor in its development. He crafted all the parts that create the Batman as we know him. Imagine how lame he would've turned out if Finger would've just gone with Kane's initial design. Kane knew it, too. In a private interview in the 1980s he admitted Finger was responsible for somewhere between 50 and 75 percent of all the creativity in Batman. He just never said it in public, where for decades he insisted Finger was nothing more than hired help. Officially a ghost writer, he wasn't entitled to any formal credit for his work, and likely received far less pay relative to the impact his mind had on the project. This is common for the working artist. You are essentially a machine for the studio.
Bill Finger died in 1974, in relative obscurity. He was never given any official credit for his contributions to Batman until a full 41 years later in 2015.
The model of the corporation using the artist as essentially a production machine is well established. It's strange that artists are mourning the loss of jobs in such structures, when they are no longer needed at all. If artists could see that it's easier to create new systems of distribution for their creations, and to secure their ownership rights, they will not become another unknown IP ghost.