See How Julius Schwartz Messed With Bob Kane When Kane Was Still ‘Drawing’ Batman
In the latest Comic Book Legends Revealed, look at how Julius Schwartz once messed with Bob Kane when they were working on Batman together
Welcome to Comic Book Legends Revealed! This is the eight hundred and sixty-eighth installment where we examine three comic book legends and determine whether they are true or false. As usual, there will be three posts, one for each of the three legends. Click here for the first legend in this installment. Click here for the second legend in this installment.
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COMIC LEGEND:
Julius Schwartz once messed with Bob Kane's inability to make corrections to artwork he claimed to be his.
STATUS:
True
As you likely know by now, even if you're just a regular reader of Comic Book Legends Revealed, the co-creator of Batman, Bob Kane, eventually stopped drawing Batman comic book stories, choosing instead to hire other artists to draw the comic book stories for him, and then he would submit them to DC as though Kane himself drew them. This was because Kane had a special deal with DC that required DC to buy as many stories as Kane could submit, and pay him at a high rate. So the rate was high enough for Kane to pay someone else an above-average page rate (or if not above-average, at least decent enough for the constant steady work to be worth it) to do the pages for him. When he started doing this with Lew Sayre Schwartz, Kane would at least draw the Batman and Robin figures in each story (with Schwartz leaving space on the pages for Kane to draw them), but by the time Sheldon Moldoff took over, Kane wasn't doing any of the art at all.
In 1964, Julius Schwartz took over editing duties on Batman and Detective Comics from Jack Schiff and insisted that the artwork be modified to be more modern (as Moldoff, as Kane, had been drawing in the same Kane-esque style for a decade), and eventually, Schwartz and DC worked out a deal where "Kane" just wouldn't do any more artwork for DC.
DID DC EDITORIAL BELIEVE THAT BOB KANE WAS STILL DRAWING BATMAN COMICS?
As I pointed out in a Comic Book Legends Revealed from earlier this year, Sheldon Moldoff believed that no one at DC actually knew Kane was no longer drawing the comics, but it is obviously a tricky question. A number of DC employees claimed that they knew for sure, while some said that they didn't know at all. Mark Evanier asked DC editor George Kashdan about it, and I think that this was the best take on the whole thing, "No one thought Kane did it all or even most of it. But Kane had this contract, and it was easier to just do 'Don't ask, don't tell.' As long as the pages came in on time, which they almost always did, no one cared. I guess we figured Shelly was doing some of it and weren't shocked to hear he was doing all of it."
My pal, Will Murray, the great comic book and pulp fiction historian, noted that he had talked to Moldoff about it, and he insisted that Jack Schiff did not know, and would even give Moldoff "Kane" pages for Moldoff to ink, without any hint that he was asking Moldoff to ink himself.
Julius Schwartz, though, had enough doubts that he famously messed with Kane.
HOW DID JULIUS SCHWARTZ MESS WITH BOB KANE?
Mark Evanier got the story from Schwartz himself, and it goes a little like this:
One time when Bob Kane dropped off pages, I asked him for a quick revision on one panel. Batman was punching someone and I wanted it to be a Marvel-style punch with a big fist coming right out at the reader. Bob said, "Okay, I'll take the page home and fix it and get it back to you tomorrow." By now, I knew he was going to have some assistant redo it so I decided to have a little fun with him. I said, "No, I need to send this story off to the letterer right away. Just sit down at a drawing table down the hall and redo the panel. He was turning pale. He said, "No, I need my own drawing table and my own art supplies to work." I said, "Come on. It's just one fist. The great Bob Kane should be able to knock that out in two minutes."
I kept after him until he finally agreed to do it. He took the page and went off down the hall to where there were some drawing tables for artists to work at. It took a half-hour or so but he finally came back with the page and the fist was perfect. He did a real good job. I was impressed until later, I found out what happened. He sat there for twenty minutes, erasing and redrawing, erasing and redrawing. Finally, he paid Murphy Anderson ten bucks to redraw it for him.
Again, that doesn't mean that Schwartz felt that Kane wasn't doing ANY of the work, but he was pretty sure that Kane's involvement was minimal at best, but even he would probably have been surprised to learn that it was NON-EXISTENT.
Thanks to Mark Evanier, Will Murray and the late Sheldon Moldoff, George Kashdan and Julius Schwartz for the information.
CHECK OUT A MOVIE LEGENDS REVEALED!
In the latest Movie Legends Revealed – Did Bruce Lee leave Hollywood for Hong Kong because he was so irked at not being cast in the Kung Fu TV series?
MORE LEGENDS STUFF!
OK, that's it for this installment!
Thanks to Brandon Hanvey for the Comic Book Legends Revealed logo, which I don't even actually anymore, but I used it for years and you still see it when you see my old columns, so it's fair enough to still thank him, I think.
Feel free (heck, I implore you!) to write in with your suggestions for future installments! My e-mail address is [email protected]. And my Twitter feed is http://twitter.com/brian_cronin, so you can ask me legends there, as well! Also, if you have a correction or a comment, feel free to also e-mail me. CBR sometimes e-mails me with e-mails they get about CBLR and that's fair enough, but the quickest way to get a correction through is to just e-mail me directly, honest. I don't mind corrections. Always best to get things accurate!
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