In the latest Comic Book Legends Revealed,discover how Mort Weisinger tried to prove Bob Kane wasn't drawing his Batman comic book stories
Welcome to Comic Book Legends Revealed! This is the eight hundred and sixty-third 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:
Mort Weisinger tried to prove that Bob Kane wasn't actually drawing his Batman comics when Kane added Lew Sayre Schwartz as his ghost in 1948
STATUS:
True
A while back, I wrote about the peculiar situation when it came to Bob Kane's ghosts on the Batman comic books heading into the 1960s. The majority of the artwork being done for Batman comic books throughout the 1950s and 1960s was by "Bob Kane," but obviously, for that much artwork to be produced, no one believed that Bob Kane was doing it all himself. As it turned out, by the mid-1950s, Kane wasn't doing it at ALL, with Sheldon Moldoff doing ALL of the work that was credited to Kane, but suffice it to say that DC editorial knew Kane couldn't be doing it all, but at the same time, no one really cared enough to look into it any further, with changes only being made when DC first worked out an arrangement for Kane to do less work on the series, and then finally worked out a deal to stop having to buy any more artwork from "Kane" in 1967 (in a future legend, I'll detail an amusing story where Julius Schwartz had some fun with Kane's lack of involvement on the Batman comic book in those years). .
WHY DID BOB KANE HAVING "GHOSTS" HURT DC?
Bob Kane famously worked out a sweetheart deal with DC (then National) where the company, in effect, had to buy as much of his Batman work as he could produce, and at a particularly high page rate (I mean, I don't think it was exorbitant or anything like that, it was just more than the company was paying other artists).. It was part of a general arrangement the company signed with Kane that almost certainly revolved avoid Kane agreeing not to ever to sue DC for the copyright of Batman, unlike Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster with Superman.
Kane had mostly stopped drawing the Batman comic books to concentrate on the Batman newspaper strip, and Kane had a good deal on the comic strip, as well, so it all worked out for Kane to do the strip instead of the comics (and, like any comic book artist of his generation, a guy like Kane would have much preferred to be a comic strip artist than a comic book artist if he had the choice). Once the comic strip ended, though, Kane had to go back to drawing the comics around 1945.
And Kane continued to produce Batman stories for DC, roughly one a month...
How much of these stories were being saved by Kane's inkers? I have no idea....
Eventually, though, Kane came up with the idea of hiring the talented artist Lew Sayre Schwartz to draw the stories FOR him (with Kane still providing the Batman and Robin figures in the stories, to, I guess, A. prove that Kane was still drawing the stories and B. Perhaps just to make Kane feel better about this deal? I really don't know his motivations as to continue to draw the figures during this era). Schwartz was a much faster artist than Kane, and so now, suddenly, instead of Kane producing 12 stories a year, Schwartz/Kane were doing TWENTY stories a year, and Kane's contract provided that DC accept as many pages as he provided, so now suddenly DC had to pay out a good deal more than it was previously paying.
HOW DID MORT WEISINGER TRY TO PROVE KANE WASN'T DRAWING BATMAN ANYMORE?
This didn't sit well with the editor of the Batman titles at the time, Mort Weisinger, so, as Schwartz detailed to Jon B. Cooke in an excellent interview in TwoMorrows' Alter Ego #51, Weisinger would continually try to call Schwartz to try to get him to admit that he was the reason why Kane's output was now suddenly practically doubled. Schwartz never gave him the time of the day, in great part because he was making out well in this arrangement, even if the arrangement benefited Kane the most (as, again, the rates were high enough that Kane giving Schwartz a 20% cut was still better money for Schwartz than if he was working by himself.
Jack Schiff then took over as the editor on the Batman titles, and presumably he just didn't care either way. When Schwartz quit the gig, Sheldon Moldoff took over as "Kane," only now Moldoff was doing ALL of the drawings (so no more Batman and Robin figures by Kane). Again, Schiff didn't seem to care one way or the other by this point.
But for a moment there, DC really did care about Kane using a ghost!
Thanks to Jon B. Cooke and the late, great Lew Sayre Schwartz, for the information!
CHECK OUT A TV LEGENDS REVEALED!
In the latest TV Legends Revealed - Was a Mickey Mouse cartoon the last thing aired on BBC-TV before World War II started and then the first thing that aired on BBC-TV when service started up again after the war ended?
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 cronb01@aol.com. 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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