At yesterday’s opening of The Batman Exhibit (which will serve as part of the Warner Bros. VIP Studio Tour), DC Entertainment’s co-publisher (and my personal favourite artist of all time) Jim Lee shared his thoughts on Batman as a character, (often uncredited) co-creator Bill Finger and – perhaps most excitingly of all (to me at least) – his upcoming return to the world of Batman comics!

Check out his answers, courtesy of Comic Book Resources.

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On Batman’s impact as a fictional character;

How many other fictional characters have had as many stories created about them? Batman’s got to be pretty far up on that list, given the number of Batman books that come out, and the number of years of publication. Sherlock Holmes, limited run. James Bone limited run. Even Harry Potter, as big as that franchise is. There are tens of thousands of stories featuring Batman.

On Batman co-creator Bill Finger, in particular his cover credit on the upcoming new edition of Detective Comics #27 set to be released on ‘Batman Day’;

Speaking specifically of that particular cover, we always list the writers’ credits on the cover, and he scripted that issue.

No one is denying Bill’s massive contributions to the DC mythology — not just Batman. It’s never been our take that it was only Bob Kane. But the credit by Bob Kane, that’s a very specific thing, and has been around since the creation of Batman, over 75 years ago. It’s hard to talk about this publicly other than, we love what Bill Finger has contributed to the mythology, and we’ve always acknowledged and compensated him and his estate for that work.

On Finger’s recent credit

And, on what he’s going to be doing next once his run on Superman Unchained (with Scott Snyder) comes to an end;

I will leak something to you: It’s something Batman-related. But I actually have several projects lined up. There are several projects I’ve committed to before that I want to wrap up. But there are some really interesting new projects with some creators I’ve never worked with before that I hope to line up and announce by the end of the year. But I’m going to have to wrap up “Superman Unchained” first. I don’t think the fans want to hear what I’m doing next until after that.

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The writer of this piece was: Craig Neilson (aka Ceej)
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