Review: Bill the Boy Wonder: The Secret Co-Creator of Batman by Marc Tyler Nobleman

Hardcover, n.pag.
Published 2012
Acquired August 2012
Read May 2013

Bill the Boy Wonder: The Secret Co-Creator of Batman

by Marc Tyler Nobleman
illustrated by Ty Templeton

Bill the Boy Wonder is an odd book. It sort of promises to be a biography of Bill Finger, the man who created Batman along with Bill Kane and wrote many, many of his early stories. But it seems that we don't really know all that much about Bill Finger. Much of the book ends up focusing on the credit dispute between Finger and Kane-- if "dispute" is the right word, given that Kane always asserted that he solely created Batman and Finger rarely said anything to contradict that. It's appalling the extent to which Bill Finger's role in the creation of the Bat-Man has been elided, but I don't know if a children's picture book is the place for that dispute to be played out.

It's immaculately researched, though, as the Author's Note at the end makes clear, and it seems unlikely that we'll ever known enough about Finger to create a full-length biography of the man. So this is a nice little tribute, and I'm glad I read it, even if I'm uncertain as to what to do with it beyond that. Ty Templeton's illustrations are great. I've only encountered his art sporadically, but I've always liked it when I've seen it.