It was 1939, and Vincent Sullivan, editor of Detective Comics, had a terrific idea. So what if it was someone else's? The year before, a muscle-bound man from Krypton had landed in the pages of rival Action Comics and become an instant icon of pop culture. Sullivan may not have owned Superman, but he could clone it. He called in cartoonist Bob Kane, then 18, and asked for a similar "super-duper" character. Kane went home, tossed the movies The Mark of Zorro and The Bat Whispers into an imaginary blender with Leonardo da Vinci's flying machine, and dreamed up Batman. The...
To continue reading:
or
Log-In
