He entered the comics field two years later, in 1936, freelancing original material to editor
Jerry Iger's
comic book Wow, What a Magazine!, including his first pencil and ink work on the serial
Hiram Hick. The following year, Kane began to work at Iger's subsequent studio,
Eisner & Iger, which was one of the first comic book "packagers" that produced comics on demand for publishers entering the new
medium during its late-1930s and 1940s
Golden Age. Among his work there was the
talking animal feature "Peter Pupp"—which belied its look with overtones of "mystery and menace" Kane said his influences for the character included actor
Douglas Fairbanks's film portrayal of the swashbuckler
Zorro;
Leonardo da Vinci's diagram of the
ornithopter, a flying machine with huge bat-like wings; and the 1930 film
The Bat Whispers, based on
Mary Rinehart's mystery novel
The Circular Staircase (1908).
Bill Finger joined Bob Kane's nascent studio in 1938. An aspiring writer and part-time shoe salesperson, he had met Kane at a party, and Kane later offered him a job
ghost writing the strips
Rusty and
Clip Carson. He recalled that Kane Finger said he offered such suggestions as giving the character a cowl and scalloped cape instead of wings; adding gloves; leaving the mask's eyeholes blank to connote mystery; and removing the bright red sections of the original costume, suggesting instead a gray-and-black color scheme. Finger additionally said his suggestions were influenced by
Lee Falk's
The Phantom, a
syndicated newspaper
comic strip character with which Kane was familiar as well. Finger, who said he also devised the character's civilian name,
Bruce Wayne, wrote the first Batman story, while Kane provided art. Kane, who had already submitted the proposal for Batman at DC and held a contract, was the only person given an official company credit for Batman's creation until 2015, when Bill Finger was officially named a co-creator. Comics historian
Ron Goulart, in
Comic Book Encyclopedia, refers to Batman as the "creation of artist Bob Kane and writer Bill Finger". According to Kane, "Bill Finger was a contributing force on Batman right from the beginning. He wrote most of the great stories and was influential in setting the style and genre other writers would emulate ... I made Batman a superhero-vigilante when I first created him. Bill turned him into a scientific detective." The character debuted in
Detective Comics #27 (May 1939) and proved a breakout hit. Within a year, Kane hired art assistants
Jerry Robinson (initially as an
inker) and
George Roussos (backgrounds artist and
letterer). Though Robinson and Roussos worked out of Kane's art studio in
The New York Times building, Kane himself did all his drawing at home. Shortly afterward, when DC wanted more Batman stories than Kane's studio could deliver, the company assigned
Dick Sprang and other in-house pencilers as "
ghost artists", drawing uncredited under Kane's supervision. Future
Justice League writer
Gardner Fox wrote some early scripts, including the two-part story "The Monk" that introduced some of The Batman's first "Bat-" equipment. In 1943, Kane left the Batman comic books to focus on penciling the daily
Batman newspaper comic strip. and
Sheldon Moldoff from 1953 to 1967.
Robin Bill Finger recalled that Kane, who had previously created a sidekick for Peter Pupp, proposed adding a boy named Mercury who would have worn a "super-costume". Robinson suggested a normal human, along with the name "
Robin", after
Robin Hood books he had read during boyhood, and noting in a 2005 interview he had been inspired by one book's
N. C. Wyeth illustrations. The new character, an orphaned circus performer named
Dick Grayson, came to live with Bruce Wayne as his young
ward in
Detective Comics #38 (April 1940) and would inspire many similar sidekicks throughout the Golden Age of comic books.
The Joker Batman's nemesis the
Joker was introduced near that same time, in
Batman #1 (Spring 1940). Credit for that character's creation is disputed. Kane's position is that Robinson, whose original Joker playing card was on public display in the exhibition "Masters of American Comics" at the
Jewish Museum in New York City, New York, from September 16, 2006, to January 28, 2007, and the William Breman Jewish Heritage Museum in
Atlanta,
Georgia from October 24, 2004, to August 28, 2005, has countered that: Robinson added, however, "If you read the Batman historian E. Nelson Bridwell|[E. Nelson] Bridwell, he had one interview where he interviewed Bill Finger and he said no, the Joker was created by me—an acknowledgement. He can be credited and Bob himself, we all played a role in it. ... He wrote the script of that, so he really was co-creator, and Bob and I did the visuals, so Bob was also."
Other characters According to comics historian
Les Daniels, "nearly everyone seems to agree that
Two-Face was Kane's brainchild exclusively".
Catwoman, originally introduced by Kane with no costume as "the Cat", was partially inspired by his cousin, Ruth Steel. Kane, a frequent moviegoer, mentioned that
Jean Harlow was a model for the design and added that "I always felt that women were feline". Kane created the
Scarecrow and drew his first appearance, which was scripted by Finger. Kane also created the original incarnation of
Clayface. According to Kane, he drew
the Penguin after being inspired by the then advertising mascot of
Kool cigarettes—a
penguin with a top hat and cane. Finger, however, claimed that he created the villain as a caricature of the aristocratic type, because "stuffy English gentlemen" reminded him of
emperor penguins. ==Later life and career==