at age 18. He studied art at Cooper Union before "joining the Max Fleischer Studio as a trainee animator in 1934".

William ‘Bill’ Finger was born in 1914 to a Jewish family. He joined Bob Kane's nascent studio in 1938. An aspiring writer and a part-time shoe salesman, he had met Kane at a party; Kane later offered him a job ghost writing the strips Rusty and Clip Carson. Early the following year, National Comics' success with the seminal superhero Superman in Action Comics prompted editors to scramble for similar heroes. In response, Kane conceived "the Bat-Man". As Kane summed up decades later in his autobiography, “Bill Finger was a contributing force on Batman right from the beginning... I made Batman a superhero-vigilante when I first created him. Billturned him into a scientific detective.” Finger is also credited with inventing the ‘Joker’ character.

“Entrepreneur Major Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson's National Allied Publications debuted with the tabloid-sized New Fun: The Big Comic Magazine #1 in February 1935. The company's second title, New Comics #1 (cover date December 1935), appeared in a size close to what would become comic books' standard during the period fans and historians call the Golden Age of Comic Books, with slightly larger dimensions than today's. That title evolved into Adventure Comics, which continued through issue #503 in 1983, becoming one of the longest-running comic book series.

Wheeler-Nicholson's third and final title, Detective Comics, advertised with a cover illustration dated December 1936, eventually premiered three months late with a March 1937 cover date. The themed anthology series would