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Re: (TV) Jesse / Batman Authorship / Dr. No / Back On Topic: Lloyd or Verl aine Playing Infamous Riff?!?:

Sorry to be so late replying on this very off-topic topic - I've just been very busy. Leo wrote: 


Where did you get all this info and fascinating
stuff on the **authorship/creator** question; is
there web-site or a couple of books about all this?
I know all this Batman lore just from decades of reading comics and about comics; I have more copies of Batman and Detective in my collection than of any other title. (I've never been a big fan of the Big Blue Boy Scout.) Unsurprisingly, there's lots on-line about Batman; http://www.supermanartists.comics.org/batman/Batwho.htm covers in astonishing detail the artists who worked on the book before the days when actual and correct writer/artist credits were given. It includes plenty of visual examples and interesting analyses of different artists' styles. (It'll help in reading the site to know that "line art" in comics is often produced by two separate people, a "penciller" who draws the pictures in, well, pencil, and an "inker" who goes over those lines in black ink and fills in large black areas for better reproduction. Because pencil art may be more or less detailed and because inkers in any case do not slavishly follow the pencils, the same penciller's work can look rather different with different inkers. Sometimes, of course, the penciller and inker are the same person. There are also colorists and letterers, whose jobs should be obvious.)
I'd recommend Googling " 'Bob Kane' Batman" for more on the history. (If you just Google "Batman," you'll get way too much stuff.) 


I remember being in a book store in Harvard Sq. in
the 1980s, and seeing a thick hardcover book that
contained a synopsis of every Batman story from the
very beginning (1941?) up until that time (including
I think all the Batman stories in "World's Finest"
Comics, and "Detective Comics. I think the book had
other info as well---and I think it was titled
something like "The Batman Dictionary" (Or
"Encyclopedia"?).


[snip]


Do you know anything about this book?
As someone else already said, it's almost certainly the Michael Fleischer "Encyclopedia." I don't own it, so I can't tell you much more. 


The stuff on Kane getting credit, when
others did the majority if not almost all
of the creative work,
In many ways, this was standard (though not universal) operating practice in those days. Many comics were produced assembly-line fashion by "studios" and often signed using pseudonyms. (One famous example was the Eisner-Iger studios. The late Will Eisner, revered creator of "The Spirit," and his partner employed many other artists to produce comics for various publishing companies. Unlike Bob Kane, though, Eisner did the vast majority of the classic work - both writing and art - on "The Spirit," though others - including Jules Feiffer - filled in during his Army service in WW II and in some of the later years.) In some cases people didn't even mind not getting credit, because comics work was considered disreputable and they feared that working in comics could hurt their chances of working in the more lucrative worlds of magazine and advertising illustration. In newspaper comic strips, the use of art assistants has always been common; a notable case is Frank Frazetta, the great science-fiction, horror, and fantasy painter, who for a time "ghosted" art for Al Capp on "Li'l Abner." In many cases, assistants eventually took over comic strips from their creators after the latter retired or even died. That's why you'll sometimes see signatures on comic strips of creators who passed on many years ago! There are some striking exceptions to the use of assistants: Charles Schulz _never_ had any help on "Peanuts" - as was evident by how shaky his line became in his later years - and I'm pretty sure that Walt Kelly used no assistants, except for lettering, on "Pogo" until the last few years of his life, when his health declined. And I strongly suspect that Bill Watterson did "Calvin & Hobbes" all by his lonesome. 


reminds me a lot
of the early Disney animators' situation.
Back then  they drew each animation-cell
by hand in gorgeous detail [no cheap, skimpy,
and repeating over-and-over scenic backgrounds
as in the later Hanna Barbara[s[p?]Studios'
cartoons.
This isn't quite right. Backgrounds on Disney cartoons were not individually painted onto each cel. However, they were certainly more detailed and beautiful than the backgrounds in Hanna-Barbera and other made-for-TV cartoons and less likely to be used repetitively. Moreover, I'm pretty sure that separate background elements were sometimes painted on separate layers (I think these were often glass plates rather than celluloid) so that foreground (i.e., relatively closer) "background" elements could be manipulated separately from background "background" elements. Separate cels were typically created only for moving things, typically characters but also tossed or falling objects, etc. Sequences were then shot through "multiplane" cameras, allowing the animated characters and objects, foreground elements, and deeper background elements to move separately, creating a greater illusion of 3-D. (As one's eye moves across a scene, relatively foreground elements appear to move faster than background elements.)
Hanna-Barbera cartoons and their ilk were certainly made more cheaply, but the savings arose from using less detail in _both_ backgrounds and character drawing, and by getting away with moving fewer elements of the characters: One can often get a reasonably satisfying illusion, for example, by just moving the mouth and eyes on an otherwise static face. 


Prime example of the Disney animators
labors is "Pinocchio" [1939?].  Walt Disney
exploited these guys, and took all the
credit---unlike Kane's Batman,  Disney didn't even
originate the story of Pinocchio, [the Brothers
Grimm?]
Carlo Collodi wrote (in Italian) the original "The Adventures of Pinocchio." I don't know that Disney ever tried to pretend he invented the character, any more than he did Cinderella or Snow White, which everyone presumably knew as fairy tales.
And I'm pretty sure that if you look at the credits on Disney cartoons, you'll see that while Walt is listed as the producer, the various directors, writers, and animators are also listed. They're certainly known: look, for example, at the "Pinocchio" credits at http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0032910/fullcredits#writers. Walt Kelly, incidentally, was a onetime Disney animator who worked on, among other things, the "crows" sequence of "Dumbo." (I'm a big "Pogo" fan.)
None of which is to say that Walt Disney was a swell guy who treated his work force fairly. I've heard some horror stories. One of the strangest I got second-hand from a college friend of mine who worked at the time for the animator Faith Hubley, by then the widow of the animator John Hubley. (Faith and John Hubley are the parents of Georgia Hubley of Yo La Tengo. The Hubleys used the recorded voices of their young daughters as the foundation of the cartoon "Cockaboody.") John Hubley had been a Disney animator and left the studio after the animators' strike of 1941 (itself a result of Walt's somewhat unfair labor practices; see http://www.pbs.org/itvs/independentspirits/john.html). John Hubley went on to join UPA, where he helped establish the "limited animation" style used in "Mr. McGoo" and "Gerald McBoing Boing." The (possibly apocryphal) story my friend told me was this: Many years after leaving Disney, John took his children to Disneyland. Walt was surveying the crowds with a telescope from his office (I think it may have been in the Magic Castle) and spotted the Hubleys. He had them summoned to his office. When they were brought in, Walt took John's hand and inspected it closely. "Where are the scars?" he asked - or possibly he said "stigmata" rather than scars. Though the story's a little hard to interpret, the impression I took from it was that he was accusing Hubley of being some kind of "false martyr." 


There was also the Disney employee who drew
(and wrote) those fabulous "Uncle
Scrooge (Mc Duff)" comic books of the 1950s
and 60s---his name was [something] Banks.
Carl Barks did Uncle Scrooge McDuck. I think he may even have invented the character. Barks is considered by many one of the great comics creators, but I've never really investigated his stuff.
So what's all this I hear about a "punk" band called Television? Apparently they stole their sound from the Strokes. 

- Jesse
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