Batman predecessors in pulp fiction, comic strips, newspaper headlines, and autobiographical details referring to Kane himself. As an aristocratic hero with a double identity, Batman had predecessors in the Scarlet Pimpernel (created by Baroness Emmuska Orczy, 1903) and Zorro (created by Johnston McCulley, 1919). Like them, Batman performed his heroic deeds in secret, averted suspicion by playing aloof in public, and marked his work with a signature symbol. Kane noted the influence of the films "The Mark of Zorro" (1920) and "The Bat Whispers" (1930) in the creation of the character's iconography. Finger, drawing inspiration from pulp heroes like Doc Savage,
Hoist with his own petard Hoist with his own petard "Hoist with his own petard" is a phrase from a speech in William Shakespeare's play "Hamlet" that has become proverbial. The phrase's meaning is literally that the bomb-maker (a "petard" is a small explosive device) is blown up ("hoisted" off the ground) with his own bomb, and indicates an ironic reversal or poetic justice. The phrase occurs in a central speech in the play in which Hamlet has discovered a plot on his life by Claudius and resolves to respond to it by letting the plotter be "Hoist with his own petard." Although the now-proverbial