Bob Kane his first adventure strip, "Rusty and his Pals". In early 1939, DC's success with the seminal superhero Superman in "Action Comics" prompted editors to scramble for more such heroes. In response, Bob Kane conceived "the Bat-Man." Kane said his influences for the character included actor Douglas Fairbanks' 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,
Bob Kane from DeWitt Clinton High School and then legally changed his name to Robert Kane. He studied art at Cooper Union before "joining the Max Fleischer Studio as a trainee animator in the year of 1934". 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