The Creator of Joker, Two-Face and Robin Dies

RIP Jerry Robinson.

From a piece in the Los Angeles Times...

Working with Kane — who was a decade older — opened up new frontiers for the gifted young artist, but Kane took the credit when Batman became a sensation. It was Robinson, who started working on Batman in 1939 with Kane and Bill Finger, who came up with the name “Robin” for Batman’s sidekick, and he was the creator or key contributor to the first and formative appearances of enduring characters such as the Joker, Two-Face and Alfred, Bruce Wayne’s butler. As comics historians now credit writer Bill Finger with co-creating the Caped Crusader, they also acknowledge that the polished, high-verve style of Robinson is clearly evident in many issues that do not bear his name.

In those early days of the comics industry, the product was seen as totally disposable and all the original art in the office would be thrown away. Young Robinson, though, so admired the work of his older peers that he fished the pages out of the trash and saved them. That led to Robinson possessing perhaps the most esteemed collection of original art from the golden age of comics. Key artifacts from that pen-and-ink archive were displayed at museums, including the Skirball Cultural Center in 2009, and then sold at private auction in 2010.