Robin and the Joker Creator Jerry Robinson Passes

Jerry Robinson, one of the driving forces behind the creation of Batman’s universe has died at age 89.  Robinson was probably best known for creating the Joker (though Bob Kane and Robinson often clashed over the credits) and co-creating Robin, the Boy Wonder.

Born in Trenton, New Jersey, Robinson was a journalism student at Columbia University when he began working for writer-artist Bob Kane in 1939. Kane, with writer Bill Finger, had shortly before created the character Batman for National Comics, the future DC Comics. Robinson rented a room from family in The Bronx near Kane’s family’s Grand Concourse apartment, where Kane used his bedroom as an art studio. He started as a letterer and a background inker, shortly graduating to inking secondary figures. Within a year, he became Batman’s primary inker, with George Roussos inking backgrounds. Batman quickly became a hit character, and Kane rented space for Robinson and Roussos in Times Square’s Times Tower.

Approximately a year and a half after Robinson and Finger were hired by Kane, National Comics lured them away, making them company staffers. Robinson recalled working in the bullpen at the company’s 480 Lexington Avenue office, alongside Superman creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, as well as Jack Kirby, Fred Ray, and Mort Meskin, “who was one of my best friends, who[m] I brought up from [comics publisher] MLJ”.

During the mid-1970s, Robinson was a crucial supporter of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster in their long struggle with DC Comics to win full recognition and compensation as the creators of Superman. With comics artist and rights advocate Neal Adams, Robinson organized key support around Siegel and Shuster, to whom DC, in December 1975, granted lifetime stipends and a credit in all broadcast and published Superman works. In 1978, he founded Cartoonists & Writers Syndicate/CartoonArts International which as of 2010 has more than 550 artists from over 75 countries.