The Creators of Batman by Rik Worth

Author:Rik Worth
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Literally Figures
Publisher: Pen & Sword Books
Published: 2021-06-29T00:00:00+00:00

The ‘New Look’

It wasn’t just Finger who had made the leap to television, however. Courageous Cat and Minute Mouse was an animal funnies cartoon developed for television by Kane with Tran-Artists productions. Trans-Artist’s other productions were a number of Sinbad feature cartoons starring the son of the adventuring pirate and a series called Bucky and Pepito, which, although most of its episodes have joined the ranks of television shows genuinely lost to time, the few unlucky people which have seen it hated it, and it made the list of the worst cartoons of all time.

Kane claimed the inspiration for the Courageous Cat came to him after a meeting with Walt Disney during a post-divorce excursion to California. Kane always prided himself on the simplicity of Batman’s design and he attributed the character’s explosive success to his visual readability and ease of reproduction. Like Mickey Mouse, the cartooning of the character stuck with readers, and the two doodlers, Walt and Bob, expressed this thought about their respective characters to one another. In his autobiography, Kane also recalled asking Disney how he had come up with the character of Mickey Mouse to which Disney replied the truth and the myth of the matter had become so conflated he wasn’t quite sure anymore. But Kane was well aware Disney had worked with fellow cartoonist Ub Iwerks in the development of Mickey Mouse. Like Kane and Finger, Disney had brought a rough idea of the character to Iwerks and Iwerks redefined it to the character we now recognise as the early Mickey Mouse. Likewise, outside of the industry, it was the business savvy Disney who would get most of the credit. Kane, of course, reiterated Disney’s centrality to the success of the House of Mouse in his book, but it seems at once like a subtle admission of Kane’s reliance on other creators and a declaration of his own authority in the creation of Batman.

Once again Kane employed his most regular and reliable ghost, Sheldon Moldoff, in the creation of Courageous Cat and Minute Mouse, by employing the work-horse artist to both draw storyboards and write scripts for the animated adventures. The cartoon was fairly successful. Its five-minute running time meant it could be easily slotted into gaps in children’s programming and the show had 130 episodes made over three years. The result was a decent and flexible product which was syndicated across America and the rest of the world for years. It was also clearly recognisable as a homage to Batman. Courageous Cat relied on a bevy of gadgets stored in his belt as well as an all-purpose gimmick gun which fired any ammo the story needed while Minute Mouse was his Robin-esque clumsy, youthful sidekick. The duo protected Empire City from various villains. Summoned by the Cat-Signal, they would fire up the Cat-Mobile and explode from the Cat-cave to fight crime. Though it may have been new money for old rope, the show was quite well received.

Batman was not doing quite so well at the start of the 1960s.

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