[1] His parents, Augusta (née Tuchman) and Herman Kahn, an engraver,[2] were of Ashkenazi Jewish descent.

[6] He studied art at Cooper Union before joining the Max Fleischer Studio as a trainee animator in the year of 1934.

[1] In early 1939, DC's success with the seminal superhero Superman in Action Comics prompted editors to scramble for more such heroes.

"[9] Kane said his influences for the character included actor Douglas Fairbanks's 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).

I went over to Kane's, and he had drawn a character who looked very much like Superman with kind of ... reddish tights, I believe, with boots ... no gloves, no gauntlets ... with a small domino mask, swinging on a rope.

[12]Finger said he offered such suggestions as giving the character a cowl and scalloped cape instead of wings; adding gloves; leaving the mask's eyeholes blank to connote mystery; and removing the bright red sections of the original costume, suggesting instead a gray-and-black color scheme.

Finger additionally said[13] his suggestions were influenced by Lee Falk's The Phantom, a syndicated newspaper comic strip character with which Kane was familiar as well.

Finger, who said he also devised the character's civilian name, Bruce Wayne, wrote the first Batman story, while Kane provided art.

Within a year, Kane hired art assistants Jerry Robinson (initially as an inker) and George Roussos (backgrounds artist and letterer).

Future Justice League writer Gardner Fox wrote some early scripts, including the two-part story "The Monk" that introduced some of The Batman's first "Bat-" equipment.

[8] DC Comics artists ghosting the comic-book stories now included Jack Burnley and Win Mortimer, with Robinson moving up as penciler and Fred Ray contributing some covers.

After the strip finished in 1946, Kane returned to the comic books but, unknown to DC, had hired his own personal ghosts, including Lew Schwartz[18] and Sheldon Moldoff from 1953 to 1967.

[12]Kane, who had previously created a sidekick for Peter Pupp, proposed adding a boy named Mercury who would have worn a "super-costume".

[23]Robinson, whose original Joker playing card was on public display in the exhibition "Masters of American Comics" at the Jewish Museum in New York City, New York, from September 16, 2006 to January 28, 2007, and the William Breman Jewish Heritage Museum in Atlanta, Georgia from October 24, 2004 to August 28, 2005, has countered that: Bill Finger knew of Conrad Veidt because Bill had been to a lot of the foreign films.

[26] Catwoman, originally introduced by Kane with no costume as "the Cat", was partially inspired by his cousin, Ruth Steel.

[27][28] Kane, a frequent moviegoer, mentioned that Jean Harlow was a model for the design and added that "I always felt that women were feline".

Finger, however, claimed that he created the villain as a caricature of the aristocratic type, because "stuffy English gentlemen" reminded him of emperor penguins.

He enjoyed a post-comics career in television animation, creating the characters Courageous Cat and Cool McCool, and as a painter showed his work in art galleries, although some of these paintings were produced by ghost artists.

[34] Kane worked as a consultant on the 1989 film Batman and its three sequels with directors Tim Burton and Joel Schumacher.