[2][3] Ben Robinson immigrated to the United States to avoid conscription in the Russian Empire, which would have lasted 25 years, and antisemitism in Russia.

[6] Robinson was a 17-year-old journalism student at Columbia University in 1939 when he was discovered by Batman co-creator Bob Kane, who hired him to work on that fledgling comic as an inker and letterer.

[9] Roussos recounted of his collaboration with Robinson: It was hard to make the deadlines, because Jerry was a heavy sleeper.

[9]Approximately a year and a half after Robinson, Roussos, and Finger were hired by Kane, National Comics lured them away, making them company staffers.

[9] 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, "one of my best friends, who[m] I brought up from MLJ".

[8] The new character, orphaned circus performer Dick Grayson, came to live with Bruce Wayne (Batman) as his young ward in Detective Comics #38 (April 1940).

Though Kane claimed he and writer Bill Finger came up with the idea for the Joker, most comic historians credit Robinson for the iconic villain, modeled after Conrad Veidt in the 1928 film, The Man Who Laughs.

[11]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.

Apparently Jerry Robinson or Bob, I don't recall who, looked at the card and they had an idea for a character ... the Joker.

But I remembered that Grosset & Dunlap formerly issued very cheap editions of classics by Alexandre Dumas and Victor Hugo ...

[13]Robinson was also a key force in the creation of Bruce Wayne's butler, Alfred Pennyworth, and the villain Two-Face.

From 1944 to 1946, Robinson and his friend Meskin formed a studio which produced material for the short-lived Spark Publications.

After leaving superhero comics, he became a newspaper cartoonist and drew the science fiction strip Jet Scott, which was written by Sheldon Stark and ran from 1953 to 1955,[15] and created True Classroom Flubs and Fluffs, which ran during the 1960s in the New York Sunday News (later incorporated into the Daily News).

Robinson also did a political satire cartoon panel feature, Still Life[7] which began national syndication on June 3, 1963.

[18] 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.

[24] Robinson was among the interview subjects in Superheroes: A Never-Ending Battle, a three-hour documentary narrated by Liev Schreiber that premiered posthumously on PBS in October 2013.

[30] Robinson received the Sparky Award for lifetime achievement from the Cartoon Art Museum at the 2011 San Diego Comic-Con.