Bill Finger created Batman, but Bob Kane took credit and millions of dollars in royalties for decades, while Finger lived in anonymity and poverty.

In the winter of 1938, Bill Finger received a phone call from friend and collaborator Bob Kane asking if he’d like to work on a new comic book feature. Kane brought him a preliminary sketch he’d made by tracing Flash Gordon, coloring the costume red and his hair blond, then attaching wings to his back. He thought maybe the character could be “Birdman.” Kane had no idea how to develop the sketch into a character.

But Bill Finger did. He changed the costume and created the Caped Crusader we know today—the backstory, the environment, the supporting characters, and the bizarre villains that define Batman.

Though Kane promised to take care of Bill, Kane’s father hired a lawyer to work out a lucrative deal that guaranteed Kane received sole credit on every Batman story—whether Kane worked on it or not. Even after Finger moved in-house for DC (where he co-created Green Lantern, Wildcat, and wrote more than 1500 comic stories), he received pitiful payment along with no royalties or credit.

Eventually, however, the truth began to leak out…and a heated war over Batman began. This is one of the most important creator rights battles in the modern age, and most people—even those thoroughly engrossed in the comic-book industry—know nothing about it.