In the early 1930’s, when the world was gripped by the Great Depression, Frank D. Foster II was a young art student in Boston. Foster became friendly with Al Capp, who later became famous for the comic strip “Li’l Abner”. Capp was interested in cartoons and comic books, and suggested to Foster that they should work together to develop some comic characters. He worked with Capp briefly and “cooked up” a couple of ideas.
Foster described this in a 1975 interview with a Boston attorney:
“ … he got me interested enough to make some ideas up. And it seems to me that in those days, and even now, that most all of the strips were the heros of the day – such as, flying through the sky during the day and doing good deeds and so forth and so on – and I thought, well, why couldn’t that be done at night? Have a good guy do stuff at night. So, I started working, just briefly, very briefly, not too seriously, with Al Capp, and cooking up a couple of ideas.
“ … one of the things was Batman … “
A portion of a panel of drawings of
Frank Foster's Batman
Frank Foster Circa 1932In July, 1932, Foster Married Ruth Hardy, and he pursued a painting and decorating business. The business failed in 1936.
By the fall of 1936, the Foster family had grown to three with the birth of Frank D. Foster III. In October, with the painting business bankrupt, the Fosters moved to New York.
From then until the fall of 1939, Frank found intermittent and part-time work at a variety of jobs, including painting murals for the 1939 World’s Fair and drawing cartoons for publishers.
The Fosters first lived on East 53rd Street, which was within easy walking distance to a number of comic book publishers, including one of the biggest, DC Comics, which was located on East 46th, just few blocks away.
In between jobs, Frank tried to circulate his cartoon drawings among publishers of comics and fiction and some of the items in his portfolio were the drawings he had made a few years earlier while collaborating with Al Capp. The drawings included several concepts, including the panel of “Batman” drawings.
In particular he recalled working for two weeks drawing cartoons at Munsey Publications. According to his son, he also recalled leaving his work with various publishers including DC comics at 480 Lexington Avenue to be reviewed for possible publication. He distinctly remembered leaving his drawings, having them returned and being being told they couldn't use them. He did not however remember the exact dates or names of the various individuals who interviewed him.
Further establishing the drawings during this period was a letter from a friend of the Foster’s who had lived in the same apartment in New York in the late ‘30s. In 1975, Frank wrote to Byron MacDonald to find out if Byron remembered (deletion) seeing the drawings during this period . About two weeks later, MacDonald replied:
“I definitely do remember those drawings as we had lots of discussions concerning Batman and Frank’s short time working there.”
In 1939, the work on the World’s Fair ended and the Fosters moved to Washington, DC where Frank went to work assisting the curator of the Mellon Art Gallery (now the National Gallery of Art).
Sometime shortly after moving to Washington, Frank saw "Batman" comics on the news stands. His wife remembers him saying "Will you look at that! They stole Batman!".
Being without financial resources for attorneys or knowledge of how to proceed with doing anything about it, nothing was ever done.
Frank D Foster II passed away in 1995. His son Frank [III] feels that although there is no chance for any kind of a legal action, he believes that his father should at least receive some recognition for his idea:
“In my mind there’s been a tremendous injustice and I don’t feel right about just letting it lie forever and never trying to make it right.
“My Father’s passed away, so if anything develops, he won’t be there to enjoy it. There is an injustice to be made right and history should be corrected, and even if it’s posthumous, he should be given some recognition. I know he created Batman. It’s the first Batman. It was there, at the same place, at the same time Batman was published. There has to be a connection. The possibility of two men in 5,000 years of history arriving at the same character who’s a hero of the night, with the same name of Batman, at the same time, at the same place on the earth, is zero.”
