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Art donated to Columbia University shows Jerry Robinson’s college doodles, as well as a 1939 audition for Batman creators Bill Finger and Bob Kane.
Sketches by Jerry Robinson donated to the Columbia University Rare Book & Manuscript Library have shed light on the career behind one of the earliest Batman artists who co-created Robin and the Joker.
The sketches, donated by Robin’s son Jens and his wife Janice, include doodles of Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson that Robinson drew while taking notes at Columbia, which he attended for a journalism degree for two and a half years. A 1939 art audition that Robinson drew for Bill Finger and Bob Kane, the creators of Batman, is also present.
Kane, who scouted Robinson after he saw the then-teenager wearing a jacket covered with hand-drawn comic characters, asked the budding illustrator to mimic the styles of various artists of the day. The two-page audition shows Robinson’s take on the likes of Hal Foster’s Price Valiant, Walt Disney’s Mickey Mouse and Ernie Bushmiller’s Nancy, among many other ’30s comic characters.
Notably, the lower left side of the audition’s first page shows the hairbow-wearing Ginger Snap and her mother, two obscure character that Bob Kane worked on early in his career, as well as the “Bat-Man” himself. Robinson’s interpretation of Batman is drawn in a hunch with a swooping scalloped cape, mimicking Bob Kane’s iconic final panel in the two-page origin story of Batman #1 in 1940.
“While he stayed at Columbia for over two years, before leaving to become a full-time comics artist, clearly his mind was on comics even during class-time,” a post on the Columbia Rare Book & Manuscript Library reads. “It is clear that Robinson was not only masterful at mimicking the styles of the best known newspaper strip artists of the day, he could even reproduce their signatures… Nothing captures the tipping point from gifted amateur to professional artist quite like these three pages.”
Following his departure from Columbia, Robinson focused on comics full-time and became one of Kane’s main ghost artists on Batman and Detective Comics alongside the likes of other well-known creatives like Dick Sprang and more obscure contributors like Paul Cooper. Aside from Robin and the Joker, Robinson played a key role in defining many other mainstays in the Batman mythos, including Alfred Pennyworth and Two-Face.
In his later life, Robinson became a key advocate for creators’ rights in the comic field — a notable development considering that Kane was the only one credited on the Batman comics he worked on. He passed away on Dec. 7, 2011 at the age of 89.
Source: Columbia University Libraries
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