Robert Bianco

USA TODAY

PASADENA, Calif. — Did Batman have two dads?

Many fans of the Batman comic books know that Bob Kane created the character — but that may not be the end of the story. In his book, Bill the Boy Wonder: The Secret Co-Creator of Batman, and his May Hulu documentary, Batman & Bill, Marc Tyler Nobleman insists that Kane could not have created the character without substantial help from Bill Finger, a writer who never got the credit Nobleman thinks he deserved.

"Without Bill Finger," Nobleman says in the film, "there is no Batman." DC Comics and DC Entertainment apparently agree: After a series of negotiations with the late Finger's estate, they now list Finger as Batman's co-creator.

Which is fine, says Nobleman, with the character's most devoted fans.

"The first time that I went to Comic-Con for the book … I did not know what to expect," Nobleman told television critics Saturday. What he discovered is that the fans of the comic book were interested in the backstory and in seeing Finger get his just due. "We want to support giving this guy the credit he never got in his life."

It's a new day for Michaela Watkins on Hulu's 'Casual'

And to Nobleman, Finger's new co-creator credit still isn't credit enough. Most everything we know or can name about the Batman character, Nobleman says, came from Finger. If he had to break it down into numbers, he says, Batman is 98 percent Finger and 1 percent Kane, with the other percent coming "from the ether."

"I will always be talking about it … There are still Batman fans who don't know. So whenever I can talk about this, I will."

If you watch the film, you'll notice that much of Finger's story is done in animation, as if he were part of his own comic books. Part of that is an aesthetic choice, says co-director Don Argott. But part of it stems from the need to find an answer to a visual problem: Only 14 pictures of the late Finger exist.