Creativity Quote by Bob Kane

A little brag, a little battle report: Bob Kane frames Batman's rise as something other people had to be educated into. The line is casually triumphant, but it’s also defensive in that creator-from-the-30s way, staking a claim over a character who long ago outgrew any single hand. “It took them a while” suggests skepticism from editors, publishers, maybe even readers - a slow-moving industry that needed proof before it blessed what would become a cultural juggernaut. Kane isn’t just remembering success; he’s remembering being underestimated.

The sly move is the vagueness of “them.” It turns a messy history - commercial calculation, editorial pressures, the collaborative assembly line of comics, and the later fights over credit - into a clean narrative of delayed recognition. That’s particularly loaded with Batman, a property whose mythos is famously collective, with Bill Finger’s role minimized for decades. Kane’s sentence reads like an attempt to control the origin story of the origin story: if others were late to “catch on,” then Kane was early, visionary, right.

Calling Batman “the greatest” is hyperbole, but it’s strategic hyperbole. Batman isn’t merely popular; he’s adaptable: pulp noir, camp TV, grim psychology, blockbuster prestige. Kane’s quote flatters the character, yet it also flatters the creator by implying he saw the franchise potential before the market did. In one short line, he claims the crown and rewrites the waiting room.