Unknown author · Public domain

Co-created Batman with Bob Kane in 1939, contributing what Kane himself privately admitted was 50 to 75 percent of the character's creative foundation — the cape, the cowl, Gotham City, Commissioner Gordon — while receiving no public credit for decades. Finger died in poverty and obscurity in 1974; it took a biographer's research and his granddaughter's persistence to win DC Comics' 2015 agreement to add his name to the "created by" line at last.