Batman #11, p.13

For me this is the grail of grails, a Golden Age Batman piece pencilled by Bob Kane- and fighting his archenemy The Joker, no less. I missed out on this page back in 1999 when it was auctioned off on ebay by Alexander Gallery. Back then it was credited as Bob Kane pencils and George Roussos inks. I lost the auction- I wasn't spending as much on art back and then, and it's haunted me since. I even saved the jpeg from the ebay auction. In the intervening 10 years, I've tried to track the page down, asking dealers, collectors, and anyone else who might have an idea of the whereabouts of the page. Well, last month it finally popped back up again in auction- this time though, it was credited as Jerry Robinson pencils and George Roussos inks. What to do? I really did think the page was Kane pencils- there were so many early signature elements. But Comics.org had updated their credits for Batman #11(June/July 1942) since 1999 to list Robinson as sharing pencilling credit for the story. So for the two weeks of the auction I did as much research as I could on the story and consulted many fellow collectors. Some thought it was Robinson, some thought it could be Kane. I did alot of pacing and wringing of the hands, but in the end I went all out and won the page. Shortly after winning the auction, it dawned on me to that Jerry Robinson was still very much alive and kicking, and that perhaps I could ask him. The idea had actually been suggested to me earlier during the auction, but I dismissed it because the Comics.org Robinson credits for Batman #11 were notated as being verified by Jerry himself. But at this point, what could it hurt? I asked a friend(Joe) who's good friends with the Robinson family if he could pass a scan on to Jerry for possible identification. As it turns out Joe had just seen Jerry a couple days earlier. He forwarded me an immediate reply from Jerry stating that the page was definitely Bob Kane pencils, probably Jerry's inks, and perhaps some Roussos work on the backgrounds. So a 10-year search comes to an end. Thanks to my pal Jim for helping me procure this rarest of gems, and to Joe for contacting Jerry and confirming the credits on the page straight from the source. Wahoo!