On May 17, 1994, I conducted a short interview with Batman creator Bob Kane for Entertainment Weekly's "Children's" section, for a piece about famous comics creators' childhood vacations. The Kane capsule, "Caped Camper," ran as part of my EW comic-book column in the July 22, 1994, issue, with the editor taking some minor liberties in condensing the quotes. Below is the verbatim, previously unpublished short interview with Kane, who died Nov. 3, 1998. His claims regarding aspects of the Batman legend are presented for the historical record. Kane spoke by phone from his home on Fountain Avenue in Los Angeles. Frank Lovece: [Following description of this EW capsule] I'm also speaking with Stan Lee about his own childhood vacations. Bob Kane: Stan Lee's a friend of mine. He's the wrong guy to ask about vacations! I'd go to summer camp, getting out of the hot city to the Adirondack Mountains where I could just be free all summer. I'd have two months of activity, of camping life, canoeing and swimming and exercise and fun-&-games. They'd teach you arts and crafts; you could paint and do sculpture. I did sculptures; I did a head once of Abraham Lincoln, out of clay. In fact, I won first prize when I was about 13. The prize was an extra week of camp. They let me indulge my cartooning; I would do caricatures of the camp teachers. They'd show cartoons at night, like "Felix the Cat" and "Mickey Mouse," which led me to create "Courageous Cat and Minute Mouse", which was on television in the '50s. FL: Where were you born and raised? Kane: I lived in the Bronx originally, then moved to Manhattan when I was about 17. I lived in [Greenwich] Village for awhile. It was very bohemian then; I did painting then. FL: Do you have kids yourself? Kane: I have a daughter with my first wife. Debbie's a photographer. She lives in New Jersey. I have one grandson — she has a son. FL: What are your vacations like today? Kane: Probably not too different from other people's vacations. I generally mix business with pleasure. We generally take it a bit early; last year we got to Hawaii in May, in the summer we go to Santa Barbara. Generally I play golf and tennis, swim. I get bored sitting around, so I draw or write. I've been into writing the last several years. I just wrote a screenplay with my wife — she's an actress, Elizabeth Sanders. It's a new superhero which I can't reveal. It's different from Batman and other heroes. It's called the Silver Fox. It's got a great villain, comparable to the Joker. FL: OK, so, Bob: Who created the Joker? Kane: Bill Finger and I created the Joker. Bill was the writer. Jerry Robinson came to me with a playing card of the Joker. That's the way I sum it up. But he looks like Conrad Veidt — you know, the actor in The Man Who Laughs, [the 1928 movie based on the novel] by Victor Hugo. [See movie-poster image above.] There's a photo of Conrad Veidt in my biography, Batman & Me (Eclipse Books, 1989; ISBN 1560600160). So Bill Finger had a book with a photograph of Conrad Veidt and showed it to me and said, "Here's the Joker." Jerry Robinson had absolutely nothing to do with it. But he'll always say he created it till he dies. He brought in a playing card, which we used for a couple of issues for him [the Joker] to use as his playing card. FL: Where's the Silver Fox project right now? Kane: I have indie financing to produce the film myself, and we'll have a major distributor — we're looking at several major directors who like the script. It looks very promising right now. It's about $18-$20 million [budget]. FL: Do you use a computer? Do you still like typewriters? Kane: I write longhand sitting by the pool or in my room on the terrace [while on vacation]. When it's peaceful, I can write. At home you have the phone, you have distractions. I was thinking about this a long time: a superhero, not as a comic book, but as a screenplay, He doesn't dress in the union suit at all. It's the '90s, very modern, Zorro-like, he doesn't have the typical 1940s union suit, like Superman, Spider-Man, Batman. This year, we're hopefully gong to Maui. I'll continue polishing the script over there. It's almost two years in the making. FL: Your wife's an actress. What kinds of things has she done? Kane: She's been in soaps — The Edge of Night, a running part, Nurse Barbara, that she created. She did a lot of off-Broadway and theater-in-the-round. She was in the second Batman movie, a small part. She's very good at writing female dialogue. I'm better with superheroes' and villains' dialogue. FL: Is the Silver Fox a female superhero? Kane: A man. FL: I guess it's fun work, if you're doing it on your vacations. Kane: To me, it's not work. When I draw and I write, I find it relaxing. It's not like 9-to-5, where a man goes to a job and he isn't really interested in the job. Luckily, I get paid for doing what I'd do for nothing. FL: You've just done four trading cards for DC: Batman & Robin, Batman and the Penguin, Batman and Catwoman, and Batman & Robin with the Joker. Correct? Kane: Correct. FL: And you're a "project consultant" on the new Batman movie, which is shooting in September. What's that mean? Kane: I kinda critique it and put my two cents in for whatever it's worth. [The mini-interview ends. Later that day, Kane calls back.] Kane: I didn't want to give you the wrong impression about how much Elizabeth did on "The Sliver Fox." We co-authored it 50-50, and it gets convoluted, but she did half the work, minimum, at least, before the script[ing stage]. I created the main concept of the character itself, and then she added and I added and so forth. It's a full collaboration. I just wanted to give a full credit on it. So just discount some of the other stuff if I minimized what she did.