The LA Times have interviewed legendary comic book creator Jerry Robinson on the creation of the Joker and the golden age of comics.

“That was a fad then, kids would get these linen jackets with all the pockets and personalize them with all this razzmatazz,” he recalled. “I was wearing mine as a warm-up jacket and someone tapped me on the shoulder and asked, ‘Hey, who drew that stuff?’ It was Bob Kane, who had just finished the first issue of Batman [which was "Detective Comics" No. 27]. I didn’t even know what that was. He showed me the issue that was on sale there at the local village. I wasn’t very impressed.”

Robinson, however, was impressed with Kane’s offer of a drawing-table job in New York. The teenager had been accepted at three universities and had planned on Syracuse, but after the serendipitous meeting, he phoned Columbia in the city and said he was on the way. Just to complete the giddy Frank Capra-esque sweep of the story, Robinson was spared a bus ride when a resort guest, the celebrated tenor Jan Peerce, offered him a lift.

Click here to read the full interview...

Also mentioned in the interview was Robinson revealed last Wednesday that he plans to sell his entire collection of original art, a staggering bit of news for the comics world. “There are hundreds of pieces," Robinsons said, and among them is the classic Superman by Fred Ray (shown above, right) with an eagle perched on the arm of the Man of Steel. "There’s nothing like [this collection] anywhere else in the world, but I’d like to sell it intact. I won’t do an auction. I spent 70 years bringing all of it together I don’t want it dispersed now.

(Source - LA Times.com)