William Finger was born on February 8, 1914. He met cartoonist Bob Kane at a party in 1938, and soon after they were collaborating on several adventure strips. Within a year, Batman appeared. Finger's fondness for pulp fiction and movies influenced his plots and writing style for comic books. He worked on many other DC characters and titles, scripted some of the 1940s daily and Sunday Batman and Robin newspaper strip continuities, and wrote for Quality, Fawcett, and Timely Comics.

Finger's television credits include 77 Sunset Strip, The Roaring Twenties and Hawaiian Eye during the late 1950s and early 1960s. His efforts in the super-hero genre also appeared on TV in the 1960s, including material for the animated New Adventures of Superman plus a two-part Clock King episode of the 1966 Batman series. Finger died in New York City on January 24, 1974. He was posthumously inducted into the Eisner Awards Hall of Fame in 1999.