In Entertainment Weekly's "20 All-Time Coolest Heroes in Pop Culture"[1] list, posted March 27, 2009 (near as I can figure), Nancy Drew outranking Batman (she was #17 to his #18) caused a bit of consternation on various message boards. Though the list was nothing more than a silly exercise and the aftermath a gust of hot air in the Internet teapot, it did serve as a reminder of just how similar the two properties are: not only superficially (shared genre tropes: Batman has his batmobile; Nancy Drew has her blue Mustang convertible; Batman has Alfred; Nancy Drew has Hannah Gruen; the death of a parent/parents were formative to her/his personality; sidekicks; money is never a problem; both were banned from carrying guns for quite some time; neither can commit to a love interest because their work comes first; Nancy's attorney father, Carson Drew, often brings her cases and protects her legally when the need arises, while Commissioner Gordon has also fulfilled these functions for Batman; both have been alternately "cleaned up" and "grittied" as befitting the times, etc.), and not just culturally, but also in terms of creative production.
Both made their debut in the 1930s — 1930 for Nancy, nine years later for Batman — and became wildly, and enduringly, popular: both are appearing in multiple forms of media today (they've both been made into movies by Warner Bros.).[2] Nancy Drew was conceived by Edward Stratemeyer of the Stratemeyer Syndicate as a teen sleuth along the lines of his successful Hardy Boys books, but a strong female solo lead, to balance out his Tom Swifts and the like; just as the comic-book character Batman was created as a response to Superman and helped to define the fledgling superhero genre. (The Jerry Robinson interview in TCJ #271, Bob Kane's autobiography Batman & Me, and Melanie Rehak's Girl Sleuth: Nancy Drew and the Women Who Created Her (Harcourt Inc., Orlando, 2005) are my sources for the information in this column.) After Stratemeyer's outlines were approved by his publisher, Grosset & Dunlap, they were written up by a ghostwriter he had had in mind for the books, Mildred Wirt, who for 25 of the first 34 "classic" books fleshed out the character and created her hometown, River Heights (the Syndicate would then revise Wirt, later Wirt Benson's, work); just as Batman was co-created by Bob Kane and an uncredited Bill Finger, and inked and eventually drawn by uncredited cartoonists such as Jerry Robinson (who also contributed characters and stories) and George Roussos. 
In both cases, for decades a figurehead received more than their fair share of recognition (while reaping what financial benefits there were to be had, as well as the glory):[3] for Batman, it was Bob Kane, while for Nancy Drew, it was Harriet Stratemeyer Adams (Edward's daughter, who, after gaining control of the Syndicate, wrote most of the Nancy Drew outlines and eventually represented herself as Carolyn Keene, the pseudonymous author of the Nancy Drew books). The contributions of those who had worked-for-hire on the books and comics were only brought to light decades later. Kane did come to acknowledge Finger's contribution — after Finger had died in poverty in 1974. Mildred Wirt Benson, however, was a successful journalist until she died at age 96: she received wide recognition as a driving force behind the creation of Nancy Drew due to a combination of fan and journalistic investigation and a court battle between the Stratemeyer Syndicate and Grosset & Dunlap, when the Syndicate began publishing Nancy Drew books with Simon & Shuster (the latter of which absorbed the Syndicate after Harriet Stratemeyer Adams' death, just as DC absorbed Kane's little studio in the '40s).
Of course, there are now hundreds, if not thousands, of people who have worked to create further Batman and Nancy Drew adventures (with comics now actually doing a better job of saying exactly who). But as the characters are fictionally conceived and reconceived, it's fascinating to examine the telling and retelling of their real-life secret origins. (And in my opinion, Nancy Drew is cooler than Batman.)Kristy Valenti currently works for The Comics Journal and Fantagraphics Books, Inc.
Uncharted Territory is © Kristy Valenti, 2008
