On the opening night of the exhibit for both the families of the Golden Age creators as well as the press and the donors, Jerry gave the keynote speech, a look back at his career in comic books. Not only did he discuss his work on Batman, first under the tutelage of Batman's co-creator Bob Kane (along with Bill Finger), he recounted the creation of Robin (including what to name him!) but how he and Superman cover artist Fred Ray were able to save much of the original art from otherwise ending up in the trash.

Creators' rights are very important to Jerry, he discussed how he and other artists fought for Joe Shuster and Jerry Siegel to get proper credit and renumeration for creating Superman, particularly in the advent of the first of the Superman movies with Christopher Reeve.

Aside from his Batman connections, Jerry also talked about one of his less fondly remembered series he worked on, starring the world's most famous collie, Lassie. The image on the left is NOT from any published issue of Lassie but is an imagined scene from the last unpublished story Jerry came up with... and he's more than happy in the show to give the details of the unseen issue. And trust me, I looked for any samples of Jerry's run on Lassie, but they, like the grass fire, seem to have gone up in smoke.