Jerry Robinson, a pioneer in the early days of Batman comics and a key force in the creation of Robin the Boy Wonder; the Joker;  Bruce Wayne’s butler, Alfred; and Two-Face, died Wednesday afternoon in New York City. He was 89.

The illustrator with a far-ranging career – after shifting in the early 1960s into political cartooning, he would serve as president of the National Cartoonists Society and then author the exhaustive and well-regarded “The Comics: An Illustrated History of Comic Strip Art” — died in his sleep during a late afternoon nap, according to Michael E. Uslan, a close family friend and an executive producer on all the Batman feature films since the 1980s.

Born on New Year’s Day 1922 in Trenton, N.J., Robinson was a still a teenager when he stepped into the fledgling comic book industry after a chance meeting with Bob Kane, who showed the youngster the just-published issue of Detective Comics No. 27, which introduced a masked man-hunter called Batman.

[photo via The New York Times]