This thread inspired me to check out the “new look” Batman first introducted in Detective Comics and the Crisis on Earth One/Two JLAs I’ve had since a kid.
Yeah, they’re a bit different from the earlier stuff. But soon things get even more interesting.
And, of course, the conditions of my issues are nowhere the quality of the ones that go for hundreds of dollars on eBay.
The New Look Batman came about when TPTB at DC handed over the reins of Batman to editor Julie Schwartz, who had masterminded DC’s Silver Age
superhero revival (Flash, Green Lantern, Hawkman, etc). He assigned writer John Broome (Green Lantern, Flash), and artist Carmine Infantino (Flash) to pep up the long-moribund franchise.
Infantino’s main role was to redesign the costumes, adding the yellow oval around the bat symbol, and the Batmobile and other accoutrements. Although the New Look Batman didn’t stick, as the comic book had to adapt to the Batmania of the TV show, and undo changes such as killing off Alfred, Carmen Infantino was a key player in transitioning DC from the Silver Age into the Bronze Age, getting away from the goofiness and campiness that was in a lot of the DC books of the 50s and 60s.
While he was drawing the New Look Batman, Infantino was also promoted to cover supervisor (He designed a lot of classic superhero cover motifs.), the to art director. When Stan Lee tried to hire him away in the last 60s, DC responded by offering the position of editorial director, and then named him publisher in 1971.
Infantino initiated some significant changes.
-He hired Jack Kirby from Marvel. His first DC title was Superman’s Pal Jimmy’s Olsen, perhaps the goofiest off DC’s Silver Age books. Kirby introduced ongoing plotlines involving Intergang and the Cadmus Project, leading up to the reveal of Apokolips. Granted, DC seemed to keep Kirby’s new concepts at arm’s length, not really integrating them into the DCU until years later, after Kirby had already left, but it certainly put other creators on notice
-He promoted new ranks of editors, including Mike Sekowsky and Joe Orlando. Like Carmine himself, the new editors were artists, and were willing to give their creative teams more leeway than the editor-driven DC of the Silver Age.
-He brought in a new generation of talent. The comics creators of the 60’s were pretty much the same comic creators that were around in the 40s, but the late 60s saw an influx of a new generation of creators, many of whom grew up as comics fans and a more respect for the potential of the medium. Infantino was not shy about giving young talent prime titles, either. The team of Denny O’Neill and Neal Adams started the seminal runs on Batman and Green Lantern/Green Arrow in 1970.
-As Publisher, he greatly expanded the number and type of books DC was offering. This was referred to as the DC Explosion.
A lot of these changes didn’t necessarily lead to sales, though, and Infantino was fired by DC in 1975 after the so-called “DC Implosion”.
Weisinger also hired a 14 year-old Jim Shooter to write the Legion of Superheroes.
Other hallmarks of the Weisinger style:
-Comics readers are ten years old.
-Readership turns over every five years, so it’s okay to recycle stories, and continuity doesn’t matter that much.
-The editor, not the writer or artist, is the driving force in creating comics. (Weisinger was a notorious micromanager and control freak.)
-Stories should be complete in one issue (or less) and always revert to the status quo.
-There should be a house style for both story and art. (Mort would have been a happy man if everyone could just draw like Curt Swan.)