Trivia Quiz #39: Batman's Companions

1. What did Dick Grayson and Kathy Kane have in common? (No, not that!)

2. Who was Bat-Boy?

3. Who was Batman Jones?

4. Who was Mr. Marvel?

5. Who was the Eagle?

6. What did Commissioner Gordon like to have every evening? (Golden Age reference).

More about →

Happy 70th, Batman!

Detective #27 arrived on the newsstands on April 18, 1939, launching the career of my favorite comic book character of all time.

Bill Jourdain has been building towards this with a series of posts. He discusses that first year of the Batman, the dark knight before the arrival of Robin, the Joker and the Catwoman. In another terrific post he discusses the changes that came over the Batmobile during the Golden Age of Comic Books.

Update: See also this post by Bill which points to many of his podcasts about Batman over the years. If you are taking a drive in the car or going out for a bike ride or walk, download one or two and listen. Bill makes an entertaining companion, and I have listened to most of these episodes more than once.

For my own part, I am going to use this opportunity to talk a bit about the Silver Age Batman. You can basically divide the Silver Age Batman into five distinct eras:

1. The "Fill in the Legend" era from about 1955-1958. Initially there was no particular reason to think that comic books were anything more than a fad. But as the characters showed signs of durability, DC began to more carefully fill in the back story for their major characters. On the 10th anniversary of Superman's first appearance DC ran more detailed origins for Superman and Batman both, and as the '50s wore on they ran quite a few stories that filled in the legend of Batman. In Detective #226, we learned that Bruce Wayne had learned to be a detective from a private investigator named Harvey Harris. In Detective #244, we learned of the Australian boomerang master who taught him the skills he later used with batarangs. In Detective #265 we found about about Batman's First Case. There were also stories about how Batman subconsciously designed his costume based on an outfit his father had worn to a masquerade ball (Detective #235) and how he learned his disguise tricks from a Hollywood makeup artist (Detective #227).

2. The "Good Grief" era from about 1958-1964. Jack Schiff had long been Batman's de facto editor according to most accounts, but virtually from the start of his official editorship the stories took a dramatic turn towards extremely cheesy science fiction plots. Batman continually found himself up against some horrific monster, or an alien, or turned into some bizarre form himself. The creme de la creme of this era has to be this cover:



3. The New Look. I did an extensive post on this a month or so ago, on the 45th anniversary of the New Look. To brief it up for new readers, the New Look was a modest improvement on the Jack Schiff era and perhaps as best as can be expected given certain contractual realities to Bob Kane.

4. Dadadadadadaduh! Batman! The Batman TV era, with lots of POW! and ZAP! Mostly horrible.

5. The post-Moldoff years. Apparently DC managed to pay off Bob Kane around 1968 and Julius Schwartz was free to contract with new artists. Initially the most significant change was to dump Sheldon Moldoff (who had ghosted about 90% of the Silver Age Batman art for Kane) and retain Irv Novick. While Novick did not become as hailed as his cover artist and eventual successor on the series, Neal Adams, he definitely deserves as much credit as Adams for returning Batman to his "creature of the night" roots. This is the only really good portion of the Silver Age Batman, although there were good elements and individual stories during each of these segments.

Some of my other prior posts on Batman that you might enjoy:

A discussion of Ace, the Bat-Hound.

Robin's romance with Bat-Girl.

One of my older posts on Batman and Guns is now the #1 Google search result for that topic.

Update: See also here for a very funny cartoon take.

More about →

45 Years Ago Today

The New Look Batman was launched in Detective Comics #327. I don't think it's any secret that during the Jack Schiff era, Batman had become a little too reliant on gimmick stories. Aliens, weird transformations, and monsters had become all too common.

The problem can be seen in the declining average circulation numbers for Batman as reported in the following issues:

Batman #137 (1960 sales) 502,000
Batman #145 (1961 sales) 485,000
Batman #153 (1962 sales) 410,000

This was a sharp decline relative to the market; Batman went from #6 in sales in 1960 (and 3rd at DC) to #7 (5th at DC) to #10 (8th at DC). Unfortunately, we don't have the 1963-64 figures because they were not reported by DC for most of their magazines, but we must assume that there was not a strong uptrend, or else Schiff would have been retained on the feature (he did continue editing for DC at titles like Blackhawk and Mystery In Space).

So Julius Schwartz was placed in the editor's desk. I am sure that fandom responded with glee, as Schwartz had an excellent track record during the Silver Age, having brought back such famed Golden Age characters (in new incarnations) as the Flash, Green Lantern, Atom and Hawkman), as well as the Justice League of America, a modern version of the Justice Society of America. Schwartz brought with him artist Carmine Infantino, whom he put in charge of producing covers for both Tec and Batman. Infantino also began providing interior artwork for every other issue of Detective.

The way the story gets told now, Julie and Carmine saved Batman; there are claims that Batman issues were being returned in large numbers and the New Look was the only thing that kept Batman around long enough for the TV series.

I'm just a little skeptical. First, although the trendline was not good for Batman sales from 1960-62, there were lots of comics DC published that didn't even sell half of what Batman did. Fox and Crow, for example, sold 1/3rd the copies.

DC published their sales figures again in 1965, and Batman was back up to 465,000 copies per issue, from the 410,000 level of 1962, about an 11% increase. Detective was up 15%. But those increases were not all that unusual; comics were surging in popularity during those years (probably due to demographics). G.I. Combat was up 34%, Action Comics up 21%, Adventure Comics up 25%. Jimmy Olsen was up 18% to over 550,000 copies sold per issue.

So how much Schwartz's manning of the editor's desk is responsible for the sales increase in Batman and Detective is unclear. While Schwartz did get rid of the cheesier science fiction elements that had been so common under Schiff, he did not address the other major problem the series faced: the artwork.

Bob Kane apparently had a deal with DC to provide the bulk of the artwork for Batman. As is well-known, Sheldon Moldoff actually did the drawing. Moldoff's work, while serviceable seemed very stale by 1960s standards. Moldoff did all the interior artwork for Batman issues during the New Look and alternated with Infantino on the interior stories for Detective.

And while some of the stories Infantino did were fine, there were also the very oddball ones like these:





And if anything the series got worse when the Batman craze hit, although it's hard to blame that on Schwartz; obviously he had to deal with the fact that loads of kids were buying the magazine looking for the "pow" and "sock" that they saw on TV.

The New Look was an improvement and perhaps with the situation DC faced with Kane's contract about as much as could be expected. Don't get me wrong here; I do think that Julie rescued Batman, but it was later, after the collapse in sales following the cancellation of the TV show. By that point DC had bought out Kane and Schwartz was free to hire the new Batman artists; Irv Novick and Neal Adams, notably.

More about →