Originally, World's Finest Comics had presented multiple stories of multiple heroes, including both Batman and Superman, in various adventures. But a reduction in page count beginning with World's Finest #71 led to a momentous occassion - a team-up between the Man of Steel and the Dark Knight in the same comic!
And so World's Finest became the Batman/Superman team-up book. Edited initially by Jack Schiff, when Julius Schwartz took over the Batman books with the "New Look", World's Finest was put under the purview of Mort Weisinger, editor of the Superman line.
Unfortunately, it seems Mort was a little late to the whole "new" part of Batman's new look, so the Caped Crusader is in his old costume on the cover, while sporting the yellow oval within.
"The Olsen-Robin Team versus the Superman-Batman Team!"
Writer: Edmond Hamilton
Pencils: Curt Swan
Inks: George Klein
Synopsis: Our story begins in the offices of the Daily Planet, when a crackpot inventor shows up with a computer he claims can predict the future and demands the Planet write a story on it. Lois pawns the guy off on Jimmy Olsen, who says he will have to keep the device at the Planet to test it before he'll write a story. The inventor agrees, and soon Jimmy thinks that if it works he'll be able to get scoops before anyone else!
He asks the machine what the next big news story will be, and it replies that a high-wire walker will almost fall to his death! Well, turns out there is in fact a wire-walker doing an advertising exhibition down the street - dressed in a big yellow bird costume advertising the "Bird of Paradise" club.
Jimmy heads down with his camera and sure enough the big yellow bird guy takes a fall, but luckily he catches himself and so there's no need for Superman to spring into action. The next big story the computer predicts is that a flying saucer will buzz Metropolis. Clark declares that this is "just silly" (how many times have aliens visited Metropolis by now?), but sure enough the UFO buzzes the city.
However, the third prediction of the computer is that Jimmy Olsen and Robin WILL DIE, and so now Jimmy's freaking out. Lois and Perry can't find any record of the inventor in the phone book, so they can't get a hold of him to find out anything more from the machine. So Superman shows up to fly Jimmy to Gotham since this prediction involves Robin as well (with Jimmy wrapped up in Superman's cape so he doesn't discover the location of the Batcave).
So Superman and Jimmy tell Batman and Robin what's up, and Batman's all "this is a hoax, scan the computer with your X-ray vision". Turns out the device is sensitive to x-rays, and dissolves when Supes investigates it. Convenient. Batman then tries to get Jimmy to identify the inventor from a line-up of mad scientists, but no go.
So Jimmy and Robin go back to their lives, but they are seriously freaking out at everything that happens because they think they might die. So Robin suggests they take the Daily Planet's helicopter to a deserted island where no one can find them, and the World's Finest are cool with that, although it seems like no one asked the Daily Planet about this misuse of company property.
But the second Jimmy and Robin get to the island they begin digging their own graves and planting lead coffins in them and talking about how they're going to trick Superman and Batman into thinking they're dead! WTF? Weird Silver Age dick move? Or weird Silver Age hoax for contrived reasons? Or both?
The sidekicks call their friends with their signal watches and belt radios, and our heroes respond to the SOS to find two graves with their friends names on them. Superman can't verify they're dead because of the lead lined coffins, so Batman dares him to dig them up "if you can stand it", and Supes wusses out.
So Batman and Superman head off to find the "killers", while Jimmy and Robin are like "lewlewlewl."
So while Robin and Jimmy fly away in the helicopter and flashback to why all this is fucking happening. Turns out Robin had invented a monitor that can see through lead (what?!) and so Jimmy and Robin decided to test it and acidentally stumbled upon two crooks talking about how they had belts that could turn them invisible (what?!!) and they were gonna kidnap Jimmy and Robin and hold them hostage against Batman and Superman.
So Jimmy and Robin follow them but the crooks slip away because invisibility, and while they were gone some petty crooks broke into Jimmy's apartment and stole the lead monitor because we can't have something useful like that lying around for future stories.
Jimmy and Robin decide the only way they won't be liabilities for Superman and Batman going forward is to fake their own deaths, so Jimmy comes up with the whole complicated ruse of the computer that tells the future, and Robin was the dude in the bird costume, and also flew the Batplane dressed up as a UFO, because this long con was clearly the least complicated way to fake the death of a cub reporter who hangs out with Superman and a child in a yellow cape who gets shot at all the time.
The helicopter arrives at an abandoned observatory halfway between Metropolis and Gotham that they've decided to make their headquarters. They're going to watch both cities on two radar sets to try and detect the crooks despite their invisibility. And sure enough Robin detects a helicopter flying way too low over "Gotham Bank".
So using Robin's radio belt, Jimmy calls in an anonymous tip, claiming to be the "murderer" and mocking Batman and announcing the intent to invisibly rob the Gotham Bank - y'know, as a Batman villain does.
So Batman and Superman follow the crooks from the Gotham Bank using Superman's super-hearing to track their invisible helicopter, while Robin and Jimmy follow their heroes as well.
So Superman and Batman track the crooks to their weird secluded valley hideout, and that's when it turns out that their invisibility devices were invented by another scientist who is dying of radiation poisoning and decided to devote what little life he had left to inventing stuff to help mankind, and decides the first thing he'll invent is an invisibility machine, and then he's immediately kidnapped by criminals to use the device for evil.
So Superman cures the scientist by bringing him counter-radiation elements from a distant galaxy, and the crooks are arrested. And this is when it'd be natural for Jimmy and Robin to pop out and say "JK, we're alive!" the two decide to carry the charade a little bit longer to be dicks, and instead pop out during their memorial.
So Batman and Superman head back to the island to grab the caskets so they can be properly buried, followed by Jimmy and Robin. But when Superman and Batman open up the caskets... Jimmy and Robin are in them!!
Jimmy and Robin burst from their hiding places all "WTF" and Jimmy gets the hilarious line "Maybe we are [dead]? I'm confused..." At which point Batman explains that they knew Jimmy and Robin were faking it all along, that they pulled this final gag just to fuck with them, and figured it out because Jimmy's fingerprints were on the casket so clearly the two buried themselves which is impossible.
The wax figures of Jimmy and Robin end up in the "Eyrie", the headquarters of the Olsen-Robin team, as the first installments in a joint Superman-Batman hall of trophies.
~~~~
My Thoughts: Ugh. So, I know that Silver Age DC has a lot of fans. And I can certainly say that I myself have come to admire these stories much more than I used to when I was a teen and deep in my "Watchmen/DKR/Year One Gritty Comics" phase.
That being said, from a storytelling perspective a lot of these Silver Age stories, Mort Weisinger edited stories in particular, rely exceptionally heavily on contrivances. Things happen for the purpose of happening. Basically you can tell all these stories get structured around the cover, which is almost always a kind of "what the fuck is happening here and why?" And that's on purpose. It's designed to be the kind of insane non-sequitur that websites like SuperDickery.com thrived on, because the idea is that you want to read the story behind that crazy cover.
But then it almost always turns out the cover is a cheat of some kind, and that the story is full of insane contrivances to get us to that point. It's one of the reasons why, although I understand why the Mort Weisinger edited DC books are a big deal and solidified Superman's mythos and are fun and full of boundless imagination, I personally find them tough reads sometimes.
The Art: Speaking again on the topic of stuff I know is good, I understand why it's good, but personally don't really like -- Curt Swan art. So, I know it's sacreligious to dislike Curt Swan. But I do. I understand that for a lot of people he's THE Superman artist, like Neal Adams is THE Batman artist or Steve Ditko is THE Spider-Man artist. And that's fine. I also understand that he's really talented and draws really, really well. I mean, compared to Sheldon Moldoff, Curt Swan is amazing. But when World's Finest was a Jack Schiff edited book, it was mutha-fuckin' Dick Sprang on the book, an artist as awesome as his name. And frankly the problem I have with Curt Swan's art is the same problem I have with Ed Hamilton's story - Mort Weisinger. Mort had this particular style he imposed on his artists, and it makes sense because it unified the look of the Superman line of books, but the point of the look was to give the appearance of static illustrations of scenes, like in a children's book, rather than anything with a sense of movement or pizzazz. You begin to see why Jack Kirby over at Marvel was such a huge deal artistically when you put his stuff against this style.
That said, Curt Swan does a great job on this book, as usual, even if I don't like his style. The most awkward thing artistically is in fact "New Look" Batman himself, because it's pretty clear that they basically drew the whole thing with Batman's old costume, then went back over it to match the new Infantino version before it hit the printers, forgetting to change the cover too. It's like the reverse of Brian Bolland's revised "Killing Joke" hardcover - the yellow oval has been hastily and poorly added instead of hastily and poorly removed.
The Story: Do I have to say it? It makes no sense, and is just full of those WTF moments that Silver Age DC is famous for. I mean, on the second last page of this story we get the introduction of a dying scientist who invents invsibility, purely as a contrivance to explain invisible criminals, which is purely a contrivance to have them be a credible threat to Superman and Batman. Earlier in the story we have Robin inventing a device to see through lead, which is purely a contrivance to allow the discovery of invisible criminals, and becomes obvious as a contrivance when it's conveniently stolen so that it'll never be mentioned again.
And then there's the fact that this story, like so many Weisinger stories, is predicated on the idea of one of our heroes lying to the other characters for a contrived "greater good" reason. Here it's Jimmy Olsen and Robin concocting the ridiculous "computer that sees the future" long con so that everything else in the story will happen. And this is just insane. It's an insanely convoluted way to kill yourself, and it's also insane to think they had to fake their deaths to begin with. I mean, fuck it's Batman and Superman, the two greatest superheroes EVER. If you guys were kidnapped, I think they could handle it -- it happens like every second issue in their solo books.
And of course the story uses a bunch of cheats - like thought bubbles for Jimmy Olsen that seem to indicate that he doesn't know the computer is a hoax and that he's the one doing the hoaxing.
But all this is kind've moot, because the point of a Mort Weisinger comic is to have a story so insane and crazy that you have to keep reading to find out what the fuck is going on, and Ed Hamilton definitely succeeds there, even if he wades us through a ton of open bullshit to get us there.
I'll be interested to see if the Eyrie ever reappears ever again, since it's a clear attempt to imitate the Batcave and the Fortress of Solitude and their respective trophy halls, but this time as a headquarters for the sidekicks and a trophy hall devoted to both their respective heroes.
Notes and Trivia: First Mort Weisinger issue of World's Finest, debut of "The Eyrie"
The "New Look" Batman and Robin began in the 300th appearance of Batman in Detective Comics, with a cover that featured a brand new masthead for the first time in the series history. (Y'know, because maybe after 36 years it's time to modernize a little?)
The cover art is by Carmine Infantino and is essentially a blow-up of some panels from within the issue - although with one key difference that makes the cover kind of a cheat.
It's most interesting feature is that the big visual change of the "New Look" (Batman's yellow oval) is coyly avoided on this cover. It's hard to imagine these days, when superheroes have new costume and relaunches every couple of years, but the New Look was a huge change and a big gamble, and so it seems DC was trying to ease readers into the changes a bit.
The other big thing on the cover is the announcement that the back-up feature starring Martian Manhunter has been replaced with one starring Elongated Man -- aka the stretchy-powers superhero you care about even less than Plastic Man or Mr. Fantastic.
"The Mystery of the Menacing Mask!"
Writer: John Broome
Pencils: Carmine Infantino
Inks: Joe Giella
Synopsis: We start with a splash page elaborating a later scene in the story in which Batman and Robin helpless to make a move against a smug criminal. Our story proper takes us to Gotham Village, an uncreatively named analog for Greenwich Village. Imagined as an electic place filled with bohemians, cafés, and apparently lots of CRIME, it is currently the centre of a controversy to tear it down in order to lower crime in Gotham City (aka gentrification) or to be preserved for it's historic value.
Bruce Wayne is Vice Chairman of the committee to preserve the village, and so he takes his youthful ward Dick Grayson down to take a look at the place. There they meet a young woman named Linda Greene. Her fianceé, James Packer, wants them to live in the Village after they are married, but Linda wants to move Uptown because CRIME. Apparently Jimmy's been disappearing a lot lately and recently Linda found a map of the Village among his stuff with a certain area marked with an X, so what if Jimmy's a criminal?!
The circled X on the map causes Bruce and Dick to go into a mututal flashback to when they were pursuing a gem thief as Batman and Robin. The thief hid in a penthouse apartment and Batman rushed in to get him and was greeted with a blast of Crazy Purple Knock-Out Gas.
Robin runs up to the knocked-out Batman, and we get a replay of the cover. Only this time Batman's hands cover his whole face, and so when he turns to Robin who demands the Caped Crusader take off his mask, he does so and reveals a big pink circled X on the forehead - in a spot that should've been perfectly visible in the cover page's version of events.
Batman then looks up to see that the same mark has appeared on Robin's forehead as well! However after a few minutes the marks fade away... while the gem thief is long gone.
Meanwhile, the escaping gem thief inner monologues to himself that the explosion knocked out Batman long enough for the crook to brand him, "as well as Robin who entered the room moments later" -- which makes no sense, because Robin was never knocked out... so when was he branded?? How did the mark mysteriously appear on his forehead?
Anyways, at the Batcave, Batman does a chemical analysis on his mask and finds a trace amount of phosphorous isotope - which can only be bought at the Rare Chemical Company store! (Seriously?)
An inquiry with the store's owner reveals the only person to have purchased the isotope recently is a man named Frank Fenton, and the owner gives Batman his address. Turns out it's real, and a dude named Fenton lives there! This is the easiest mystery ever!
They show up at Fenton's place and we get the scene from the splash page - the Dynamic Duo find themselves unable to move. Fenton mocks them for a bit, take his loot of jewels and leaves.
After the paralysis wears off, our heroes regroup at the Batcave. Dick thinks the paralysis has something to do with the X marks, and Bruce agrees. They formulate a plan to undermine Fenton's control on their next meeting, and decide to search for him in Gotham Village, since it's a notorious hideout for crooks.
And that brings us back to the present, with Bruce's visit to the Village revealed as a cover for Batman and Robin to do some sleuthing. At that moment, Jimmy Packer walks by, and Bruce and Dick offer to tail him for Linda, who agrees.
And so Batman and Robin follow Jimmy to an abandoned house at the location Jimmy had marked with an X. Jimmy goes through a secret door in the back of a room, and our heroes follow him, revealing a staircase down into an underground cavern.
This is Sub-Gotham Village, a haven for criminals where they hide out until the heat dies down, paying a percentage of their loot to a crime boss named Smiler. Fenton is striking a bargain with Smiler, saying that he should get a discount rate because he can provide insurance against Batman and Robin as long as he's down there.
The Dynamic Duo springs into action, but once again are paralysed by Fenton. However when the crooks approach to gang up on them, they suddenly spring into action! Quickly they have all the crooks beaten up, and Batman stops them from trying to escape BY PULLING A GUN ON THEM?!!
The cops show up and arrest everybody, and in a Scooby-Doovian twist, Smiler's revealed to be wearing a mask and to be Roland Meacham, the chairman of the committee to preserve Gotham Village!
Yep, turns out the conservative reactionary anti-crime dudes who wanted to tear down the bohemian paradise were right all along - it was a haven for criminals!
Meanwhile, Fenton is revealed to have been using an energy signal from an electronic box directed at the radioactive phosphorous marks on Batman and Robin's heads to affect the motor areas of their brains, which the Caped Crusaders were able to block by wearing lead-lined masks. Which, is.... ugh. Okay.
And it turns out that Jimmy was just trying to find out where the criminal element was in Gotham Village so he could alert the police, figuring that if crime was gone then no one would want to tear it down and he and Linda could live there in peace!
And he was right! Even though the chairman was a crook, Bruce as Vice Chairman convinces the city to let the Village stay. Happy endings all around!
~~~~
My Thoughts: It's really hard to give an accurate picture of how amazingly huge this issue was when it dropped. I mean, it's basically just a regular average story about Batman and Robin fighting some regular crooks, with some vague topical allegory and a slightly weird gimmick for one of the criminals. But that's WHY it's such a big deal! Because Batman comics for the past seven or eight years had been about the Dynamic Duo fighting invading aliens from Dimension X and so on! Heck, the very issue of Detective before this one was called "Captives of the Alien Zoo", and featured a plot that is exactly what that title sounds like.
So this lowkey, quasi-realistic tale is a huge breath of fresh air in comparison to what came before. Which, ultimately, was the whole idea behind the "New Look".
The Art: And what a look! Again, in comparison to the issue just before this one, and indeed any Batman comic since Dick Sprang stopped drawing it (around 1954, I think), this thing is GORGEOUS! Ten years of Sheldon Moldoff ghosting for Bob Kane had meant flat, dimensionless, boring art! From a modern perspective Carmine Infantino might not look like much but in 1964 for Batman fans it was a huge leap forward. Infantino rendered his characters in a much, much more "realistic" style, delivering a Batman and Robin who looked like real people. Robin finally has a normal looking hairstyle instead of Bob Kane's weird double spitcurls, and Bruce finally has a normal looking chin instead of the perfectly square jaw he'd been sporting for decades. The art is dynamic as well - their capes move like fabric instead of cardboard, everything just looks and feels amazing. It's the art, and more importantly the contrast between this art and the art that came before, that makes this issue memorable, far moreso than the story.
The Story: As much as it's nice to have a down-to-earth Batman back, Broome's story is not very good, from an objective standpoint. It's got too many strands - there's Gotham Village, Jimmy Packer, Fenton and his gimmick, it's all over the place. The science of the gimmick makes no sense at all, but at least it's lowkey I guess. I know Schwartz felt that while Batman should go back to fighting regular crooks, they should still have some sort of gimmick that puts them beyond regular police, so I guess this is an iteration of that notion.
The weirdest thing about the story is that Gotham Village is like a version of Greenwich Village, and all the bohemian artist types living there made me think this was a kind of attempt to get at the folk movement teenager types, the burgeoning beginnings of the counter-culture movement as it stood in 1964. By having Bruce on the committee to preserve the village, it seems like the story is siding left here, natural since the youth audience of the comic probably would too. But then it turns out the hardliner "tear it all down" conservatives are right all along! Weird. It makes the comic come off very "square" in its sensibilities.
Although it is cool to see a story in which Bruce Wayne actually has some part to play. Putting him on a committee transforms him from a bored playboy/non-character to someone who's actually doing some social work in his civillian identity in addition to punching people as Batman. It's a cool beginning to a trend that will eventually culminate in Wayne Enterprises being introduced in the Bronze Age.
Okay, so the actual weirdest thing is Batman pulling a gun on those crooks - but Julie Schwartz has long since fessed up to that being because he was still a little unfamilar with the specifics of Batman's M.O., and soon promised it would never happen again.
Notes and Trivia: First "New Look" Batman and Robin, first appearance of the "Yellow Oval" bat-symbol, Batman pulls a gun on some dudes, first appearance of Gotham Village, first Batman issue drawn by Carmine Infantino.
In 1963, the Batman titles were in trouble. Exactly how much trouble is up for debate. Common comics histories generally state they were on the verge of cancellation, and indeed this is what staffers remember being told at the time.
But looking at the published sales numbers, it appears that while it is true sales had dropped by 30%, the Batman books were still in around the top ten of comics published in terms of sales (the bottom of that top ten, but still). There's also the fact that DC comics couldn't really cancel the Batman books - doing so would mean ownership of the character would revert to his "creator", Bob Kane, due to a lucrative contract Kane had signed in 1947.
But it was clear that something needed to be done about the books. Jack Schiff's era of the Batman Family, complete with Batwoman, Bat-Girl, Bat-Hound, Bat-Mite and so on, had to come to an end. The endless outer space adventures and interdimensional menaces had run their course. And by 1964, Sheldon Moldoff's Bob Kane-alike art style looked hopelessly out of date.
Compared to the revolution being wrought by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby over at competitor Marvel Comics, DC's line looked stiff, silly and childish, and none moreso than Batman and Robin. Clearly this was proof that Jack Schiff had been right all along, that the Dynamic Duo had never been a good fit for sci-fi, that the character needed to return to his roots as a pulpy urban avenger of the night!
DC agreed, so they fired Jack Schiff for being right, and chose a new editor to helm the rebirth of Batman -- their top sci-fi guy, Julius Schwartz!!
Schwartz was given six months to revive Batman's lagging fortunes, and the man who had ushered in the Silver Age at DC with Flash, Green Lantern, Hawkman, and Justice League of America knew that what Batman was in need of most was modernization.
Immediately gone, of course, was the sci-fi stuff. No more aliens, no more monsters, no more bullshit. Batman was back to fighting gangsters and earthbound human criminals - granted, they were still allowed colourful gimmicks or other characteristics that elevated them above common criminals, but they were human and they were believable. Once again, emphasis would be placed on Batman as a detective, a solver of crimes and mysteries.
Also excised was the supporting Bat-cast - gone were Batwoman and Bat-Girl, and their ugly costumes and poor excuses for "romantic interests". Gone was Ace the Bat-Hound, and especially gone was Bat-Mite. It was back to just Batman and Robin.
Other details were updated - the Batmobile, the Batcave, etc. given an aesthetic overall to bring them more in line with the 1960s. The Bat-Signal replaced with a "hotline" to Police headquarters inspired by the hotline between the White House and the Kremlin. Robin was to be drawn to look more like a high school age teenager than the puffy-cheeked cherubic pre-adolescent he had been for the past twenty-five years.
Also in need of updating was the art. Schwartz decided to bring on DC's golden boy artist, the man who had really helped sell the new Flash - Carmine Infantino. Infantino was definitely a cut above Sheldon Moldoff -- his characters looked more real, less cartoonish and more defined, and he had a stylishness to his drawing that was unique and identifiable.
Certainly this presented something of a problem - Infantino's art could not be more different from the ghosts of Bob Kane, and definitely could not be signed by Kane. So what to do?
Well, here's where things get interesting - DC had told Schwartz that Batman was in danger of cancellation. And they had also told Kane the same thing. They were firm that a desperate shake-up was in order, and therefore got Kane to agree to allow Infantino on art duties. Kane's studio was still guaranteed a certain amount of work - Infantino would do every second issue of Detective, while Sheldon Moldoff would do the others and Batman, and Joe Giella would ink both in order to create a kind of artistic link between the two.
By allowing this, Kane essentially loosened the conditions of his contract with DC for the first time. Infantino became the first Batman artist who's work was NOT signed "Bob Kane". It was a small step, but it was enough.
When Schwartz had revived Flash and Green Lantern, he had given them newer, more modern costumes. With the art changes brought on by Carmine Infantino, it made sense to update Batman's appearance as well. But being a huge icon of DC as he was, obviously the costume could not be changed much. Infantino altered the way the ears on the cowl looked, changed the shape of the mask a little, but the only big change he and Schwartz got away with was the symbol on Batman's chest -- a yellow oval now encircled the Bat logo, mirroring the look of the Bat-signal (and also coincedentally allowing DC something to trademark, as it was more unique than just a bat sillouhette).
This one change, the yellow oval, visually signifies the end of the old era of Batman, and the beginning of the new -- dubbed in house ads "The New Look".
~~Sources~~
Mark Waid's Foreward to The Dynamic Duo Archives Vol 1
http://www.hembeck.com/Covers/Detective327.htm
"The New Look Batman: Back to Basics"
"The Legend of Batman's New Look"
"How Bad Were Batman's Sales in the Early 1960s?"
"What Really Rescued the Caped Crusader"
"Secret Origins of the Batman TV Show"
When Jack Schiff assumed the editorship of the Batman group of comic books National Publications (aka DC Comics) had been publishing Batman stories for almost two decades. The character had cemented himself as the second-tier superhero of the genre, behind only Superman in the pantheon. His adventures as a masked detective solving crimes with his youthful sidekick Robin were even popular enough to survive the death of the superhero fad in the early 1950s - where his contemporaries found their books cancelled and their stories ended, Batman and Robin continued on with Superman and Wonder Woman as the only three costumed heroes headlining their own series.
With the superhero trend dying off, the comic book industry reached into other new genres, finding success: romance, westerns, horror, and science fiction. Science fiction, especially, was finding itself in a boom period all over media in the "Atomic Age", with stories of giant monsters and invading aliens finding popularity in film, television, and comics.
DC was more than willing to ride the trend, and so they infused their comics with a healthy dose of science fiction. Mort Weisinger's Superman books featured visits to other worlds, alien enemeies such as Brainiac, and of course survivors from Krypton such as the Phantom Zone aliens and Supergirl. Meanwhile, editor Julius Schwartz had revived older Golden Age heroes such as the Flash and Green Lantern, but had given them a decidedly sci-fi twist. The new versions proved immensely popular and helped usher in DC's Silver Age.
And so it was to be expected that the Batman titles would be pressured to follow suit, and join the trend. Certainly the Superman Family titles under Weisinger were popular enough that it made sense to imitate them. And so editor Jack Schiff's tenure on Batman was marked with a definite tendency towards sci-fi adventures.
Alien invasions, trips to other dimensions, bizarre giant monsters - it's an era that isn't looked back on fondly by many Batman fans. While Grant Morrison has recently rehabilitated this era through the lens of his run on the Batman titles, and they found reprinting in a trade collection called The Black Casebook tying into that run, and also found some wry references on the Brave and the Bold animated series - frankly most Batman fans see this era with distaste, and it's easy to see why. An urban crime fighter in a fairly realistic setting, a dark mysterioso vigiliante of the night, suddenly going to Planet X or growing sixty feet tall or fighting a Rainbow Monster?
But while Schiff gets a lot of the blame for this era, understandable considering it all happened under his tenure, that blame is a little unfair. Schiff himself was a long-time veteran of writing Batman stories, and he knew that the sci-fi mileau was wrong for the character. But he was also a good company man - he took orders and he wasn't one to stick up for himself, especially against imposing personalities such as Mort Weisinger or DC exec Irvin Donenfield.
And so Schiff did what he was told and copied Superman - not just in bringing sci-fi to Batman, but also in creating a "Batman Family" similar to Superman's. Now, in addition to Robin and Commissioner Gordon, Alfred and Vicki Vale, there would be an Ace the Bat-Hound to go along with Krypto the Super-Dog, and mischievous imp Bat-Mite who was similar to Superman's foe Mr. Mxyzptlk. Also, female heroes Batwoman and Bat-Girl would be added as ersatz love interests for the Dynamic Duo, partially to try and undo the charges of homosexuality leveled at the heroes by Frederic Wertham's book Seduction of the Innocent, which had ushered in the era of the Comics Code in 1954.
And so starting in 1957 the Batman books embraced this new era of sci-fi kookiness, where Batman must wear a different coloured costume every night, where Bat-Girl is always trying to get a kiss from Robin even though the Boy Wonder thinks girls are icky, and where the Super Batman of Zur-En-Arrh may team up with his Earthly counterpart for outer space escapades. The back-up feature in Detective Comics even introduced J'onn J'onzz, the Manhunter from Mars!
Frankly, the results were not successful. Sales dropped, readers complained, and while some of these stories are looked back upon fondly, the vast majority are hard to read.
It didn't help that the art was perhaps the worst the book had ever had. Bob Kane hadn't drawn a page since around 1949, of course, but he had Sheldon Moldoff working as his ghost while he signed the art and collected the credit. While inker Charles Paris helped things somewhat, for the most part Moldoff's art was stale, cardboard, the uninspired efforts of an underpaid penciller trying to imitate the art style of someone who was never very good in the first place.
And so while the rest of DC entered a creative renaissance, and comics as a whole experienced a new dawn with the arrival of Marvel Comics on the scene in 1961, the quality on the Batman books dipped lower and lower, as stories were recycled and writers scrapped the bottom of the barrel for ideas.
New Batman annuals reprinted older, pre-Code, Bill Finger/Dick Sprang material was hugely popular with readers, resulting in letters asking what had happened to this Batman. And while Schiff tried to use this as evidence to his superiors that sci-fi and Batman didn't mix, they still insisted on continuing the sci-fi tone, even as sales dipped lower and lower.
Finally, by 1963, sales had dropped by over 30%. DC would've cancelled the book then and there, but there was one problem - Bob Kane.
When Kane's contract had come up for renewal in 1947, he had lied to DC and told them he was a minor when he first created Batman in 1939. And so he was able to claim DC had taken advantage of him, and when he renegotiated he renegotiated hard. Despite having done almost no work on the character since, operating behind an army of ghosts, Kane retained exclusive rights and ownership of Batman, and if DC stopped publishing the character, Kane would be able to take him elsewhere.
So as much as they might've wanted to, DC could not cancel Batman. So instead, drastic measures were taken.
~~Sources~~
Mark Waid's Foreward to The Dynamic Duo Archives Vol. 1
"The Science-Fiction Batman: BEMs in His Belfry"
http://www.hembeck.com/Covers/Batman156.htm
