Several folks have written me to ask about a series over on the Comic Book Bin website in which Philip Schweier is serializing a history of DC Comics. Here's a link to Part One and you can find your way to subsequent parts through that…but I don't recommend you do that. The three parts posted so far have just too many inaccuracies and misleading statements. For example, in Part Three, Schweier writes…
In 1971, Carmine Infantino was named publisher, overseeing the entire line of comics, holding court in matters ranging from animated cartoons to toy production. Seeing a need for a more visual approach to creating comics he named a number of artists — Joe Kubert, Joe Orlando, and Dick Giordano, among others — to assume editorial positions with the company.
Infantino was named publisher in 1971 but that was just a change of title. He'd been overseeing the entire line of comics for several years by then. He named Joe Kubert an editor in 1967 and Joe Orlando in 1968. Dick Giordano began editing in 1969 and was ousted in 1971. Here's another paragraph…
Under Infantino's leadership, new titles were introduced, such as Tarzan and The Shadow. However, whatever financial success they may have enjoyed was offset by licensing fees. Another financial leak came in the form of rising freelance fees. To reduce the impact, the company chose to send work to the Philipines to be drawn.
The financial problem with Tarzan and The Shadow was not licensing fees, which were rather modest, was that those books didn't sell very well. Neither did a lot of non-licensed books of the period which were also cancelled. With the licensed books, the problem was not that the company had to pay fees but that they didn't share in any licensing of those characters. It's not so bad to lose money publishing Wonder Woman when you're taking in money from Wonder Woman toys…but DC received no part of the merchandising cash from Tarzan. Also, the Filipino artists were cheaper but their employment had nothing to do with rising freelance fees since DC didn't raise those fees much, if at all, during this period. Matter of fact, this was a way of trying to cut them for everyone, using the Filipino contingent as a threat.
I haven't the time or inclination to go through the whole series but there's an awful lot that's like the above. Sorry to say.