Which brings us to Part Four of this multi-part article about the day Batman changed forever, that day being (for me) Thursday, March 26, 1964. If you need to catch up, read Part One, then go read Part Two and Part Three. Preferably in that order.
In the early sixties, DC Comics employed a squadron of editors, each of whom edited a batch of comics for the company. With occasional exceptions, each did his books with a small group of freelancers who didn't freelance much for other DC editors. For example, most of the comics edited by Julius Schwartz were written by Gardner Fox or John Broome. Joe Kubert and Russ Heath drew mostly for Robert Kanigher. As a reader then, it sometimes felt to me like DC was an aggregate of seven different companies. The books of each editor had a distinctive look and feel…and you could tell that the various editors there did not read each other's comics very often, if ever.
My favorites were probably the books edited by Schwartz. Just before the big change in Batman, he was editing the following comics for DC: The Atom (bi-monthly), Flash (8 issues a year), Green Lantern (8 a year), Justice League of America (8 a year), Mystery in Space (8 a year), Strange Adventures (monthly) and he'd just dropped The Brave and the Bold and added a new Hawkman comic (a bi-monthly) to his list.
That worked out to 56 issues per year — a little more than a book per week. Down the hall in Mort Weisinger's office from which the Superman books emanated, they put out the exact same number. Another longtime editor there, Jack Schiff, was in charge of Batman (8 a year), Blackhawk (monthly), Detective Comics (monthly) and World's Finest Comics (8 a year) for a total of 40 issues per year. A slightly easier workload. The other editors there were Murray Boltinoff, George Kashdan, Robert Kanigher and Lawrence Nadle.
The higher-ups at DC — Publisher Jack Liebowitz and Editorial Director Irwin Donenfeld — were aware they needed someone besides Jack Schiff to be in charge of the Batman books and Julie Schwartz, who was editing the most successful non-Superman super-hero comics for the company, seemed to be the guy. But they were also looking at Marvel's rising sales and some of their other titles' declining numbers and this seemed like a good time to swap a number of editors around.
At first, Julie balked at taking over Batman, partly over the added workload and partly because he was afraid his standing within the firm would suffer if he failed to reverse the downward trend of the Bat-Books. They solved the first qualm he had by taking away from him — quite against his wishes — Mystery in Space and Strange Adventures. These, they reassigned to Schiff…so Schwartz lost one monthly and one eight-per-year to Schiff and in exchange, he got one monthly and one eight-per-year…from Schiff.
Schiff also lost World's Finest Comics, the book featuring Superman-Batman team-ups. They moved it from the now-former Batman editor to the Superman editor. Weisinger objected to the added work though according to his friend Julie Schwartz, Mort loved the idea of controlling yet another comic with Superman in it. He was not that happy that Justice League of America — in which the Man of Steel appeared sparingly — was outside his control.
And a few other books moved about. The monthly Blackhawk (also in need of a facelift) went from Schiff to Boltinoff. In exchange, all the "weird" anthology titles about ghosts and monsters were consolidated under Schiff. He got House of Secrets from Boltinoff. He took over House of Mystery and Tales of the Unexpected) from Kashdan. Kashdan also took over Sea Devils from Kanigher, freeing R.K. to launch a new bi-monthly war comic, Captain Storm.
You don't have to follow all that. I couldn't. I just pointed this out as a time of slight panic at DC. That's why they chose that moment to rotate editors on a dozen of their comics. And why there was a lot riding on Julius Schwartz bringing forth a new look for Batman.
It was easy enough to dump a lot of the sillier elements that had been brought to the property. Out went Batwoman, Batgirl, Bat-Hound, Bat-Mite and a lot (but not all) of the Bat-Paraphernalia. Batman and Robin would still ride about in the Batmobile but they ditched the Bat-Copters and a few other means of Bat-Conveyance. Schwartz put his two main writers, Fox and Broome, to work on scripts and there would also be some by Bill Finger, Ed Herron and Robert Kanigher. The stories emphasized the "detective" side of Batman as he battled villains who were colorful but not interplanetary.
But then came the hard part: The artwork. To be continued further.