Welcome back. Please log in.

DOUBLE COVER outer cover is 8.5
1st new look Batman; Infantino begins (5/64); COMIC BOOK IMPACT rating of 7 (CBI)
By the mid-1960s, Batman was nearly done for. After three decades of fighting off homicidal clowns, sexy jewel thieves, scarred former friends, and waddling bird enthusiasts, the Caped Crusader was about to be done in by the twin scourges of 1950s/early 1960s anti-comics frenzy and the most dreaded villain of all, plummeting sales. As a result, DC gave editor Julius Schwartz and dependable freelancer Carmine Infantino an ultimatum: you guys have six months to fix this mess, or the Dark Knight gets it.

Going for broke, Schwartz and Infantino, together with Batscribes Gardner Fox and John Broome, combined the character's pre-Robin attitude and punchiness with the then-new pop art sensibility that was transforming the look of American and English advertising art. The result was an instant success. Combined with the concurrent Batman TV series and the cult following gathering in Hollywood and college campuses for the original Batman serial, the character was given a stay of execution. This opening salvo in the battle to save the Bat is one of the most cherished and famous of all Silver Age DC keys, its pop-art sequential cover with stark white background announcing forcefully to all that a new Batman was in town, and he was taking no prisoners.
What makes this copy extra-special is the DOUBLE COVER! Variants like these have become red-hot in recent years, as collectors looking for that little extra oomph in their collection avidly seek out production oddities like this. In the rough-and-tumble printing process that newsstand-era comics were subjected to, quality control was, shall we say, not top priority, and occasional weirdnesses such as this would pop off the assembly line without note. Double (and sometimes triple and quadruple) covers would pass into collectors' and readers' hands over time and be carefully set aside as nifty variations on common issues or well-loved titles. Not only is this copy doubly graced with Infantino's classic imagery, but the inner cover is a sparkling 9.4, making this both a desirable variant and a stunning high-grade beauty.




Artists Information

High School of Art & Design alum Carmine Infantino got his start in the industry working Timely, a precursor to Marvel Comics, where he would do spot work on anthology features, in his first work at DC he helped create Black Canary and began his long-running involvement with the Flash during his Golden Age era, as well as illustrating the original Green Lantern. After the post-war comic book slump Infantino collaborated with writer Robert Kanigher and editor Julius Schwartz to help bring back superheroes and launch the Silver Age by updating the Flash in the pages of Showcase, the reboot was a huge success and led to the superhero rebirth that has continued into the modern day, Infantino's ability to capture speed and movement on a page made his Flash believable and engaging. Carmine was promoted to Art Director and then Publisher at DC over the course of his illustrious career,

Joe Giella is an American comic book artist best known as a DC Comics inker during the late 1950s and 1960s Silver Age of comic books. Giella's career began in the 40's at Hillman and later working with C.C. Beck on Captain Marvel stories at Fawcett. He would also assist on Captain America, Human Torch, Sub-Mariner and other stories at Timely. It was the Silver Age where he would come to his most prominence, working at DC on many of their biggest titles, including Batman, Green Lantern and Strange Adventures, working often with artist Carmine Infantino.