LOGAN, W.V. — Holy CPR, Batman! Despite the fact that he's sitting atop the box office, at one point in the Caped Crusader's crime fighting career, he was slated to die.

But not by the gun of the Joker or some criminal stalking the streets of Gotham City.

Instead, Batman's crime fighting was at end and nose-diving sales was the killer. Published reports say the numbers were so bad that, in 1964, the company was ready to give up and put an end to Batman's comic book adventures.

But, it was because of the work of a longtime comic book creator that the Bat-franchise is alive and well.

As Batman Begins makes millions as the top movie in theaters, veteran comic book artist Carmine Infantino sits in his New York City apartment thinking of the days when Batman was on the brink of cancellation and how today's movie might not be possible without his help.

See, in 1964, Infantino was the man who saved Batman.

Infantino, then an artist with DC Comics, was called into the publisher's office with legendary comic book editor Julius Schwartz and told to do something — anything — with Batman, whose series was about to be canceled because of sagging sales.

"I was working at home and Julie (Julius) Schwartz gave me a call," Infantino said. "Irwin Donenfeld — who has just recently died — was the publisher then and he wanted to see us the next day. I said 'Julie, I'm coming in next Monday.' He said 'No, no. You're coming in tomorrow. He wants both of us in his office tomorrow morning.' Donenfeld said 'It's this simple. Batman is dying. We're giving you two guys six months to fix it. If not, it's over. He dumped quite a load on our shoulders.'"

Infantino said he was immediately assigned to do the covers for both Batman and Detective Comics, the latter being the series that spawned Batman in its 27th issue in 1939. The Caped Crusader's creator, Bob Kane, was under contract with DC to do so many pages a month. But, Infantino said, Kane's Batman stories were too old-fashioned — and the falling circulation numbers on his two comic series was making the Batman an endangered species.

"What happened was I had to create the covers and Julie would write stories around them," Infantino said. "And because of the obligation to Kane, I would do the Batman stories in Detective Comics and Kane would handle the stories in the Batman comic, but I would do all the Batman covers. Kane was not happy with this because he thought they were stealing his strip, which they bought outright from him later for a million dollars."

Infantino said the radical change in direction — from Batman soaring through space in a Bat-rocket to Batman fighting crime on the streets of Gotham City — caused an immediate increase in sales. But, the cliffhanger cover he was designing caused an instant increase in sales, he said.

"The book was at 32 percent sales — which is a heavy loss and we brought it back up to 45 percent," Infantino said. "We were raising the print run and making money with this."

In published reports, DC Comics has said that the sell-through went to 69 percent with the new look of Batman.

That's when Batman caught the eye of a TV producer, which led to the highly-popular Batman television series, Infantino said.

"At this point, producer Bill Dozier was at an airport and he saw one of my covers on Batman, he got interested, he called the company and — boom — the TV show came on and we took off with that," Infantino said. "Dozier liked it and he wrote to Donenfeld and Jack Liebowitz, because they ran the company, and he made an arrangement. He wanted to put Batman on television and they worked out a deal. As soon as the thing started, it was a big hit. Bam! Pop! Pow! It was silly. But, it worked. No one could complain. DC and the TV people made a fortune."

Schwartz, Infantino's editor on the Batman titles, said in an interview done before his death, Infantino was "more important (to DC Comics) than anyone I work with," when talking to Liebowitz about keeping Infantino from going over to rival Marvel Comics in 1966 when Marvel's Stan Lee offered $5,000 more money than what he was making at DC.

"Carmine revived Batman artistically with what we called the 'New Look,'" Schwartz said in Infantino's autobiography, The Amazing World of Carmine Infantino from Vanguard Productions. "This led to the TV show, which was a smash hit. When the TV producers wanted another female character, Carmine and I created Batgirl. I called that the 'Million Dollar Debut of Batgirl.' Most often, when a writer or I would come up with an idea for a new character or villain, it would be Carmine who would come up with the perfect design."

Schwartz, who passed away late last year, was a longtime editor at DC Comics and Infantino collaborator. Schwartz is credited with ushering in what comics fans refer to as "The Silver Age" of comics when he, Infantino and Robert Kanigher created the modern age Flash in 1956.

"Julie was very important to the whole thing and you have to give him his credit," Infantino said.

Despite his resuscitation of Batman, Infantino never shared the profits with the company. No royalties, nothing.

"Unfortunately, we artists at the time got the same pay we always did," Infantino said. "I had to do posters and all sort of advertising and licensing work for them, all at comic book page rates — not advertising rates. By the time the TV show was on the air, Batman was selling 900,000 to a million copies a month."

Infantino said the popularity of the show eventually died down and so did sales on the Bat-titles.

"After the show wore off on people, the thing dropped like a rock again and there was a whole rebuilding," he said. "By that time, I was promoted to editorial director at DC. First, I had to call Kane in. I said to him 'Listen, we're going to pay you the money that we are obligated to, but you're off the strip. We've got to get better talent on these books.' At this point I was too busy running things to draw Batman so I immediately brought Neal Adams, Irv Novick and Jim Aparo in and put them on the books. And surely, it began to come back again.

"Kane hadn't even been doing the work. He was farming it out to others. He hadn't touched the drawing for years. What he was turning in was too old-fashioned."

Infantino's three choices for Bat-artists proved to be the right choice, he said, as Batman and Detective Comics once again soared to the top of the sales charts. According to Infantino, the three artists all brought more realistic approaches to Batman.

"We had to give realism to this character because it had become too campy," Infantino said. "Before I took it on, it was really campy. It looked like little marionettes walking around. Then, they had things like Bat-Mite and Bat-this and Bat-that. We had to make drastic changes. We had to bring the whole thing back down to earth."

One of the sweeping changes Infantino says he made to the Batman family was adding new characters.

Infantino is credited in his autobiography with co-creating two of the longest-running characters in Batman history — Batgirl and Poison Ivy. Batgirl has been a member of the Bat family since her first appearance in Detective Comics No. 359 and the villain, Poison Ivy, has gotten under Batman's skin countless times since first appearing in Batman No. 181. These two characters, along with others like the Blockbuster, helped Batman regain his place atop DC's best sellers, Infantino said.

"(Batgirl) happened because Dozier had put the Catwoman on the air," Infantino said. "She was on the show and that connected with viewers. So, he called and said 'Do you people have any more women characters?' Julie called me and says 'Do you have any more characters?' I said 'I have three women characters here. Do you want me to bring them in?' He said 'Yep.' So, I brought them in. He loved Poison Ivy. He didn't like the Cobra. And he was iffy on the Silver Fox. I said 'Julie, what if we turned Silver Fox into a Batgirl?' He said 'I'd buy that.' And that's how it started.

"We put them on the covers and they took off. Dozier used Batgirl. They're still using Poison Ivy to this day in animation and she was in one of the films."

Infantino said even if he were still actively working in the comics profession, he would no longer create characters unless he was to be paid royalties.

"I wouldn't do it again unless I sahred ownership of the characters," Infantino said. "It's that simple. I understand the guys today refuse to give any ideas away now because the companies want you to sign everything away."

A top artist and cover editor at DC for many years, Infantino was eventually promoted to president and publisher. He left the company in the mid-1970s and worked at Marvel Comics, Hanna-Barbera and Warren Publishing before returning to DC in the early- to mid-1980s for a short stint before eventually returning to pencil the character whose life he'd saved.

DC used Infantino on the Batman newspaper comic strip, but it was a job that didn't fly with the artist because he said it seemed to him to be a rehash of old ideas.

"I didn't like the scripts at all," Infantino said. "They'd bring an old villain out and it was really old cartoon stuff they were doing. They had the inker give it an animation style. I didn't say a word. I just drew it and turned it in."

Nowadays, Infantino, who considers himself retired, will occasionally do a cover for a special project, produce art recreations and still attends comic book conventions where he does sketches and talks to fans about his six decades in comics.

"When I go to conventions, people come up to me," Infantino said, "and they tell me they loved the comics that we did better than the ones they're reading now."

Though DC cited Infantino as one of 50 the most important creators in the history of the company in the comic Fifty Who Made DC Great, DC Comics representatives declined to comment for this story.



Michael Browning writes for The Logan, W.Va., Banner.