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Post by Ish Kabbible on Sept 4, 2016 22:42:19 GMT -5
Jack Schiff loved his aliens and prison bar covers. Robot aliens too  |
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Post by Prince Hal on Sept 5, 2016 8:58:27 GMT -5
What the HECK!?!? I've never read this one. Don't you love how Sheldon Moldoff always drew characters as if they were floating on their tiptoes? And they never leave shadows beneath them! |
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Post by Prince Hal on Sept 5, 2016 8:59:09 GMT -5
Jack Schiff loved his aliens and prison bar covers. Robot aliens too Not that there's anything wrong with that. |
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Post by Ish Kabbible on Sept 5, 2016 9:18:42 GMT -5
Jack Schiff loved his aliens and prison bar covers. Robot aliens too Not that there's anything wrong with that. I think Schiff had a guilty sub-conscious . There are plenty of other covers with prison bar motifs sans aliens. I wonder what crimes Schiff committed besides filling youngster's heads with sub-par Batman stories And I wonder what all those gorilla covers from other DC editors represents |
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Post by Prince Hal on Sept 5, 2016 9:22:22 GMT -5
Not that there's anything wrong with that. I think Schiff had a guilty sub-conscious . There are plenty of other covers with prison bar motifs sans aliens. I wonder what crimes Schiff committed besides filling youngster's heads with sub-par Batman stories And I wonder what all those gorilla covers from other DC editors represents You may be on to something, Ish. Remember that it was Schiff who was the guy behind the scores of community service strips that ran for so many years throughout the DC line.  |
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Post by Ish Kabbible on Sept 5, 2016 9:33:09 GMT -5
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Post by Ish Kabbible on Sept 5, 2016 9:38:21 GMT -5
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Post by Ish Kabbible on Sept 5, 2016 12:10:35 GMT -5
YOU DON'T KNOW JACK SCHIFF !!!!
I don't want to come off as a meany concerning Jack Schiff's regime as editor of Batman comics. For all I know, he was a well-intentioned and nice gentleman. Facts are, sales on the Batman titles were slowly fading during his reign and he was under much pressure to reverse this slide. According to an interview he gave Robert Overstreet for the 1983 Guide, Schiff was advised by Harry Donenfeld, DC publisher, to heed the suggestions from Mort Weisinger, fellow DC editor. Mort wielded much power within DC in the late 50s/early 60s as the editor of the top-selling Superman line
It was Mort who told Jack to inject as much science-fiction themes as possible. It was Mort who suggested Jack use the Superman template for supporting characters. So Lois Lane clone Vicki Vale was played up, Mr Mxyzptlk clone Bat Mite was introduced, Batman got a dog with a mask to emulate Krypto, female Bat things were introduced since Supergirl was popular.
Sales continued to slide. What was good for Superman did not necessary work with Batman. Schiff began to edge away a bit from monthly aliens and monsters and began to focus more on villains such as the returning Joker and new creations like Clayface and Catman. But it was too little, too late. Schiff was taken off the Bat titles replaced by Julie Schwartz in 1964. Schiff was already thinking of leaving and start a career in freelance writing. He took over House Of Mystery and brought The Martian Manhunter along with him. Schiff helped to introduce Robby Reed, Dial-H-For-Hero. In 1967 Schiff left DC for good
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Post by Hoosier X on Sept 5, 2016 13:55:27 GMT -5
Detective Comics #234 - first Batwoman - (July 1956)
Action Comics #252 - first Supergirl - (May 1959)
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Post by Ish Kabbible on Sept 5, 2016 15:15:26 GMT -5
Thanks Hoosier for that info. I was reading the excerpts from that interview Jack Schiff gave to Bob Overstreet and while he specifically mentioned those Weisinger recommendations, I inferred Batwoman among them
Edit: Schiff might have been referring to Batgirl, introduced in 1961
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Post by Hoosier X on Sept 5, 2016 17:21:31 GMT -5
One of the things I love about Batwoman is that she pre-dates the Silver Age Flash by a few months.
Jack Schiff edited Batman for a long time. A long time. And those random aliens that the anti-Schiff crowd likes to mock were around for a long time too. If you look at the sales figures for Batman and Detective for the late 1950s and the very very early 1960s, they are second only to the Superman family of comics. And this is when the random aliens and weird transformations had been going on for a few years. It was a very successful formula for a long time.
If you look at the last year or so of Detective Comics (and I'm guessing the Batman comic is the same but I haven't looked at it that closely), you'll see that there just aren't that many random aliens and weird transformation stories. From Detective #311 to #326, there's three Catman stories, one run-in with Clayface, some fairly generic gangsters, a movie-lot murderer, a Tarzan-inspired story, the return of both Double X and the Terrible Trio, Dr. No-Face, the Zodiac-Master and a robot brain. There's one weird transformation story (Detective #322) where Batman turns into a genie. (And it's a great story! So for me, it's not a good example of Schiff being a hack) and a story that kind of mixes the weird transformations with random aliens (Detective #320) the one with Batman and Robin as mummies (this one's pretty dumb, but I kind of like it because they gave Vicki Vale something to do.) And the random aliens in Detective #326. (This is another one that I think is a bad example if you're trying to claim hackery. I like it!)
So that's three out of sixteen stories with those random aliens and weird transformations that supposedly characterize the Schiff era.
I don't think Bat-Mite is in a single one of these issues. (He's in #310 though.) Batwoman is in quite a few of them. Bat-Girl appears once. (She only appeared six times in 1961 to 1964 in all the Batman comics combined, and #322 is Bat-Girl's only appearance in Detective.) I'm not sure about Ace. He's only in one of these issues, I think, but I think he might have appeared in the main Batman comic more often.
By 1964, I'm guessing the "Bob Kane" style of art looked very outdated, and sales were declining. I doubt very much that Batman was on the verge of cancelation, as some have claimed. But Batman had been very successful under Jack Schiff for quite a long time, including a period of several years where the random aliens and weird transformations were selling very well.
I love these stories! From what I've read, they hit more often than they miss. This idea that they were all random aliens and weird transformations seems to me to be a huge exaggeration that I've been seeing in the introductions to trade reprints of Batman stories for a long time and it's not borne out by my experience with actually reading the stories.
I keep meaning to be a bit more comprehensive and do more research and write an article about the "Jack Schiff myth" but I just haven't read that many of the stories over the long haul of Schiff's career.
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Post by Ish Kabbible on Sept 5, 2016 17:56:37 GMT -5
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Post by Prince Hal on Sept 5, 2016 18:19:43 GMT -5
Lil' Ishi did enjoy this book that Hoosier spotlighted awhile back. As a full length 3-part "novel" the sheer size of the story lent it an aura of importance  Maybe it was all the sex contained in the story that made it a favorite    An all-time favorite. |
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Post by Hoosier X on Sept 5, 2016 18:47:21 GMT -5
I'm glad to see that everyone likes this one! According to Mike's Amazing World, it was written by Bill Finger, with art by Sheldon Moldoff and Charles Paris.
And I especially love Robin and Bat-Girl giggling in the background in the last panel. Hilarious and adorable!
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Post by Ish Kabbible on Sept 5, 2016 19:34:59 GMT -5
I'm glad to see that everyone likes this one! According to Mike's Amazing World, it was written by Bill Finger, with art by Sheldon Moldoff and Charles Paris. And I especially love Robin and Bat-Girl giggling in the background in the last panel. Hilarious and adorable! The final, unpublished. page had them all get rooms at the Cary Bates Motel.
grotto |
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