Comic Book Resources

Who created the original Batman logo?

Batman #1 logo

As you may have guessed, we're big fans of the Logo Studies feature letterer Todd Klein runs over on his blog, where he looks at various comic book logos and how they evolved over the years. Yesterday he shared a bit of history about the original Batman logo from the 1940s, which was designed by comics legend Jerry Robinson.

"One of the things I expected when I started doing my Logo Studies was that I would never be able to find out for sure, or at all, who designed many of the original comics logos from the 1940s," Klein wrote on his blog. "Today I proved that expectation wrong when I spoke to Jerry Robinson, one of the first Batman artists, and involved with the character almost from the beginning."

Klein had originally gotten in touch with Robinson to ask about the Robin logo that appeared on the Boy Wonder's first appearance, and Robinson told Klein he also designed the original Batman logo, seen above.

Check out Klein's complete rundown of the Batman logos over the years here and here, and his commentary on the Robin one here.

Stunning sagas, alternate realities

Grumpy Old Fan

Marvel tends to revisit its past with a specificity that DC doesn't duplicate. In projects like World's Greatest Comic Magazine!, What If?, the current X-Men Forever, and (apparently) the upcoming Clone Saga miniseries, Marvel not only spins new stories out of particular points in continuity, it attempts to give particular creative teams the second chances at closure which the fates denied them. Of course, DC does quite a bit of looking back itself, but most of the time it's not facilitating such second chances. Still, there are certain points in DC's publishing history which seem to ask for their own "what if" moments; so I'm going to talk about a few of those today.

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Shades of Gray(son): Rounding up June's Bat-books

Grumpy Old Fan

So there I was in the spring of 1988, a college freshman buying snacks at the local convenience store, when I saw Amazing Spider-Man #300 sitting on the magazine shelf. I knew artist Todd McFarlane had helped make the book pretty popular, and I had fond memories of writer David Michelinie from his earlier work on Iron Man and Avengers. Accordingly, I stuck with ASM through the end of McFarlane's run (in #325), and never gave much thought to Spidey's two other regular titles. Spectacular Spider-Man and Web Of Spider-Man might have been great reads, but for whatever reason, I just wanted the "headliners," Michelinie and McFarlane.

I suspect the same is true these days with the Batman line. Yesterday's releases of Detective Comics #854 and Gotham City Sirens #1 close out the first month of the Big Batman Relaunch. The Grant Morrison-written Batman And Robin (drawn initially by Frank Quitely) has drawn the most attention, with much of the rest going to Detective's Batwoman lead (written by Greg Rucka, drawn by JH Williams III). Each of these high-profile creative teams has been charged with producing new-reader-friendly stories, and thereby building an enduring foundation of loyal consumers.

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