12 Most Notorious Batman Urban Legends

6. Batman Was Almost Cancelled In The 1960s

Verdict: Untrue (probably).

After flagging sales at the start of the 1960s, DC played with the idea of cancelling the character altogether, and that the character was teetering in 1963 before the introduction of the New Look by new editor Julius Schwartz revived it.

But consider the context: at the time, Batman was still all over DC's covers and was still featuring heavily in World's Finest. He was far from considered toxic and he remained the flagship even as he was supposedly circling the drain. The reality is that the New Look - which coincided with the 300th issue - was a marketing ploy, and so was the dire circumstances.

According to the excellent Silver Age Comics blog's take, Batman was still the 10th best-selling comic in 1962, out-selling JLA or Flash, or Green Lantern, and "20 other mags that DC was publishing at the time". That excellent run-down pours scorn on the idea of cancellation, instead looking at it as a necessary reshuffle, which is far more likely.

Interestingly, Gerard Jones's Men of Tomorrow (via OzAndEnds blog) claims that Bob Kane's 1947 contract stipulated that he'd retain all rights to the character if Batman was cancelled. Would DC really have handed over the rights in total and forever? Unlikely.

Artist Carmine Infantino claimed that one of the issues was that Bob Kane wasn't even doing the work, farming it out to ghosts, but Kane's letter to BatMania claimed that as utter BS - there he said he still did 90% of the Batman work. That much was untrue, but the cancellation probably wasn't.