Carmine Infantino - Architect of the DC Universe

This was only a start for him.

(New name, new post!)

Comics great Carmine Infantino seems mostly known today for his role in creating the Silver Age Flash and his long association with Barry Allen. This is, on its own, a remarkable achievement – after all, he designed the iconic Silver Age Flash costume that has been continuously used (with very little modification) since 1956. Yet I would argue that Infantino’s greatest achievement in comics was his role as Editorial Director, and later Publisher, of DC Comics (1967-1975), a wildly creative period that completely revitalized the company and established cornerstone concepts and new characters that helped launch DC to great commercial – but also critical – success.

Infantino directly had a hand in nearly every creative success during his tenure as Editorial Director because he hired many of the creators – greats like Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, Denny O’Neil, Neal Adams, Dick Giordano, Jim Aparo, and Mike Grell – who produced such successes. And while many of the concepts did not have wildfire success right away, almost all of them – particularly Kirby’s Fourth World and Swamp Thing – went on to massive success in subsequent decades. Furthermore, many concepts that did not light the sales charts on fire, like Adam’s Deadman and the Goodwin/Simonson Manhunter, are even today praised from a critical standpoint as masterpieces of the art form. Infantino injected DC Comics with a new maturity in both storytelling and artwork that did away with much of the “silly” concepts of the post-Golden Age that caused so many to dismiss comics as an art form. Had Infantino not seized on the new opportunities available to the industry, DC Comics might have remained the comics for your “little brother” compared to those offered by cross-town rival Marvel (of course, not that there's anything wrong with comics for your little brother).

Infantino also hired the two men most associated with Marvel Comics who were not named “Stan Lee” – Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, the artists who had the most influence on designing the “house style” of Marvel Comics. With Infantino as Editorial Director, Kirby and Ditko created some of the most offbeat characters that DC Comics had. Kirby’s New Gods, Demon, Kamandi, and OMAC and Ditko’s Creeper and Hawk and Dove are all still widely used in DC books today, and the DC Universe would be a poorer place without these contributions. Other notable new characters introduced include Deadman (Strange Adventures #205), Bat Lash (Showcase #76), Swamp Thing (House of Mystery #92), Jonah Hex (All-Star Western #10), and Warlord (First Issue Special #8).

Along with the new characters created by Kirby, Ditko, and others, nearly all of DC’s flagship characters received revamps. Though some of these had a questionable success rate – notably the “I Ching” Wonder Woman era that was reversed in just under four years, the even shorter-lived “non costume” Teen Titans era, and the “Kryptonite No More!” Superman – others, like the Batman revamp that lead to the O’Neil/Adams Batman stories and the “New Look” Green Arrow were massive improvements for both the characters and the stories. In addition, Green Lantern was able to latch onto the critical success of Green Arrow with the “social relevance” issues (though sales were not there), DC began publishing Shazam! featuring the original Captain Marvel, and Len Wein began a well-regarded run on Justice League of America (issues #100-114). Even Golden Age characters, like the Spectre, Manhunter, and the Sandman, received new versions by top creators (Fleischer/Aparo, Goodwin/Simonson, and Simon/Kirby, respectfully). Heck, even the Phantom Stranger, who was previously a character from a long-forgotten canceled 1950s book was revamped in the pages of Showcase! Yet curiously enough, the character most associated with Infantino – the Flash – received no such revamp. I’d imagine even a prolific editor like Infantino couldn’t get to every character, and since he had a big hand in Barry Allen's creation perhaps Infantino liked the Scarlet Speedster the way he was.

In January 1976, Jeanne Kahn was made Publisher, and after a few years away from DC Infantino returned to drawing The Flash in the early 1980s. As for Kahn, you might say she did quite well also, but creators under her tenure certainly were able to capitalize on what Infantino oversaw before.

A Question About Speedy

You may have forgotten (because I recently did) that Mia Dearden, also known as Green Arrow’s sidekick Speedy, is HIV positive. I bring it up that way because something that anyone who knows anything about the real-life disease would expect it to be a life-altering change, however it has been hardly more than a background detail since Mia made the announcement in Green Arrow #33 (December 2004). Since then the fact that Mia is HIV positive has come up a few times in Green Arrow and never in any significant way.

In a 2004 interview with CBR, then-and-now Green Arrow writer Judd Winick stated:

“The point of this character is she's living with HIV, as many people do. There are people who have been living for 20 years through combination drug therapy and live relatively unencumbered lives. Some people are on the combination drug therapy and it's an enormous hassle and there are tons of side effects and terribly uncomfortable. It runs the gamut. This character is not about Mia dying of AIDS, it's about how she'll be living with HIV as many, many people do.”

I am all for social issues worked into comics – certainly it has worked in the past – as long as they are done organically and do not feel shoehorned in. While Winick is not particularly known for subtlety, I applaud him for not handling Mia in a particularly heavy-handed, preachy manner. But I do question why Winick made Mia HIV positive character when the revelation has since served no storyline or educational value to the title.

If the goal of including an HIV positive character in a superhero comic book series is education, I would argue that the twenty-thirty something audience of readers all lived through the mid-to-late nineties when AIDS awareness was at its peak in the public consciousness. I also highly doubt most children who read comics are reading Green Arrow, which is not code-approved and is often as sex-obsessed as Winick’s typical work (case in point: after writer Brad Meltzer had Ollie readying an engagement ring for Black Canary in issue #21, Winick had him fooling around with Black Lightning’s niece in issue #28). So the whole idea behind “using” Mia’s condition to educate young readers sort of goes the window when it is not marketed or written as a book for young readers. And even though part of the “Mia has HIV” fallout even involved her joining the Teen Titans (which is a code-approved book that probably has a number of young readers), her tenure in the Titans lasted less than a year (Teen Titans #21-31) and did not involve any sort of attempt to educate the reader. During that time Teen Titans writer Geoff Johns was busy doing the two things he does best: build up to an event and make dead characters somewhat less confusing. I guess there was not enough time for education.

I forgot that James "My Fables Covers are Works of Beauty" Jean did covers for Green Arrow.

If we are to take Winick’s words at face value – that Mia’s condition is just about how she will be living, not dying – I suppose she is like Garrett Miller. Don’t remember him? He was the wheelchair-bound Ghostbuster on Extreme Ghostbusters, a cartoon series sequel to the classic 1980s original. But that was about it – from what I understand, nothing much was made to make him into an interesting, three dimensional character except for the fact that he was in a wheelchair. Because the series did not end up lasting beyond the first season, Garrett Miller became a wasted opportunity of tokenism: an overly politically correct symbol who in a way was all the more insulting because he existed for no other reason than to be politically correct.

I think Speedy can be a character a bit more complex than this.

My point is that being an active superhero who happens to be HIV positive is something that makes Mia Dearden a unique character. While I am glad that Winick has not made her HIV status the primary focus of the title, completely ignoring what makes each superhero unique is what dooms a character to the Z-list and squanders any potential that character has. There is a balance somewhere between unnecessary heavy-handed preaching and unnecessary political correctness for the sake of political correctness. For example, being a vegetarian is one of many unique traits that makes Animal Man a complex character, but nobody really thinks of Animal Man as the "vegetarian superhero" and you don't see him as the official mascot of PETA. Winick has not even come close to that balance in the fifty-plus issues that he has written since Mia’s revelation. She's neither a blatant symbol nor a complex character. She's just sort of... there. And that's a place she shouldn't be.

Personally, I would just hate for it to turn out that Mia’s condition really served as nothing more than a goodwill publicity stunt. She can be so much more than that and I would like to believe that Speedy’s unique story was going somewhere and that she is intended to be something greater than another Garrett Miller.