Carmine Infantino

Carmine Infantino (May 24, 1925-) is a comic book artist and editor who was a major force in the Silver Age of Comic Books. He was born in Brooklyn, New York City, New York, United States.

Silver age artist

In 1956, Carmine walked into Julie Schwartz's office to drop off his latest job, a romance. Julie took the pages, and told Infantino he was going to be drawing super heroes again. Just like that, Julie was bringing back the Flash for DC's newest title, Showcase. The script would be by Robert Kanigher, and Carmine was in charge of finding the look for the new Science Fiction based Flash. He went home and drew a red and yellow uniform, striving to keep it as simple as possible. He used the theme of blinding speed as a motif for the lighting bolts and wings on the cowl and boots. He drew on his design abilities to create a new visual language to depict the Flash's speed, making the figure a red and yellow blur. It took a bit for Flash to catch on, going through four tryout issues of Showcase before gaining his own book (starting at #105, continuing the numbering of the old Flash title and causing new fans to think that somehow they'd missed 104 issues!).

Related Topics:
Julie Schwartz - Flash - Showcase - Robert Kanigher

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Infantino continued to work for Schwartz in his other titles, most notable becoming the second artist to draw the strip Adam Strange after Mike Sekowsky. With his design sensibilities (he once said he tried to take all the 'drawing' out of his pages, but Murphy Anderson kept putting it back in) he soon made the strip his own.

Related Topics:
Adam Strange - Mike Sekowsky - Murphy Anderson

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In 1964, Julie Schwartz was handed the failing, faded Batman titles and asked to try to turn them around. The first guys he tapped for the job was scripter John Broome and Carmine Infantino. They jettisoned the sillier aspects that had crept into the series (Ace the Bathound, Bat-Mite, various dumb alien villains) and put Batman and Robin back to solving mysteries. Carmine used his more realistic art style to help made a clean break with the past. It was a sharp 'snap' that was heard around the fan world. The 'New Look' caused raging in the letters pages and the rest of fandom for years.

Related Topics:
Batman - John Broome - Ace the Bathound - Bat-Mite

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Other strips Infantino was doing at this time, included "The Space Museum", various SF stories for Schwartz, in addition to Batman, Elongated Man, Adam Strange and the Flash (plus covers for these books). Carmine had a work ethic, a goal of two fully penciled pages a day. That was remarkable at a time when most artists could turn out usually only one (unless you were Mike Sekowsky, or ?King? Jack Kirby, who were known for doing five pages a day without breaking a sweat).

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