Carmine Infantino (1925-2013)

We sadly note the passing of Carmine Infantino on 4 April.  Infantino had a career in comics that stretched from 1942 until his retirement in the 1990s.  He made many important contributions to comics history, such as co-creating the Barbara Gordon Batgirl and Deadman in the 1960s.  He was editorial director at DC when Denny O’Neil and Neal Adams produced their classic Green Lantern/Green Arrow stories, and brought in Jack Kirby from Marvel, allowing him to produce the Fourth World stories.

But by far the most significant  contribution he made was when he designed the costume and drew the artwork for the 1956 revival of The Flash.  Infantino, editor Julius Schwartz and writer Robert Kanigher together revived the then-moribund genre of the superhero, and, for good or for bad, the success of that project still dictates the shape of the comics industry today.

The late 1950s and early 1960s have rightly been described as an astonishing period of creativity at DC.  Of that generation of creators that contributed to the titles, some are still around – Murphy Anderson for one – but one of the most significant figures in US comics history has now gone.