Happy Birthday to the comic legend Ditko! He’s most famous for the world building of Marvel with Kirby, but after his fall out with Stan Lee over writing and creative credit on Spider-Man he would go to Charlton Comics to create some of his most iconic eventual DC characters like Blue Beetle and The Question. Those characters would be the inspration for Morre’s Watchmen. He would also freelance for DC creating characters like Hawk & Dove & Creeper. In the 70’s he was approached to create his version of Batman, a childhood favorite of his, his Batman was rejected for being too dark and violent. He was just a decade too early, Miller would cash in on dark Batman with DKR. I recently picked up Working With Ditko by Jack C Harris and he goes into more details about his DC adventures with Ditko, he includes lots of scans of Ditko’s sketches from his time as editor. Some of the best are Batman proposals, I took one and did a quick ink job on one.
You can also see a toned down Batman in Man-Bat #1, the only Batman Ditko would draw. It’s a cool read, and he did get to keep having Batman’s face in the shadows.