Carmine Infantino experimented a bit in the 1960s with covers that incorporated the series logo, in the manner of Will Eisner’s SPIRIT sections. This BATMAN cover was one of the first, if not the first.
At the time, DC was beginning to lose sales traction to newcomer Marvel, and was looking for a way to arrest this slide. The shattering of the logo here is dramatic, and the strong red of the background makes the cover pop well. Even batman’s positioning at the very top of the cover, where the logo typically would be positioned, helped to identify it as an issue of BATMAN even if it was racked magazine-style, with only the the top ¼th of the cover showing.
The Tom Brevoort Experience 