By the late 1950s, Batman stories became more science fiction oriented in keeping with the times, as so many other DC characters had dabbled in that genre.  That is also the time frame in which Batwoman came on the scene.  In those stories, Batman battled space aliens, while morphing into strange transformations.  But by the mid 1960s, sales had fallen off drastically and DC Comics was actually thinking about killing off Batman completely.  As a last ditch effort, the then editor Julius Schwartz presided over some major changes which were cover-billed as the “New Look”.  In an effort to make Batman more contemporary, they needed to return him to a more detective-oriented role.  They retired Batwoman, and a few other characters, doing away with science-fiction storylines. 

Read the article in its entirety in the July  2015 Bevil newsletter, which accompanies the cover.