I believe Whitman had the trademark on "Big Little Books", but several
publishers used the same general format.
I'm looking at _Popeye Danger, Ahoy_ (octopus on the cover) right
now, which is a Whitman BLB from 1969 in which era the BLBs had
soft covers rather than board covers.
As to how they did Batman, same way they did Popeye: paid for the right.
_Danger Ahoy_ says copyright 1969 by King Features Syndicate, so Whitman
had no ownership of the property. Also, the book credited to "Paul S. Newman"
which is not a name I've ever heard associated with Popeye, so presumably
the books were not done by the comic strip team. (Though with a character
like Batman, there are quite a few artists who have done him over the years,
and they certainly wouldn't be ruled out for a BLB..)
Mark Evanier did a long article on the tangled history of Whitman/Western
Publishing several years ago. It may be on line somewhere, but it appears
from Wikipedia that eventually the Whitman properties were absorbed by
Random House.
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