As for the 'go go checks', I'm not sure the idea was to be 'hip' at all.

I think they felt that their books were the superior ones and if customers were only easily capable of distinguishing their books on the stands at a glance, then sales would be helped. It is no more silly than Marvel starting those little corner boxes with characters in them for TM and product ID purposes.

These days, DC would have TM'ed checks on the top of comic books, and started calling themselves 'the brand with the checks' or something silly, like adidas calls themselves 'the brand with the three stripes' in order to deprive Nike et al from making cool shirts.

As for Adam Strange, I would agree with the idea that he was getting quaint already. Strange Adventures going to pot until Deadman was tragic, but Batman was on the verge of cancellation in 1964, so sometimes a comparatively small sacrifice needs to be made to save something quite big.

As for Metamorpho failing where Marvel books were succeeding, I actually tend to think that this perhaps illustrates that - outside of us geeks both now and then - there was a large market for DC books that was specifically buying them for more of a DC style, and perhaps weren't enjoying the Marvel books as much as retrospective thinking would say everyone was.

I honestly don't necessarily think DC was flailing to understand Marvel in particular - at least not in the main. Obviously Marvel represented a significant threat of the sort they had not faced since they sued Fawcett out of existence, and maybe since the end of the war.

But also they were 50 year old men trying to come to grips with massive social upheavals, and the emergence of youth culture that defied the establishment in a way never seen before or since.

It is too convenient and simple to say that Marvel was responsible for all of the madness that sometimes plagued DC books in the 1960s. Marvel was nothing more than a product of the culture of the times - with some hideously embarrassing moves themselves - but they had so few books that the silliness quotient was kept at a low. DC's books struggled more to adapt to these changing times, thus allowing Marvel to emerge and begin the process of dominating the market - which they would do throughout much of the 1970s. It is retrospective thinking that credits Marvel for so much.