Panels and Pages… Art and Artists… Creators and Conventions… Musings and Memories…
Author: Greg Goldstein
Greg Goldstein is a veteran publishing and media executive; most recently, he was the Chief Operating Officer, President and Publisher of IDW Publishing, managing all aspects of the company’s book and games business from 2008 to 2019.
Throughout his career, Greg has developed creative and profitable publishing programs for dozens of the world’s best-known entertainment brands including Star Wars, Transformers, Star Trek, James Bond, TMNT, Spider-Man, Batman and Godzilla.
In 2013, Greg led IDW’s acquisition of Top Shelf, an independent publisher best known for Congressman John Lewis’ March trilogy, which has become the most lauded non-fiction graphic novel series in the history of the medium.
In 2011, Greg won an Eisner award for his editing on the first-ever collection of Bob Montana’s Archie newspaper comic strips. (Published under IDW’s Library of American Comics imprint.)
Prior to joining IDW, Greg was VP of Entertainment and Gaming for Upper Deck, responsible for the company’s blockbuster slate of games, including Yu-Gi-Oh, World of Warcraft and The VS Superhero system. During his tenure, he created Marvel Ultimate Battles, the first-ever trading card game that focused exclusively on Marvel’s popular mass media characters.
As VP of Brand Development for Activision from 2000-2002, Greg established strategic partnerships with the largest Hollywood studios, and worked closely with Marvel Entertainment to successfully develop Spider-man into one of the biggest blockbuster licensed videogame brands in interactive history.
Greg’s career has also included a successful stint at Topps, where he helped launch and manage Topps Comics in the mid 1990s.
Additionally, Greg serves as an adviser for to the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund (CBDLF). He is also a frequent guest lecturer at San Diego Sate University and has presented at dozens of panels and conferences throughout the US.
He is also a well-known collector of original comic book art and rues the day he sold his collection the first time around in the late 1990s.
Marking the 10th anniversary of the Death and Return of Superman, Dan Jurgens and Bill Sienkiewicz tackled a four-issue retrospective mini-series titled, appropriately, Day of Doom.
Bill’s unmistakable inks make the situation even more horrific this second time around. (This is one of the best pages in the series, as it features all four Superman characters who “returned.”)
Happy Halloween indeed — and welcome to the 30th anniversary of the Death of Superman.
Batman / Judge Dredd: Vendetta in Gotham, January 1994
Earlier this week, we posted a beautiful page from one of two Batman / Punisher crossovers. Today we have a terrific Cam Kennedy action page from the second of four Batman / Judge Dredd prestige format comics by writers Alan Grant and John Wagner.
The complete list as follows, thanks to our friends at the Grand Comic Database — GCD. (This blog would be lost without them.)
Batman / Judge Dredd: Judgment on Gotham (DC, 1991 series); Batman / Judge Dredd: Vendetta in Gotham (DC, 1993 series); Batman / Judge Dredd: The Ultimate Riddle (DC, 1995 series); Batman / Judge Dredd: Die Laughing 1,2 (DC, 1998 series).
Now all we need is Punisher / Judge Dredd crossover and we’d be all set. Unfortunately, Marvel doesn’t do crossovers anymore. Sigh.
Batman: The Silver Age Dailies and Sundays, Volume #1, March 2014
As noted a few years back, Pete Poplaski has been called an “artist’s artist” by many creators. His name might not be known as well as other artists, but his talent is unquestionable.
Pete, who broke into comics in the 70s underground community, ultimately became Kitchen Sink Press’ art director, and among many accomplishments helped give some of Robert Crumb’s projects just the right design touch.
Kitchen had the rights to reprint the DC Batman and Superman comic strips in the early 1990s, and Pete created brand new covers that evoked the classic style of those strips.
When we acquired those reprint rights at IDW in 2012, we went back to Pete to see if he would be interested in picking up where he left off, and fortunately he was.
Wayne Boring. Dick Sprang. Al Plastino. You name a classic artist, and Pete can replicate the style.
This, of course, is his amazing cover to Batman Silver Age Vol.1. It not only evokes the classic 60s Carmine Infantino revamp of the Dynamic Duo, but also the opening animation of the classic (beloved, and often hated) 60s Batman TV show. (Which is why these newspaperstrips exist in the first place, but, as always we digress.)
Pete takes his Black and White Art, photocopies it and hand colors it to create a color guide.The published cover — entirely hand drawn except fo the DC logo in the upper left corner.
Here’s a cool “Batman-animated” style page from Tim Levins that captures the fun and the flair of the 90s animated series.
The best art pages have no words — therefore, no word balloons needed. (And therefore, no missing word balloons on original modern art, 98% or more of word balloons are digitally added later.)
I realize its a bit of a cliche — but I always do get a kick out of Batgirl’s signature action move.
And, yes, I likely deserve one myself for employing that pun.
“Dandy” Don Heck was a pro at a glamorous situations and glamorous people — including Batgirl and pretty much all the women he tackled, as evidenced in the page above.
Don was best at inking his own pencils, also evidenced above, in this cool action page from Batgirl’s back-up feature in Detective Comics.
Batgirl fighting Catwoman? — seems like a great way to celebrate Halloween (upcoming) and Batman Day (belatedly) within a terrific action page by Jennifer Graves and the equally terrific J.Bone.
And, always a pleasant surprise to have a 21st Century piece of art with the word balloons hand lettered on the page.
Call me “old-school” all you want. It’s a compliment.
Fun fact: It took nearly 20 years for DC to collect this mini-series, and when they did they renamed it “Harley Quinn and the Gotham Girls to capitalize on — you guessed it — Harley Quinn, who is by no means the centerpiece of the original series.
Norm Rapmund Recreation of John Byrne Batman, July2022
How to celebrate the 500th blog post — and a little more than three years of posting?: Here’s a beautiful Norm Rapmund recreation of a John Byrne Batman splash page (from the 1990 Batman 3-D graphic novel) that Norm started well before this blog was even conceived. (Probably 2017 or so.*)
The 500 milestone includes some “reruns” and a few “cheats,” but hey, 500 is still 500. And we have may slipped in frequency for the first time this past month, but there’s still more great art to come.
Stay tuned.
(*A story for another day.)
Byrne’s original 3D graphic novel and the black and white reprint from a Byrne DC collection 25 years later. One change that Norm made that I really like is that the Harvey Dent side of Two-Face’s face is a bit less evil — as it should be.
