Greg Goldstein's Comic Art Gallery

Category: Original Art and The Artists

Matt Wagner — Roping In Bizarro

Original Art and The Artists

Batman / Superman / Wonder Woman: Trinity #2, September 2003

Batman / Superman / Wonder Woman: Trinity #2, 2003

Here’s a great Matt Wagner splash featuring Wonder Woman doing her best to rein in Bizarro. Spoiler alert: It doesn’t go all that well.

Wagner delivers page after page of visual dynamics and terrific storytelling in this underrated series featuring DC’s “Big Three.”

The only thing I don’t like: The “official” book title, which is a bit long and definitely not obvious. (Publishers occasionally forget that readers have to be able easily find the title at retail. Trust me on this.)

Happy Halloween —all month long!

Stuart Immonen — Bizarro Returns

Original Art and The Artists

Superman #87, March 1994

Stuart Immonen — guest penciling in Dan Jurgen’s regular slot — has some fun with Bizarro, and the rest of the Superman cast in this two-part story from 1994.

This is only the second appearance of Bizarro in the “modern” superman era. John Byrne used the character in the Man of Steel mini-series (#5) and promptly destroyed him.

Spoiler alert: Lex Luthor resurrects the Superman cloning idea in this issue, and things don’t go much better. (Although I guess Bizarro lasts two issues instead of just one this time around, so there’s that.)

I definitely dig Immonen’s art — but if you thought Jurgens drew Mr. Kent with a big mane of hair, definitely check out Stuart’s version. Superman’s hair starts big in issue #87 and might even be fuller and longer by #88. 

Definitely ready for a time-travel trip to the Hyborian age.

Happy Halloween —all month long!

Superman was in his long hair phase in these days and artist Immonen was not messing around. (Pages from issue #87 and #88.)
John Byrne’s reboot of Superman brought Bizarro back for one issue in the original Man Of Steel mini-series, but he was toast by the end of the issue.

Eric Powell — Chasing Frazetta & Davis

Original Art and The Artists

Criminal Macabre / The Goon: When Freaks Collide #1, July 2011

If the 60s “comic chase movie poster” can be considered its own category, Jack Davis and Frank Frazetta owned it.

Eric Powell pays a loving tribute to these classic posters — and both artists — with his terrific painted wraparound cover for the one-shot crossover, Criminal Macabre / The Goon: When Freaks Collide. (2011). (Instead of actors, we get monsters and creatures. Seems like a win.)

Davis continued to illustrate film posters using his trademark caricature style until most movie marketing materials employed photography.  Frazetta though was later hired instead for his painted fantasy flair. Today, of course, illustrated poster efforts have all but disappeared. Somewhere along the way, styles changed, and the ever-frugal Hollywood execs decided that $20 million for an actor made sense, but a few thousand bucks for marketing art is a bridge too far. 

Sigh. We are all poorer because of it.

Happy Halloween —all month long!

Frazetta’s Hollywood work transitioned from the humorous to his distinctive “fantasy style” in the 70s.
Has any other artist been hired to provide illustration for a subject — and then a few years later hired to create a satire of that same illustration? Jack Davis was one-of- a-kind.

Graham Ingels — Trapped… In The Crypt*

Original Art and The Artists

Tales From the Crypt #23, April-May, 1951

Graham (“Ghastly”) Ingels creates a fabulous story page for the classic (and unsurprisingly, horrific) EC tale, “Last Respects.” (Tales of the Crypt #23.)

I likely first ran into this specific story from the Vault of Horror reprint paperback (1965) which I grabbed at a flea market sometime the early 70s. Oddly, the Crypt cover from this story was reused as the jacket art for the amazing Nostalgia Press EC reprint collection (1971) (which hooked me into EC Comics to begin with) — but did not include the story inside!

As for Ingels himself? — He was the most prolific of the EC horror artists and in many ways, he was the most intriguing personality of the EC gang. Later in his life, he was certainly the most elusive, seemingly horrified (pun intended) by his contribution to these classic comics.

*Yes, I know it’s a mausoleum, but crypt was more fun, and appropriate.

See you next week for another taste of Halloween horror; it is October after all!

Screenshot

Paul Pope — The Cat, Sans Bat

Original Art and The Artists

Catwoman #7, July 2002

Black and white — and read all over:

Paul Pope delivers a stunning Catwoman cover for Ed Brubaker’s great run from the early aughts.  Smartly, the art/editorial decision makers kept the published cover in its original black and white state, with just a hint of red color applied after the fact. (Blood, naturally.) Pope did a series of these covers for the Brubaker run — all terrific.

Pope’s best known “mainstream” comic book is Batman Year 100 (2006), a wild ride into the bat-future; it would be lovely to see him return to the character at some point.

Looks like the new updated version of the out-of-print Pope art book (coming later this year from Boom!) has a cover with same black/white/red color scheme! Nice.

(Pro tip: Don’t want to draw feet? Bleed the legs off the page…)
A great series — with terrific coloring by the masterful Jose Villarrubia. (In case you thought we ONLY liked B&W.)

Batman Day, 2024

Original Art and The Artists

September 21, 2024

In honor of Batman Day — and the caped crusader’s 85th birthday — here’s a link to all the posts that have featured Batman and his cast of colorful allies — and even more colorful villains:

https://greggoldsteincomicartgallery.com/?s=batman

We’ve been celebrating the Dark Knight throughout the month of September; one more bat-post to load next week, and then it’s off to October and monsters and ghouls, et al.

Same bat-time, same bat-channel.

Berni Wrightson — Batman Redo, Aliens Too

Original Art and The Artists

Batman / Aliens #1, March 1997

Swamp Thing #7 is one my favorite single issues, ever.

Don’t get me wrong: I loved all of Wrightson’s Swamp Thing through the first six issues, each of which I bought directly from the candy store or newsstand. (And #8-10 are just as good.)

But Batman?! Drawn by Berni?  Wow. That Cape. Those ears. Just… wow.  

I knew we would likely never see Wrightson on a conventional superhero title, so this was one special book. Flash forward nearly 25 years, and Berni revisits Batman once again with this cool Aliens crossover. It’s not Berni circa 1973 of course, but still great. I’m delighted that I stumbled onto this large art page last year. 

And that half splash bottom panel? I knew that Batman pose looked familiar…

Jock — Bat-Joker

Original Art and The Artists

The Batman Who Laughs #2, March 2019

“A Batman who laughs is a Batman who always wins.”

I don’t try to acquire too many modern pages. 

Especially story pages.

I miss the ballons lettered directly on the art boards. The modern pages look “incomplete” to me. (And often exacerbated by backgrounds that are digitally added later as well.)

And great modern pages (like this one) are often priced a bit expensively by the artist — or the artist’s rep. For similar prices, you can often find some great vintage art.

But… I’m definitely a fan of Jock’s art, and this page was much too cool to pass up. It’s from the Dark Universe spinoff, “The Batman Who Laughs.” One part Batman. one part Joker. Bat-Joker indeed.

And of course, it’s a fight page — without the dialog, you still get the basic idea.

Brian Stelfreeze — Zero Hour, Plus 30

Original Art and The Artists

Batman: Shadow of the Bat #31, September 1994

Brian Stelfreeze provides this amazing “Golden Age” style cover for a Batman story in the 1994 Zero Hour event. The “original” portly Alfred suddenly reappears (from another timeline) — and, spoiler alert — disappears at the end of the story.

No matter: Stelfreeze’s cover painting is terrific, and Brian purposely added all the stains and scratches to give it an aged look.

Bonus: I can cover up his signature and no one realizes Brian painted it; it’s (obviously) nothing like his traditional painting style.

Zero Hour — The first large-scale crossover event at DC since Crisis on Infinite Earths, is celebrating its 30thanniversary. It’s a timeline event, designed primarily to clean up some continuity holes left behind by “Crisis.” Some get fixed, some don’t, but it’s a fun crossover, regardless. (And of course I’m biased, because pal Dan Jurgens wrote and drew the original mini-series.  A brand new 30th anniversary special featuring a new story by Dan and Ron Marz landed on shelves last week.)

Alfred makes his first appearance in Batman #16; He loses weight a year or so later when a thinner actor is cast in the role in the first Batman movie serial.

John Cassaday — Masked Legends

Original Art and The Artists

The Shadow / Green Hornet: Dark Nights #1, July 2013

Nice to see two of my favorite classic characters, The Shadow and The Green Hornet together in one series, with a fantastic cover by the terrifically talented John Cassaday.

Pulps and comics — like peanut butter and jelly, yes? My dad connected many of the dots between the pulp, comics, radio and serial adventure characters for me at an early age.

I credit Jim Steranko (History of The Comics) and the nostalgia boom of the 60s and 70s for amplifying those connections.

And how about some contemporary credit to Nick Barrucci and the other talented folks at Dynamite Entertainment for (at least briefly) creating a cool “shared universe” with some of these unforgettable icons?

Fun books all around, and I know from personal experience it wasn’t easy securing all those licensing rights to make these kinds of mash-ups possible.

Steranko’s History Of The Comics (Volume One) is probably the first place The Shadow and The Green Hornet appeared on cover — along with an amazing collection of other heroes and villains.
Both the Shadow and Green Hornet appeared in Movie serials. (The Hornet actually appears in two.)