Greg Goldstein's Comic Art Gallery

Tag: Batman Day

Cam Kennedy — The Wire

Original Art and The Artists

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.

Pete Poplaski — A True Classic

Original Art and The Artists

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.

Tim Levins — Bringing Down The House

Original Art and The Artists

Batman Gotham Adventures #39, August 2001

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.

Jennifer Graves & J. Bone — Bats And Cats

Original Art and The Artists

Gotham Girls #1, October 2002

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.

I can hear the Joker’s cackle from here.

Howard Chaykin — Breaking & Entering

Original Art and The Artists

Batman / Catwoman: Follow The Money #1, January 2011

Batman picking a lock while Catwoman looks on?

Just perfect.

(And with dialog even more so, but I had not read the issue when I acquired the page.)

Such a fun page by my pal Howard. (In a one-shot issue edited by one of oldest friends, Joey Cavalieri. But as always, we digress.)

It is “Batman Day” today — and we’ll pay tribute to that with a few more Bats-related posts through the rest of the month.

Its also our 500th post(!) and there will more to say about that in the next few weeks as well.

HC and GG — At Long Beach Comic–Con Two weeks ago

Mike Parobeck — Double Trouble

Original Art and The Artists

Batman Adventures #8, May 1993 & Batman Adventures #13, October 1993

Two great pages from the late Mike Parobeck wrap up our 2021 celebration of “Batman Day.”

As I’ve written previously, I was a big fan of Mike’s work; he was terrifically gifted from the start. Most of his art shares the same terrific qualities: Simple. Clear. Clean. Powerful.

He died much, much too early from diabetes at age 31.

Bob Hall — Bat Noir

Original Art and The Artists

Batman: DOA, December 1999

September 18 was DC’s annual  “Batman Day.” Although not exactly a national holiday, DC and Warner have used the occasion to commemorate the caped crusader and launch and market new products around the event.

So, as in the past two years, we continue to honor the celebration with the rest of the month’s posts devoted to The Dark Knight….

Bob Hall launches the new Millennium with a pretty cool Batman graphic Novel, Batman DOA.

Infected with a lethal virus unleashed by the deadly trio of Joker, Penguin and Two-Face, the rapidly deteriorating Batman has only 24 hours left to live… precious little time (as they say) to find a cure andrescue a kidnapped little girl whose life is on the same timetable.  Its over-arching plotline (and title) is borrowed from the classic 1950 film noir “DOA” — albeit (spoiler alert) with a much happier ending.

Bob had already delved into a Frank Miller Sin City art style in the late 90s with his own creation Armed and Dangerous for Acclaim / Valiant/ Armada Comics. Although it was occasionally a bit too derivative for my own tastes, it was definitely evolving, and I would have liked to see more material in this vein. He ultimately did a few more comics before he mostly retired from the industry to focus on playwriting and theatre directing.

Bob Hall’s noir creation Armed and Dangerous borrowed generously from Frank Miller’s Sin City.
Edmond O’Brien in the absolute classic film noir DOA (1950).

Don Newton — Valley Of The Dolls

Original Art and The Artists

Detective Comics #506, September 1981

Last Saturday (September 18) was DC’s annual  “Batman Day.” Although not exactly a national holiday, DC and Warner have used the occasion to commemorate the caped crusader and launch and market new products around the event.

So, as in the past two years, we continue to honor the celebration with the rest of the month’s posts devoted to The Dark Knight….

Here’s a terrific page by the late, great Don Newton, who drew some of my favorite Batman stories of the era.

Newton made turned complex stories into smooth storytelling, and he always accomplished it with quality draftsmanship and artistic flair.

This was yet another early find for me when I came back to original art collecting about 15 years ago.

Newton passed away much too young just shy of fifty, felled by a heart attack in 1984.