Greg Goldstein's Comic Art Gallery

Brian Stelfreeze — Zero Hour, Plus 30

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.)

Bret Blevins — Web Of Confusion

Sleepwalker # 5, October 1991

Spider_Man. Nearly drowned. Trapped in chains. On a table. Prone before Kingpin and a group of other assorted criminal goons. It’s a terrific final splash.

In “real life”, it’s game over, as most of the goons would quickly pull their guns and start blasting away. Spider powers do not include invulnerability.

But in comics, especially older classics, it’s… continued next issue!

And I am absolutely there for it. (And we know Spidey is going to get out of this — the joy is the “how?”)

Pencils and inks here both by Blevins, who drew most of the early Sleepwalker issues, following his terrific run on New Mutants.