Greg Goldstein's Comic Art Gallery

Paul Pope — The Cat, Sans Bat

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.

Jennifer Graves & J. Bone — Bats And Cats

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

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.

The Batman — Random Thoughts, (Mostly) Spoiler Free

Much of “The Batman” is brilliant. It’s not necessarily my personal cup of Joe, but Matt Reeves has delivered an inventive and occasionally extraordinary film that incorporates elements of some great “contemporary” Batman comic book story lines and motifs. (Batman Year One, The Long Halloween, Cooke and Brubraker’s Catwoman, et al.) 

It’s nice to see the world’s greatest detective actually detecting again.

The cast is superb. Robert Pattinson as Batman was excellent.  I didn’t much care for his emo version of Bruce Wayne, but we hardly see him in the Bruce persona anyway.  (He also wins for best bat-jawline). Zoe Kravitz and Paul Dano are also excellent, and Colin Farrell as the Robert DeNiro/Al Capone (Untouchables) version of the Penguin was good fun.  He definitely has enthusiasms.

Jeffrey Wright as “Lt. Gordon” also great. 

As for the story — I didn’t think it would be possible to incorporate Catwoman, Riddler and Penguin into one film without creating a bit of a mess; but the filmmakers made it work, and it worked pretty well.

And of course, developing the Riddler character as a serial killer is amazingly effective. Those real-life maniacs are always writing letters and taunting law enforcement so it was more than a logical character choice. Much of the first act of the film channels David Fincher’s Se7en and Zodiac. (Later on, it throws in elements of LA Confidential and Chinatown for good measure.)

As for the scarred side of the Two-Face coin?:

Upping the ante on Gotham as a modern Sodom and Gomorrah is wearying, even when done well.  Why does anyone with more than 50 cents to their name live there? What the hell is the draw? It rains all the damn time, the nights last 16 hours or more, and it apparently has the most ineffective police force in urban history. It’s clearly the most dangerous and corrupt city in the USA, and it makes NYC in the 70s seem like a gleaming paradise. It’s becoming its own cliché.

(I’m beginning to think Ra’s al Ghul was right. Wipe Gotham off the map and start over.)

And riddle me this? Why are the non-“rouges gallery” villains always portrayed as one-dimensional cartoon characters? From Burton to Nolan to Reeves: The mobsters in these films are mostly not believable as mobsters. (Not to mention the cops, especially “senior management.” Also cartoons.)

And the bodies… just keep piling up… and up… and up. Maybe someone should call the state police. Or the FBI. Or… anyone.

As for the length of the film…

“I’m sorry I wrote you such a long letter. I didn’t have time to write you a short one.” – Blaise Pascal.

Seriously… it needed to be 20-30 minutes shorter. Do that and I think you not only have a terrific “superhero film”, but also a much more effective film, period.   (No offense, it’s not the Godfather, which clocks in at about the same length.) And I would have watched the “extended” version on HBO a year from now anyway.

One final thought. A few film critics and fans have called this movie a “film noir.”  

Nope.

Does it contain some of the tropes? Of course it does. So do a lot of films. (The whole dark and rainy thing again.) But, In actuality, you could argue the Batman’s arc in this film is the complete opposite of a film noir. 

If it really was a noir, Batman would have completely fallen for Catwoman, done something really stupid because of his infatuation, and ended up floating face down in Wayne Manor’s swimming pool or dying in a hail of bullets. 

Or, conversely, Bats would have done something “heroic” on Catwoman’s behalf that ultimately causes her to end up in a pool of her own blood.

And, spoiler alert (ok, I fibbed) they’re both alive at the end of the film.  

The franchise lives on.

Kurt Schaffenberger — Golden Age Marvel

Whiz Comics # 129, January 1951

This week we celebrate the 80th anniversary of the original Captain Marvel, (cover dated in 1940, although the issue likely appeared on most newsstands in late 1939) now known as Shazam.

Captain Marvel (Shazam to you kids) appears in every panel in this ebullient page pencilled and inked by Kurt Schaffenberger.

Schaffenberger went to work as an assistant in the Jack Binder studio in 1941 just as Fawcett’s Captain Marvel was soaring, eventually outselling DC’s Superman. When Schaffenberger returned from World War 2 military service, he ultimately penciled and inked complete stories.

His wholesome, uncluttered and often whimsical style was a perfect fit for Captain Marvel, who was nothing if not wholesome and whimsical.

Schaffenberger drew many of the stories that capped the end Captain Marvel’s amazing run — and 10 years of legal battles with DC.

In fact, despite the seemingly never-ending copyright lawsuit that alleged that the Big Red Cheese was a knockoff of Superman, The Captain outlasted many of his spandex-attired peers, publishing longer than most competitive superhero titles.

But, by 1954, declining sales meant that Fawcett no longer had the will to fight. They settled with DC, and called it a day for Captain Marvel.

As they say…  To Be Continued.

Fun Fact: After Fawcett left the superhero business, Schaffenberger ultimately went to work for DC, and became best known for his 10-year run on the Lois Lane series, setting the DC house style for the character for much of the silver age.

Tim Sale — “Mrrow!”

Batman: The Long Halloween, #6, June 1997 

Wait.

It’s November 1, and we’re still discussing Halloween?

Of course — we are talking about Batman: The Long Halloween, one of the greatest long-form (13 issues) Batman stories ever created. Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale craft an inventive and gorgeous story that takes place early in Batman’s career, centered on a serial killer who only kills on holidays. 

The story also features the Calendar Man, once a silver age joke, who taunts the caped crusader in the manner of Hannibal Lechter. He knows who the murderer is, but will only provide tantalizing and taunting clues, not the killer’s actual identity.

On this great action page, Catwoman attacks Poison Ivy in an attempt to break her spell over Bruce Wayne, but the somewhat hypnotized Bruce breaks Catwoman herself from the attack.

Mrrow indeed!

(And happy anniversary Mr. Wayne. Our next few posts are in honor of your 80th year as the Caped Crusader.)