I love a great Frank Cho specialty piece. Rock-solid draftsmanship paired with a genuinely good sense of humor. (Which is rarer than you’d think—superheroes can swing from humorless to campy at light speed.)
Clean lines. No clutter. A powerful—and beautiful—Wonder Woman.
And a simple joke, told exactly right. From a very talented cartoonist and creator.
It doesn’t hurt that the piece is about 18 × 24 in size. Yowza.
Cho mentioned on social media that this was one of the first drawings he finished during the pandemic lockdown.
Now that was time well spent.
If you were in the right place at the tight time, you could get your print re-marqued. Mine (left) is not, but I own the original, so zero regrets.
Please collect all the random and misc. (and typically GREAT) stories from the legendary Wallace Wood in one place — omnibus, compendium, DC Finest, whatever. I’m constantly discovering “new” storiesI’ve missed like this one, aptly titled “The Collector.” (Pencils and inks by Woody, blueline breakdowns by Al Sirois.) Reprinted only once, 40 years ago, in a cheapie digest.
Woody deserves better treatment.
Thank you for your attention to this matter.
Yr. Pal,
Greg
PS That middle panel page is such a great throwback to Woody’s classic EC days, isn’t it? The coloring doesn’t quite do it justice.
Did Neal Adams create the “Batman perched on a building gargoyle” trope?
In my mind’s eye, I was a positive I had seen a golden age illustration of the caped crusader on a stone carving — but when I scanned through the Batman and Detective covers through the decades, these early bronze age beauties were the first two examples I found: Batman in May 1970, Detective in May 1971, both by Neal. I guess he liked it enough the first time to revisit it exactly a year later.
Of course, since then, it’s been done countless times — including this 2018 commission from the great Paul Smith. (Striking colors below by Frank Cuonzo.)
And maybe because I’ve seen the image so many different times, I’ve convinced myself it existed earlier.
If someone has reference on earlier piece of Batman gargoyle art, I’d love to see it.
Batman: The Dailies, 1944-1945 (TPB, 1990, Kitchen Sink)
Here’s yet another great piece of art by the extraordinarily talented Pete Poplaski.
Poplaski has been called an “artist’s artist” by many of his peers. He might not have a household name among art buffs, but his talent is formidable and undeniable.
Pete, who broke into comics in the 70s underground movement, ultimately became Kitchen Sink’s 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 Golden Age comic strips in the early 1990s, and Pete created brand new covers that evoked the classic style of those strips.
When we acquired those 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.
Dick Sprang. Al Plastino. Carmine Infantino. You name it. Pete’s remarkable ability to create brand new material in any and all of these classic styles is astonishing.
Interestingly enough, many if not most of Pete’s covers (front and back) feature hand drawn lettering, but this one does not. Also, the final crop for the book cover is tighter, so the end result of both of these elements is that there much more art visible on the original than in the final published version.
I’m fortunate enough to own a few of these covers — and many of them are prominently displayed.
Let’s say you have a terrific Superman original art page from the equally terrific Arthur Adams…
And let’s say someone else also thinks it’s a terrific page — and makes you a fair offer for it…
So, you say to yourself: “Well, I’ll sell it, and get another terrific Adams Superman page down the line…”
But somehow, you actually don’t.
And then, one fine day (actually, a rainy one — but I digress), years later, you’re flipping through another collector’s portfolio, and you stumble on… the same page you had owned.
Offered at a much higher price than you received for it, naturally. Enough time has elapsed.
And you stare at it, and mutter to yourself: “Why did I sell this?”
So… you swallow your pride, and after some minor haggling, you purchase the page.
Congratulations! You’ve just discovered yet another inventive way to shred money — to get right back to where you started.
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.
Michael Keaton is trending this week because of the Oscars “Batman” moment between him and Arnold Schwarzenegger/ Danny DeVito this past Sunday.
Many of the comments discuss Keaton being the “best” Batman.
Now, as I’ve said previously, I never loved the way his face looked in that original cowl. That’s partly the fault of the costume, and perhaps partly Keaton’s face shape. And the resulting style guide art was… not great.
That said —
Keaton is still the most enjoyable version of Bruce Wayne on screen. By far.
Keaton’s Wayne is both charming and offbeat. He’s very self-aware, has a sense of a humor and charisma, but still on the edge — likely bordering on psychotic. He provides many, many shades to the Wayne persona. His main scene with Bassinger and Wuhl is one of the great moments from the first film.
And hilariously, the whole “Keaton is the best Batman” thread is one of the most ironic critiques in entertainment history.
Why? Because even without the Internet and social media, the trolls managed to make so much negative noise about Keaton cast as Batman in Tim Burton’s 1989 feature.
“The guy from Beetlejuice? Seriously?”
The long knives were out for Burton, Warner Brothers, DC, and pretty much anyone and everyone associated with film prior to release.
Seriously, I don’t how the casting would have survived if social media had existed in 1988.
Which reminds us of the late, great William Goldman’s classic comment:
I was a huge fan of the Planet of the Apes Franchise, and when I first saw the promo image (The Comics Reader, probably) for the cover of issue #1, I became miffed.
Why would Jack rip off POTA? Was the King finally out of original ideas?
Ah to be that young and foolish again. Kamandi quickly became a favorite. And little did I know that the Statue of Liberty “end of human civilization trope was already a SF trope by the time Rod Serling incorporated into his brilliant POTA screenplay. (See below.)
And, if you’re going to end human civilization with one breed of animals develop advanced intelligence, why not do it with all of them.
Heh.
That’s why the King is the King.
And, it gets better. Turns out Jack was incorporating some similar ideas he had previously used in a short story in Alarming Tales, 15 years prior to Kamandi. (Also, see below.)
So, what did I know? Not much, apparently. Like I said, to be that young and foolish again.
This page is the final issue Mike Royer inked, and the first that D Bruce Berry (working apprentice style) had a hand in. He took over solo the following issue. Tom Kraft of the Jack Kirby Museum believes both worked on this specific page.
Kamandi, apes and tigers — all on one page. What more could I ask for?
Now, or then.
A post apocalyptic and buried (land or water) Statue of Liberty had appeared at least three times prior to the first POTA film. (I’m not exactly sure when the reprint of After The Rain first appeared, but the cover art is much stronger this time around.)A destroyed Statue has appeared countless times since Planet of Apes.Before and after comics; the dreadful Mighty Samson (1965) & John Byrne’s Doomsday + 1 (1975) cover that pays homage to Kirby and POTA.Kirby’s original tale (pun intended) of advanced animal species fighting. with each other in a post apocalyptic world first appeared in Harvey’s Alarming Tales #1 (1957.)
Nothing pleases an editor (and publisher) more than when a creative team gels in such a way that they define a character(s) for a long time, and deliver consistently quality storytelling issue after issue.
The readers, obviously, notice.
Case in point: Writer Peter Tomasi, penciller Patrick Gleason and inker Mick Gray delivered a great run on Batman and Robin during the “New 52” period.
(They had actually created a cool three-parter in the “Batman Reborn” period prior. So many eras, so little time.)
This page is the phenomenal closing splash from a prequel “zero” issue featuring the full origin of Damien Wayne, the (genetically-engineered) offspring of Bruce Wayne and Talia al Ghul. As you can see from the published page, this is the first time father and son meet.
The composition and use of negative space work seamlessly. Batman looks pissed, and the much-smaller Damien isn’t intimidated at all upon meeting his legendary father.
Giants. Annuals. King-Size Specials. It didn’t matter what you called them, but for 25 cents I was all in.
The DC oversize reprints appeared frequently when I was a kid. And I had no regular access to back issues until later on, so these definitely scratched the “classics” itch.
This Gil Kane Batman page comes from a short “bookend” story tying the theme of the reprints together.
I don’t think DC used this bookending approach all that often.
It’s always nice to pick up a page from a story you specifically remember well. It tweaks the Batman origin a bit, although I’m pretty sure this specific thread was never picked up again.
And Silver Age Kane Batman pages are a rarity in themselves. (Although he did draw some Batgirl back-up stories, which often featured Batman as well.)
(The story itself has never been reprinted elsewhere, a challenge with many DC comics of the same period.)
