Subcultural engagement for the 21st Century...
Barbelith is a new kind of community (find out more)...
You can login or register.

Underground > Comic Books >

I'm Batman

19:51 / 19.06.05

The whole Batman vibe, having just seen the film, people talking about him, the fact that I'm listening to the soundtrack now, who for your money wrote and drew the best. Also, as Wizard did a thing recently that lauded Jim scritch scratch Lee, time to put the record straight.

My favourite Batman artist would have to be Norm Breyfogle - he was really the artist that I grew up with when I really got into Batman in a big way, and I loved his shadowed face, the grimace, the inhuman straightness of his head and body. Jim Apro always seemed a little weak compared to Breyfogle, always trying to be a little too real in a comic book way, but Breyfogle just found his thing and went with it - he also drew a pretty good Bat-mobile as I remember it.

Writer - well, that's a tough one, John Wagner/Alan Grant were the writers of the time, Denny O'Neil was good but has dated badly, I loved Giffen/DeMattis' Batman in JL/JLI, but I really enjoyed Pete Milligan's stories. Frank Miller I always felt got the support right, but not the man, so I guess I'm going to go with Wagner/Grant.

19:52 / 19.06.05

Year One, David Mazzuchelli, Frank Miller.

Best. Best. Best.

20:15 / 19.06.05

I don't know if there's a definitive Batman artist. It's a pretty simple design, pointy ears, triangle nose thing, cape.

And I was never really thrilled with any of his ongoing series stuff, a few cool story arcs here and there, but I always preferred him in a team book like JLA (most versions actually), or one shots and miniseries like the Miller, Moore, and Morrison stuff.

Yotsuba & Benjamin!

23:45 / 19.06.05

Visually, my definitive Bats is definitely Bolland's. It's proximity to the first movie release pretty much cemented The Killing Joke's presence as the pinnacle in Bat-Storytelling in my mind. I always loved the way Bolland made the cowl look so solid and yet, you know, not weighing 800 lbs. And the anger he got across in the face, and that nose!

Bolland wins.

00:12 / 20.06.05

Best Batman outside comics: Denny O'Neill in his prose version of 'Knightfall'.

Best Batman art: Frank Miller, all versions, but I absolutely adore the renderings of Bats in 'Dark Knight Strikes Again'.

Best Batman written: Grant Morrison; Bat-Christ of Arkham and the supersexy science ninja leatherdaddy, with the latter ranking massively higher than the suffering, repressed one-act.

Worst outside comics Batman: Andrew Vachss, 'The Ultimate Evil' which tried way too hard and pushed the trauma-child aspect of Batman beyond a recovery zone.

Worst Batman artist: You can't really draw Batman so he's crap, without totally destroying the Bat-iconography and sensibility. So, nobody readily comes to mind.

Worst Batman writer: Denny O'Neill can be successfully blamed for a lot of the bad Batman writing in the last few decades, as the weight of his Bat-vision was often a very silly but solid restraint. Other than that: Chuck Dixon.

I'm Rick Jones, bitch

01:59 / 20.06.05

Best Batman outside comics: Denny O'Neill in his prose version of 'Knightfall'.

Seconded. Gets under his skin nicely.

06:51 / 20.06.05

You can't really draw Batman so he's crap, without totally destroying the Bat-iconography and sensibility. So, nobody readily comes to mind.

I dunno, Dick Sprang's Batman always looked pretty fuckin' ugly to me...

The boxy nose with the line runnind down the middle, those weird lines that could be a small moustache, the eyebrows drawn onto the mas, the big frowny lips, the line on the ears that makes them more earlike and less pointy, those stupid half-moon eyes... ew.

m.

10:42 / 20.06.05

My favourite Batman artist would have to be Norm Breyfogle

Seconded and thirded.

Yr next beer's on my tab, Benny.

13:18 / 20.06.05

We should all write in and demand that DC collect in paperback the Alan Grant/Breyfogle stuff. I'm glad to see (and had no idea) that so many others besides me love this era of Batman.

Breyfogle was the first to draw the Tim Drake Robin in costume, when he saved Bats & his own mother from the voodoo villain The Obeah Man (never used since, apparently).

And there was a really great one-issue story centered on Zorro tying into the infamous movie Bruce and his parents saw before they were killed by Grant & Breyfogle, I remember...

broken gentleman.

17:33 / 20.06.05

I'm more than likely alone on this one, but other than Miller and Mazzuchelli on year one (which is canon, in my mind), my best artists for Batman are Ed McGuinness or Dustin Nguyen. I either like bats cartoony to an extent, or as he was seen fighting Slam Bradley in catwoman (I'm pretty sure this was Cameron Stewart's work). Then again, I'd be happy to see pretty much anything in either the slightly cartoony style, or in a vaguely Toth-y style, which is how I (probably inaccurately) see the earlier catwoman issues.

JLA Classified and Superman/Batman cemented McGuiness' batman as a favourite, and Nguyen's short run (i think with Winick) was beautiful to look at, even with the somewhat sketchy 'scarecrow as hulk' plotline.

I have to agree with the mention of Denny O'Neil's writing in Knightfall's novelisation, that was probably the work that cemented my fascination with the bat.

Yotsuba & Benjamin!

18:35 / 20.06.05

McGuiness is fantastic. Just reread JLA: Classified and no one draws action the way he does, thus, no one draws Bats like he does.

rabideyemovement

03:53 / 21.06.05

I love the look and feel of Miller's Dark Knight, but I always thought Breyfogle was the best at Batman in action. He made Batman look like a true athlete, agile like a ninja!

06:52 / 21.06.05

I strongly dislike McGuiness's work. I think it is the unecessary bulk and chunky character designs. I don't necessarily need the realism, but I find his work very unappealing.

23:57 / 21.06.05

The best Batman artist is clearly Norm Breyfogle. He turned Batman from a superhero into a living archetype. I absolutely adore the Grant/Breyfogle run, and that is, to me, the definitive Batman. In fact, I'm reading some of it right now: "The Mud Pack," where they reunited all the Clayfaces.

So, yeah, Grant and Breyfogle.

Of course, Miller did good stuff too, the best Bat-story ever is Dark Knight Returns, but Grant and Breyfogle *made* Batman for me.

Withiel: DALI'S ROTTWEILER

07:46 / 22.06.05

This is probably sacreliege, but I love the McKean Batman, because it's the one design where the elements that don't really fit the mythos that's grown around the character are glossed over. Somehow, I feel that the twisted silhouette McKean paints is what Batman would actually look like to mere humans. Also, those twisty shoulder things are just groovy, and there are a couple of frames in Black Orchid where he captures the odd, intense pose of Batman's head and neck exactly right. (Why would a character based on instilling supernatural terror paint his (admittedly essential) utility belt bright yellow?)
I also have a great fondness for the Quitely Batman, due to the wonderful solidity of the figure and the fact that he gives the character a sort of grounded reality and sense of competence.

14:30 / 22.06.05

>> In fact, I'm reading some of it right now: "The Mud Pack," where they reunited all the Clayfaces.

Yeah, that story was aces.

Haus of Mystery

19:02 / 22.06.05

Yeah and they also had Ace the Bathound and a genius hunch-back with a heart of gold...
Some of that stuff was pure shite.

For me the definitive Batman look is Neal Adams. It's not that it's necessarily my favourite, it's just what I associate strongest with the character. My first real exposure to american comics was reprints you could buy in British newsagents, and in the late 80's/early 90's they reprinted most of The classic O'Neill/Adams stuff.
A lean, mean Batman - Adams to my mind nailed his physique. He's not a hulking ogre, just a human honed to a ridiculous degree.
I've enjoyed other creator's work more (Matt Wagner draws a nice Batman for example), but nothing says 'Batman' to me as much as this:

Solitaire Rose as Tom Servo

20:34 / 22.06.05

I agree on the Neal Adams nod. His Batman just works for me, in a way that a lot of Adams's art looks out of place on.

Miller hasn't written enough Batman for me to say he's The Best. He did two very good stories, but O'Neal's stuff in the late 60s and early 70's is almost a completely new character and origen in a lot of ways, getting rid of the previous 20 years of goofiness and grounding Batman in a pulp action sort of character that drew off of Doc Savage, The Shadown and The Spider...while some can say that's how Batman was in the beginning, even the earliest Batman stories had him fighting 20 foot tall giants and the like.

Outside of the Batman booksa, both Morrison and Waid did excellent work on Batman in JLA, and I'd like to see extended runs by both writers on the character solo...and I guess we're about to see if Miller can writer a good on-going Batman book (unless it becomes another "Jim Lee can't tell the story so he draws a lot of posters" book like "Hush" was).

And the Best VERSION of Batman was the Englehart run in the mid 70's. My only problem with the run as a story was that it seemed as if it was trunchated and didn't come to a decent conclusion, with plot threads left dangling, and the run only being a limited number of issues.

02:08 / 23.06.05

Er... didn't we already see what Miller could do on an ongoing or regular-contininuity-series Batman, almost twenty years ago?

Solitaire Rose as Tom Servo

03:03 / 23.06.05

Not really...Miller did Dark Knight, then Year One (four issues) and then DK2. He drew a special early on, but the only long-term company owned comic he's ever done is Daredevil, everything else has been mini-series of some kind or another.

05:09 / 23.06.05

Who did the whole hub-cap-stealing Crisis-era Jason Todd, thing, then? I always pinned it on Miller.

Brigade du jour

22:39 / 01.07.05

Jim Aparo drew 'Death In The Family', so I might presume it was him.

Do you recall Todd having a particularly large chin when he was stealing hubcaps? That's always the giveaway for me. ('Yes I saw him Officer, he tripped over his own face while running away from the car').

23:55 / 01.07.05

Timm has always sexed me up with his inky Batman.

Look at it, stripped bare of anything but the essentials. There's a fucking Bat-purity there that you don't see out of most artists (praps save Mignola or McGuiness)

Solitaire Rose as Tom Servo

17:41 / 02.07.05

Who did the whole hub-cap-stealing Crisis-era Jason Todd, thing, then? I always pinned it on Miller.

That was Max Allen Collins, who only had about a year n the book, and while I love his writing, he didn't fit the character very well. He was followed by Jim Starlin, of all people, who made Robin a bastard who had to die.

18:05 / 02.07.05

Figures. I'd forgot about Max Allen Collins doing Batman. Got screwed over similar to his Dick Tracy time, innit?
Well, he's hopefully doing well with the recent '30s Lone Wolf & Cub riff. Did his notion of doing a 'Cowboy Bebop' comic ever come to anything? I'd buy that twice and give the second one away to prosyletize.

Regrettable Juvenilia

23:53 / 02.07.05

Poke it with a stick

09:30 / 03.07.05

I'm in the minority with prev. Withiel, but I loved McKean's Batman, too - a creature almost more horrifying than his adversaries.
The joker looked physically sick with madness - less a creepy clown and more like a psychotically deranged maniac which, obviously, he is.

To echo Flyboy - this page has some rather dubious comic images.

17:55 / 19.07.05

Jim Aparo just passed away. Very sad. He was one of the classic Batman artists.