Coloring Fun - Batman & Batgirl by John Byrne

Black-and-White commissioned sketches are usually more fun to color than the coloring book pages found in official material. If you're following this blog, you may have noticed I stopped coloring pages from the Batman: Hush coloring book. Congratulations to anyone who did. I found that John Byrne drawing in a Google search, printed it, got the crayons out, then proceeded with the coloring.

The colors on the Batgirl costume are a nod to Yvonne Craig. The blue-green Batman costume is a nod to the cover color choices from Bronze Age Batman comics. The red night sky is a nod to later episodes of Batman: The Animated Series. The color of the Batmobile is a nod to how it appeared on the Superfriends cartoons:

Funny how the colors look brighter in that shot, but they're kinda muted in the later picture. I blame the camera. I miss the one I used to have.

The end result looked great to me - I framed it:

I find that the black frame & glass helps it "Pop" more..or in this case, "Biff!" "Bam!" "Ka-Pow!"

"Neat trick!" "Saw it in a Batman movie."

I was disappointed to learn that the expanded version of Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice will only be available to own/view on Blu-Ray and Digital HD, whereas Standard DVDs will only feature the theatrical version. It makes sense that the PG-13 version is out there so that parents have an option..but it's still not highly regarded. Why not have both versions available on all formats? Or am I the only one who still doesn't own a Blu-Ray player? Am I making a mountain out of a molehill? I'll move on, then..

Not owning the film means I can't get a closer look at a scene played in the trailer for the video: Clark Kent queries an old man about Batman...and this old guy punctuates his final word with a funny trick: he draws the Bat-emblem on a scratch-off ticket by scratching the surface with his thumbnail. My reaction was, "Hey! That's kind-of cool! I'll see if I can do that."

I used 3 tickets. Only one offered a prize. What was the prize? A free ticket. But that's not the fun part. The fun part was trying to scratch the Bat-emblem. On the 1st try, I realized I might've done it backwards. The 2nd try gave me the desired result. The 3rd try came about as an afterthought, because I recalled the image of the Bat-emblem was formed from a black surface, but that's where the ticket used in the film was essentially a cleverly designed prop. The surface of these tickets is usually a lighter color contrasting with the symbols printed in black. So I used a magic marker and drew a bat on the last ticket.

And I didn't use my thumbnail to scratch those tickets. That's actually pretty gross - those filings are worse than eraser marks: they stain the palms of your hands as you move your hand across the ticket surface. And when you use a coin to scratch, your fingers wind up smelling like the coin you've been holding (because the sweat & oils from our fingers collect the dirt & grime from the metal coin). I don't know if  "Lotto Scratch-off Ticket Art" is a pre-existing thing, but it exists now. Starting here? I do recall an artist drawing mini-paintings on those electronic subway fare "Metrocards" and trying to generate a trend a few years back..and Etch-a-Sketch "etchings".

Art Therapy: "Batman: Hush" Coloring Book (Part 10, 11 and 12 of 104)

April showers..bring coloring book pages. Witness the wealthy man from Gotham in grey and blue rescue an unrelatable kidnapped effete cipher schoolboy from the clutches of working poor mercenaries gone broke from buying gaudy licensed apparel...in a swirl of pink and orange smoke??

Yeah..much like the corridors, smoke is kind of boring on a coloring book page..then I recall the colorful smoke bombs used in the old Adam West Batman show and rolled with it!

3 down..more to go..

Art Therapy: "Batman: Hush" Coloring Book (Part 8 AND 9 of 104)

A double-page spread? Should I count it as one? Well, if both upload correctly, then yes. If not, then the numbering stands.

I think my mind is made up on using yellow crayon for Batman's 1st person narration. And I got bored with having to color the clothing on the kidnappers, so I decided that last guy buys his wardrobe from the section at Target/Kmart/Walmart that has licensed character apparel.

Art Therapy With Batman: Fun With Dust Jackets..

You get an idea..

The dust jacket image of Batman for a hardcover collection of late-60's /early-70's stories was the best thing about it. I thought it would have a happier life on the cover of a collection of more-interesting/entertaining stories, which had a cover image of Batman that was quite good, but lacking the same visual "Biff! Bam! Pow!" as the former. I like the results very much and have no regrets. After all, I own both.

Izz better! Much better! :)

Art Therapy: "Batman: Hush" Coloring Book (Part 4 of 104)

Darkness!

No parents!

Continued Darkness!

More Darkness!

Get it?

The opposite of light!

Has anyone thought of editing scenes of the Wayne's buying the farm in various Batman movies to the tune of Lego Batman's self-composed death metal song from The Lego Movie?

On this page, Loeb & Lee are staying close to the same beat as Bill Finger's account of the Batman origin, barring a callback to Frank Miller's Batman: Year One in the fourth panel. I wanted my crayon colors to echo the color scheme of Miller's tale, which I thought really sold the atmosphere, particularly the scene where Bruce encounters the large bat, though that scene didn't play out the way it's shown here; he was sitting on the floor of his study when the bat crashed through the window of his study, not standing up.

Breaking Bad didn't exist when "Hush" premiered, but the periodic table in the background of panel 3, coupled with Bruce in a lab coat, doing generic chemistry work, had me thinking about nods to Walter White, along with memories of Jeff Matsuda's sketch for fans on Reddit of Walt and Jesse as the dynamic duo back when Bad was hot, so the coat and gloves now look like Walter's standard hazmat suit, and Bruce is holding a test tube of...crystal blue persuasion.. ;)

4 down, 100 to go...

Art Therapy: "Batman: Hush" Coloring Book (Part 3 of 104)

This page begins the mini-prologue included with issues of Wizard Magazine offered as a preview..in case somebody out there wasn't entirely sure Jim Lee could draw Batman. Well, rest assured, he draws Batman phenomenally well. This prologue retells Batman's origin..in case somebody out there didn't know Batman's origin. Well, now they do.

I think the earliest Zorro pulp stories are considered public domain, so it might be okay to refer to the name of that character and his first adventure..but the film, "The Mark of Zorro", might not be. Tricky thing, copyright..that's why the Waynes are seen leaving a theater playing a cheery musical in Tim Burton's 1989 "Batman" and an opera playing Die Fledermaus in "Batman Begins", not to mention the creation of The Gray Ghost as a substitute for Zorro in the various animated series. Zorro's cool - at best, he has an unflappable presence - but Batman has more going for him than Zorro did. All you can do with Zorro is..keep him classy. Anyone interested in a crossover where Batman meets Zorro? Dynamite and DC Comics seem on good terms - they already did crossovers with Green Hornet and The Man From U.N.C.L.E. - why not Zorro?

I think Thomas Wayne is a Tom Selleck-type of guy..Martha Wayne has always been an enigma. Even when Grant Morrison hinted that she might've been a drug-addled socialite before and during her marriage to Thomas..and I recall the novel Wayne of Gotham danced around the same circles, but...eh. She's just..Bruce's mommy.

And then there's Joe Chill. Around this time, Batman's continuity was subtly revised so that he never knew who killed his parents. Jeph Loeb toyed with the idea with having the killer be unveiled in Batman/Superman as John Corben, aka, Superman foe Metallo, back when he was a small-time criminal and long before becoming a robot housing his disembodied brain ( ah, comics ). This turned out to be a red herring in the storyline, and it wasn't until the Grant Morrison years of Batman comics that Joe was reinstated as the Wayne's killer.

3 Down, 101 to go...

Art Therapy: "Batman: Hush" Coloring Book (Part 2 of 104)

Pg. 2 - Legal Jargon

Boring, but necessary, at least they threw a bone by adding a moody illustration of Batman in the shadow of what looks like a graveyard..very Bronze Age Batman-esque.

I wonder if fans think of getting autographs from the people listed on this page..or similar jargon at the bottom of the first page of most comics (or maybe the last page, or inside front-cover; the format hasn't been particularly uniform for two decades, now)...surely the Vice President of "Content Strategy" would be happy to sign his name? He helps develop a strategy for the President of Content Strategy!...The content must look strategic!! ( Double (!!) Exclamation point! )

I chose an orangey Orange sunset over the grapeity Purple night sky from "The Night of The Reaper!" because I like the symmetry it has with pg. 1...I do have an intentional color pallet here, but I don't want anything written in stone...suffice to say, I'll give the orange crayon a break for the next two pages..or less heavy-lifting..

2 down, 102 to go...

Art Therapy: "Batman: Hush" Coloring Book (Part 1 of 104)

"When I was a child, I thought as a child, but as an adult, I put away childish things..."

..and then we, as adults, decide, as adults...'Whatever - let's have some fun with crayons!'

DC Comics got their feet wet in the Adult Coloring Book market by offering variant "Adult Coloring Book" covers to most of their superhero comics a few months ago. Reprinting Jeph Loeb & Jim Lee's seminal Batman: Hush storyline as a series of coloring books aimed at this new trend is pretty cool..largely because I don't own a copy of the graphic novel that reprinted the story; ditto any of the original issues of Batman it premiered in. I might be reluctant to buy the upcoming coloring book that adapts Mad Love, only because I own the graphic novel of that, whereas with Hush, I get to explore that story while playing with color.

Two observations:

Bill Finger gets credited here on the first page of the coloring book for co-creating Batman "with" Bob Kane, but not on the actual title pages of reprinted from the comics...I don't think they'll ever go back and re-edit old comics to stamp Bill's name in there, but since Batman is a fictional character that will outlive us all, we'll have another 75+ years crediting Bill to even things out.

I like Catwoman's Golden-Silver Age look - the purple dress that offered gratuitous thigh shots. And the green cape. I had no reference for two minor cross-hatched details on the lower-right corner, so I just built it up as her green cape.

1 down, 103 to go.

Notebook Covers: Batman vs Nocturna

It's something I like to do..Instead of Photoshop, I take the actual printed matter and cut n' paste 'em together, then slap 'em together on a notebook. You won't find any notebook like this at the Walgreen's! Obviously, I didn't regard the issues in question as anything sacred; the covers were cool, the stories inside...not so much. I discovered I could form a more dynamic image by combining them and making a subtle change. I'll leave it to you readers to spot what came from where. Plus, I love the late-90's title font. They feel more indicative of the character, like one of his gadgets..a Bat-Font.

I became interested in this obscure mid-1980s Batman villain in 1998, when Paul Dini described a rejected idea for a proposed episode of Batman: The Animated Series. It would've been a 2-part episode with a cliffhanger in which Batman appeared to turn into a vampire after his first encounter with Nocturna. I didn't know who she was, or what she looked like (this was before I began using the internet, by about 2 years, but it still would've been a wilderness; pre-Google zeitgeist, pre-Twitter, pre-Facebook/Pinterest, etc..) until I started buying old back issues from that era...

In retrospect, that rejected idea in question is odd, since Nocturna isn't a vampire; exactly what she wants and who she is has a big question mark on top. Her debut offers some background on her early life, but in her dealings with others, Batman/Bruce Wayne in particular, her characterization comes off falling somewhere in between Poison Ivy and Catwoman. I would describe her as an albino goth whose interests include stargazing, riding hot air balloons, stealing jewelry and organized crime. She also has a strange relationship with her brother Anton, who adopts the guise Night-Slayer and wears a drab gray costume. Like a Steampunk-era Vampirella, really ( and that has been done, recently) but does anyone really know who Vampirella is, either?

Back to our goth/cosplay vampire/astrologer. Her best moments allow for spectacular visuals from reliable journeyman artists of the decade: Don Newton, Gene Colan, Tom Mandrake, Rick Hoberg and cover artist extraordinaire Ed Hannigan, whose classic Detective Comics cover image of Batman & Nocturna embracing amidst the red skies and thunderstorm (these stories were published around the time of Crisis On Infinite Earths and the use of blood-red skies was intended as a subtle thematic  continuity link) was so awesome that I tried re-creating it in my sketchbook (the end result was I made her posterior larger and his cape & cowl a brighter blue...I knows what I likes..). So in short, the artwork makes her an iconic Batman foe, but the stories keep her in the D-list with Magpie, Mr. Polka Dot, King Snake, Whisper A'Daire and The Planet Master. Because they're just..boilerplate storylines - Doug Moench was juggling scripts for two books a month, often with the "story" for Detective being a thinly-veiled recap of what was happening in Batman. Only the hardcore completists still hold onto these - once Frank Miller arrived, all this stuff was abandoned in favor of aping Miller's Batman. It's still not clear if Moench ever thought of reviving/revamping the character when he returned to the Bat-books in the 1990s,

I remember finding a sketch - purportedly by Bruce Timm - of what this character was going to look like on the net..and better than that, I found a fan-made image, purportedly from Deviantart, of a 3-D maquette image of Nocturna..the end result resembles Timm's designs for the silkier femme fatales of the series: Red Claw and Talia Al Ghul. Pity he didn't go for the blue hair. Angelina Jolie could play her opposite Ben "Batfleck" Affleck, but again, wouldn't you want Jolie to play Catwoman? Sorry, Nocturna. Maybe they'll incorporate you among the cast of Gotham...