Title Pages: The Batman Strikes #7

Batman Strikes #7 Title Logo

Here’s another title logo from The Batman Strikes, this time featuring the frightfully frigid Mr. Freeze. It’s always nice when you have characters as thematically strong as Freeze, as they give you a visual element you can apply to all aspects of design. Thankfully the story title was a single word or moderate length, which meant I could create nice big letters to show dripping with ice. Freeze has just broken free of his prison cell, and I placed the logo against the wall to incorporate it into the scene with the ominous, partially-silhouetted figure of Freeze towering over it.

Batman Strikes #7 - Title Page

Here you can see the context of the whole page. I should mention that I thought that Mr. Freeze was one of the more successful character designs I got to work with from the animated TV series. Most designs for Mr. Freeze’s cold suit I’d seen previously in animation or comics were topped with some kind of helmet, from a bubble dome to something resembling an astronaut’s helmet. This version had Mr. Freeze’s head covered with a spiky ice formation, and his head was a shadowy shape concealed within, with glowing red eyes visible. It was a great, striking visual and upon seeing it I thought it was surprising it hadn’t been tried earlier!

Batman Strikes #7 - Title Page inks

Here’s the inked page art, with inks by regular Batman Strikes inker Terry Beatty. It’s interesting to compare this to the pencil art, especially where I tried to create some translucence effects in the icy mist swirling around Freeze and the just-destroyed door. One advantage of being paired with an inker on a regular basis is learning what kinds of things the do especially well and then playing to those strengths. On The Batman Strikes! I tried to create stark compositions of light and dark shapes, with only the occastional bits of cross-hatching or other effects to create areas of gray mid-tone. I thought this approach preserved the simple, clean lines of the animation design while creating a shadowy, noir-ish mood that suited the Batman material.

Batman Strikes #7 - Title Page

And finally, here’s the page as it appeared with colors and lettering. Note the sound effect that was added in panel 3. That’s normally the kind of thing I liked to draw myself on this series. I’m guessing that the sound effect wasn’t scripted and I hadn’t chosen to add one when I drew the page, but the editor had one added at the lettering stage. I often wasn’t thrilled with the coloring on The Batman Strikes!, but this page looks good to me. The somewhat monochrome color scheme works well for the prison setting, and the color nicely enhances the ice and mist effects in the final panel.

More to come!

Title Pages: Batman Strikes #6

Hi all! Sorry I’ve been so quiet the last few days. Busy, busy, busy. Maybe I should do like Mark Evanier and just post a picture of  soup can on days when he’s too busy to blog. Hm, come to think of it I’m not even sure what that means…

Batman Strikes #6 - Title Logo

Anyway, here’s a look at another Title Page from The Batman Strikes!, featuring another hand-drawn story title logo. This one features Catwoman, and I should say something about her design here. Like all the major villains appearing in The Batman Strikes!, Catwoman’s design is based on animation models from the animated TV show the comic was a tie-in for. This Catwoman costume had large yellow goggles, presumably influenced by the then-recent Darwyn Cooke redesign of the character. The animation design also had a loose collar, which could pull over her head as a hood for added stealth.  That’s one of those ideas that sounds cool on paper but then doesn’t get used much in practice. I could be mistaken but I suspect that Catwoman was first seen on the show lowering the hood to dramatically reveal her mask and then it never went back on. I’m pretty sure she never had it up in any of the comic stories I drew.

But the main thing about this Catwoman design that was – I’ll be generous and call it controversial – with fans were the ears. Now if you look at her, I see what they were going for. The ears are actually more anatomically in proportion with her head for certain breeds of cats, and the big ears I think actually add to the overall slinkiness of the figure. And this Catwoman was meant to be slinky! But whether it’s Catwoman, Batman, or a host of other costumed characters emulating those or similar animals, there has become something of a tradition that the ears are represented by stylized little triangle shapes, and it’s somewhat disconcerting to see these huge cat wars sitting o Catwoman’s head. I actually found the mask fun to draw, but much like this animated series’ version of the Joker, fans were vocal about their dislike of the design every time the character showed up.

Batman Strikes #6 - Title Page

Here’s the full penciled page. Notice the really elaborate city background and the tiny figure of Catwoman climbing over it in multiple images. I’m a big fan of Marshall Rogers work on Batman, and the biggest lesson I learned from his work is that when drawing Batman one of the main characters of the story is Gotham City. Putting the characters in a rich, detailed, vast Gotham really makes them sing.

As a bonus, one of my hand-drawn sound effects appears here as Catwoman’s whip takes apart an inconvenient security camera. The sound effect is a simple one, but I always like to design sound effects myself when I can, so I can better integrate their shape and placement into the design of the panel.

Batman Strikes #6 Title Page

And finally the finished page. More to come soon!