| Posted: 25 December 2009 at 8:46am | IP Logged | 2
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In BATMAN 251, in a tale entitled "The Joker's Five Way Revenge", Neal Adams gave us what became, instantly, one of the most iconic and imitated shots of the Batman ever put on paper. (And this despite someone in the production department "fixing" Neal's drawing, and adding in, clumsily, the utility belt the Joker had taken from Batman several pages earlier.)
Note that this Batman is lean and trim, his face narrow and lantern jawed. Note that his eyes are not visible, and that his cape is smooth and unwrinkled, as are his gloves and boots. (Even that badly drawn utility belt is as it was in the comics for decades -- slender phials from which Batman drew all manner of amazing stuff, not the pouches we first saw sported by Adam West.) Yet, drawn in Neal's brilliant photo-realistic style, this was one of the most believable images of Batman we, the readers, had ever seen. This looked, not like Batman would look, but like Batman should look. Too many artists today have forgotten this. Forgotten that comics are all about verisimilitude, not tracing photographs.
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