Tag Archives: Superheroes

12 DAYS OF THE BATMAN! DAY 1: BATMAN

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I’m celebrating this holiday season with vengeance, the night… The Batman!

BatmanMinibust01

For the next twelve days- counting down to Christmas- I’ll be presenting a mini-bust of a different Batman character every day.

We begin with the Dark Knight himself:

There are people who insist Batman never smiles. I think he does sometimes. And when he does,  it’s probably very scary.

Edited to add: Batman was created by Bob Kane (artist) and an uncredited Bill Finger for 1939′s DETECTIVE COMICS #27.

I hope you’ll visit tomorrow for the second installment of 12 Days of the Batman!

Making Some Superheroes (Conculsion)

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Hey, remember these guys?


After tinkering with them for almost an entire year (!), these two crimefighters are finished. They might evoke a certain duo known for their dynamism, but are actually an entirely different solemn guardian of the night and his boy sidekick.

(Did I say boy sidekick? We sure about that? Hmm…)

These characters are from an upcoming novel. I translated the writer’s descriptions of the characters, filling in details here and there to present what I hope are modern takes on classical superhero designs. I was looking at the work of comic book artists Cully Hamner, Chris Sprouse, and Stuart Immonen, with an eye toward the costume design work of Adi Granov and Bob Ringwood.

ROBIN NODE Mini-Bust

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I was hoping to present some new work today, but it’s not quite ready. So I hope in the meanwhile you’ll enjoy this one from the vault.

“In the techno-hectic world of tomorrow, a victim shall rise to become a champion. Robin Node: Taking power from the rich and returning it to the poor…”

Robin Node, the Robin Hood of Tomorrow, was created by Daniel Lundie, who also designed this piece for me. Daniel’s expressive cartooning leaps off the page and screen and it always fun to translate into 3-D. We also collaborated on the Shaun of the Dead sculpture.

Some time after I did this piece, the Disney movie TANGLED came out and featured a character named Flynn Rider who I thought looked a lot like Daniel’s design for Robin here. Both roguish dudes who live in the woods, so I’m not surprised there was a parallel evolution.

Street Angel

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Another one from the vault:

Orphan of the streets and skateboarding daughter of justice, Jesse Sanchez fights a never ending battle against the forces of evil, nepotism, ninjas, and hunger as Street Angel!

I was a huge fan of Jim Rugg and Brian Maruca’s STREET ANGEL comic (http://www.streetangelcomics.com/), and  wrote Jim and asked if he’d design a Jesse Sanchez sculpture for me.  I was extrememly grateful that he not only provided me with some amazing sketches,  and this piece was featured in the tribute art gallery of the  STREET ANGEL collected edition.

In each issue’s frontispiece Street Angel fought a squid in increasingly unlikely confrontations (underwater hand-to-hand, wrestling, chess, etc.). This piece continues that theme where she’s downing a 40 of SQUID JUICE, the label of which Jim Rugg also designed.

And some wonderful people actually made a STREET ANGEL movie: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnL9b1Hrrrs


MIGHTY MARVEL MAY #28: BEN GRIMM/THE THING

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The ever-lovin’, blue-eyed idol o’ millions, Benjamin J. Grimm.

Reed Richard, Sue Storm, her brother Johnny, and Ben Grimm launched an experimental rocket into a cosmic ray storm and, crash-landing back on earth, were transformed into the superhuman Fantastic Four.  Reed, Sue, and Johnny gained the power to stretch like elastic, to turn invisible at will, and to become a “Human Torch,” respectively, but Ben… Ben was permanently distorted into a humanoid pile of orange rocks. The Thing.

THE FANTASTIC FOUR #1 (1961)was the beginning of what’s considered the Marvel Age of comics. Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s great breakthrough was the concept of superheroes with human vulnerabilities and flaws, who fought and reconciled like a family. In the Marvel Universe there were super-powers, but they came at a cost. Prior to that, superheroes usually had secret identities, mortal alter-egos they could retreat to when their adventures were concluded. The Fantastic Four did not; Ben Grimm couldn’t. 

Always a tough Jewish guy from Brooklyn, Ben was now too tough for the small and fragile world around him. At home only with his surrogate family, Ben channeled his great strength into his adventures with the Fantastic Four. Reed, the greatest scientific mind of his generation, looked for a cure for Ben’s condition, but could never find one. Outwardly Ben put on a brave face, playing the same lovable lout he’d always been, waiting for the moment he can let lose and holler  ”IT’S CLOBBERIN’ TIME!”

Hope you’ll pass through this way tomorrow for another installment of MIGHTY MARVEL MAY.

MIGHTY MARVEL MAY #27: SPIDER-MAN

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Poor Peter Parker. Orphaned as a boy and raised by his elderly aunt and uncle, he was a frail science geek who was bullied at school. When a freak accident involving a radioactive spider-bite granted him he proportionate strength, speed, and agility of a spider, he did what anyone would do: he went on television to get rich and famous.

The world had taught Peter the hard lesson that he should always look out for himself first, which is why he failed to stop an escaping robber, something well within his ability to do without much risk to himself. Peter’s beloved Uncle Ben paid the price for Peter’s arrogance when the robber shot and killed Ben that very night. After bringing the crook to justice Peter Parker- now and forever the Amazing Spider-Man- remembered the more important lesson Ben had taught him: with great power comes great responsibility.

That was the story Stan Lee and Steve Ditko told in fourteen pages in AMAZING FANTASY #15 in 1962. The story has changed very little in the retelling over the years, and that core guilt- that Peter could have helped and did not- has driven the character ever since.

Spider-Man was revolutionary for a number of reasons. He was a teenager, but not a sidekick, who called himself a man, as almost any almost-grown boy would do. He had problems, usually very serious ones, that usually came less from his adventures as Spider-Man as from his own poverty, need to care for his elderly Aunt May (the revelation that Peter was Spider-Man would, he feared, give her a fatal heart attack), and his own awkward adolescence. Now able to easily beat high school bully Flash Thompson, Peter needed to restrain himself and continue playing the meek bookworm he no longer was

But far from a dark, melancholy character, Spider-Man was exuberant as he swung over Manhattan and bounced  around his foes, wisecracking and attaching a note “Compliments of your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man” to defeated criminals. It was as if being Spider-Man was the only time Peter could be who he really wanted to be without consequence.

Peter failed almost as often as he succeeded. His victories were usually temporary. He chose to be good when being selfish would be so much easier. Ditko’s design for Spider-Man is one of the most iconic in all of comics. His own masked face is his emblem, a face that could hide anyone, that could be any one of us.

Be here for tomorrow’s MIGHTY MARVEL MAY because it’s gonna rock.

MIGHTY MARVEL MAY #24: THE HULK

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Doc Bruce Banner,
Belted by gamma rays,
Turned into the Hulk…

Stan Lee has said that the Hulk, co-created with artist Jack Kirby, is based on Dr. Jeckyl and Mr. Hyde, the good man who becomes a monster, and also on Boris Karloff’s version of Frankenstein’s monster, the misbegotten, persecuted creature. Those influences are fairly evident. What is absent from all but the original versions of the Hulk are his Cold War origins. Doctor Bruce Banner was a meek, bookish man who used his genius to build weapons of mass destruction and, caught in the blast of one of his bombs, became one himself.

The Hulk is Banner’s alter-ego. When angered, Banner becomes a seven-foot, thousand-pound, musclebound, lime-green, simple-minded version of himself (in most versions: he originally changed at nightfall, was gray-skinned, and merely terse, not simple). As he grows angrier, he gets stronger,often proclaiming “Hulk is strongest one there is!” After the anger has faded, he reverts back to a scrawny Bruce Banner by the side of the road somewhere, his clothes in tatters, barely able to remember what he’s done.

In the 1980s, writer/artist Barry Windsor-Smith proposed a story which would reveal that Bruce Banner had been physically abused as a child. The revelation would suggest that the Hulk was not merely Banner’s repressed anger, but a physical manifestation of the anger of an abused child, to some degree explicating the Hulk’s childlike demeanor. Marvel ran a version of  the story, but without Windsor-Smith (and interesting account of the behind-the-scenes story of how Marvel passed and then ended up using the story anyway can be found here).

The Hulk’s adventures both permit us to worry for Dr. Banner, the victim of violence who perpetuates violence without meaning to, and vicariously enjoy the demolition when he transforms and bellows “HULK SMASH!”

I hope you’ll return for tomorrow’s installment of MIGHTY MARVEL MAY even if tomorrow’s installment isn’t very nice.

MIGHTY MARVEL MAY #23: LUKE CAGE, HERO FOR HIRE

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In the 70s Marvel experimented with mixing superheroes with genres popular outside comics, such as martial arts (MASTER OF KUNG FU, IRON FIST), Satanic horror (SON OF SATAN), motorcycle culture  (GHOST RIDER), and blaxsploitation with LUKE CAGE, HERO FOR HIRE. Cage, the character and his comic, were both manifestly exploitative and well-meaning. The character was created by Archie Goodwin and John Romita written and (mostly) drawn by white men. The character was an innocent man who was sent to prison, volunteered for an experiment which gave him superhuman strength and “steel-hard skin” who escaped and used his powers for the good of the common man. For a price.

Operating like most private eyes (and a lot like Shaft), Cage set up in a dingy Times Square office over an “art house” movie theater and took superhero cases on a per diem basis, although he’d often waive or lower his fees for the needy. Despite his often angry and “steel-hard” demeanor, and signature exclamation of “Sweet Christmas!” (filling in for any real profanity in a comics code-approved book) Cage was a soft touch.

Eventually Cage adopted the more superheroic moniker Power Man, but it never seemed to stick. He also partnered with the costumed martial artist Iron Fist to become a crimefighting duo for pay.

In the last decade, much effort has been made to update Cage, his yellow shirt, metal tiara and afro now considered too dated, and he’s been given a more contemporary shaved head and goatee. He’s also lost any semblance of a costume, which strikes me as too self-consciously “cool.” Superheroes are and ever will contain some ridiculous whimsy and efforts to make them cool often underline this rather than obfuscate it.

Cage joined the Avengers, a much better-paying superheroing gig. He also fathered a child with former superheroine Jessica Jones, whom he married. Fatherhood and matrimony agreed with Cage, but he remains as “steel-hard” to his fellow Avengers as ever.

Tomorrow another incredible installment of MIGHTY MARVEL MAY.

MIGHTY MARVEL MAY #13: BEAST

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Hank McCoy ought to be the poster child for mutants. As created by stalwarts Stan Lee and Jack Kirby in  X-MEN #1 in 1963, Beast was a hirsute, agile man, with oversize hands and feet, but recognizably human. His brutish exterior  was at odds with his eloquent, erudite manner and genius intellect. Seeking the genetic cause of human mutation, Beast transformed himself into a blue-furred, apelike creature (courtesy of writer Gerry Conway and artist Tom Sutton. He also got a great Gil Kane cover out of it!). He could no longer hide his mutation from the world.

More gray than blue on this great Gil Kane cover. And more people need to work “lo” into sentences.

Far from withdrawing from society, Hank became a celebrated member of the  Avengers and continued his work as a scientist. He was a quirky, verbose, well-adjusted guy. Years passed and Hank mutated once again. This time the mutagen was writer Grant Morrison’s mind.

Morrison and artist Frank Quitely redesigned the X-Men for the 21st Century beginning with NEW X-MEN #114. “Increased sunspot activity” was blamed for secondary mutations around the world, and Beast was now a blue-furred, catlike humanoid who felt “like a Hindu sex god.”  While rebuffing an ex-girlfriend, he also alluded to being gay, a revelation which was hastily retracted by Hank himself a few issues later (I’ve always suspected the change was mandated by Marvel’s management, who realized Beast action figures were sold at Walmarts around the country and feared a conservative backlash). Hank’s shifting orientation was not as controversial as his shifting appearance. Although many embraced his leonine look, which he has to this day, others wished for a return to his earlier, more apelike appearance.

I like both looks. My guess is that Quitely was inspired by Jean Cocteau’s Beast in La Belle et la Bête. I went with this version because I haven’t seen it represented in 3D as often.

With luck, you’ll be back for another edition of MIGHTY MARVEL MAY tomorrow!