Art For Art’s Sake #344 — The Devil And The Bat
by Richard Bruton
Spinning the wheels of the comic art roulette that is Art For Art’s Sake one more time…
This week, we’ll end with Matt Wagner’s Batman/Grendel series, which looked a lot like this…
…and this…
Katsuhiro Otomo illustration for a Masamune Shirow Ghost in the Shell exhibition…
Obviously based on Otomo’s classic Akira bike moment…
It was done by Otomo after Shirow did this piece for an Otomo tribute in 2017…
Jaime Hernandez
Jim Cheung – Bone artwork:
“Never thought I’d be tackling this character, but Bone was the theme for this year’s Baltimore Comic Con Yearbook! Deceptively tricky capturing the nuanced lines of Jeff Smith, but it was a fun challenge nonetheless!”
John McCrea Hit Man…
Iron Man and Pepper – Robbi Rodriguez
Alejandro Mesa – Scarlet Witch
Matias Bergara – Poison Ivy
Walt Simonson – Batman
Michael Cho Judge Dredd
Kevin Maguire Bat villains…
Leonardo Gonzalez – Spider-Men…
Javier Gonzalez – Big Barda
Darwyn Cooke – FF
Chris Weston commissions…
Boo Cook – a recent Joker commission – a lil’ bit of McKean’s Joker, a lil’ bit of Brucie… (Forsyth, not Banner)
Nick Derrington with a nice Grendel/Batman…
Which, of course, makes me want to show you some more Grendel/Batman, where Matt Wagner’s creation met the Bat. You had a first two-part series in 1993, written, drawn by Wagner with colours by Joe Matt, and a second 2-parter in 1996, again written and drawn by Wagner, colours by Sean Konot.
The first had the original Grendel, Hunter Rose, the suave, disturbed crime boss/assassin, pitching up in Gotham City mostly because he’s bored of the crimes he can commit in his own city and challenges Batman to stop him before he pulls off a new heist in Gotham. The second came far later on in the Grendel saga, as Gotham City hosts an exhibition of famous killers through history, including the skull of Hunter Rose in the present day, only to have the 26th Century Grendel-Prime travelling back in time to connect with the soul of the original Grendel.
Both are rather good. But it’s the art that makes it for me every time I revisit it as part of that original run of Grendel stories that ran from ‘Devil by the Deed’ (1986) through to Devil’s Quest/Batman & Grendel II (1995/6). Wagner’s art in that first Batman & Grendel is so gorgeously loose, all those tight, small panels used so well to tell a claustrophobic tale, opening up so impressively when they need to… I mean, look at the way he does it in these first few pages of Batman & Grendel I, as Hunter meets Bruce Wayne…
And then, as we get the two men in their suits, it goes bigger…
Then, three years later, same Bat, different Grendel, and a very different art style…
