Tuesday, May 6, 2014

Vintage Magazine Article-
"DC Direct Currents"
Issue #17 June 1989 &
Issue #53 August 1992

Throughout the late 80'and 90's, DC Comics released a neat little periodical called Direct Currents. Each issue featured a list of comics shipping to shops that month along with stand-alone articles on particularly noteworthy happenings. The front cover of each issue routinely featured the "hottest" upcoming book... and in June of 1989, there was nothing that could top the DC Comics Batman Movie Adaptation. :)

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Also featured in this issue- A brief interview with Jerry Ordway, the stellar artist behind the adaptation! I have included it here as well since the latter part of the write-up features some Batman '89 talk...

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Flash forward three years... and the adaptation for Batman Returns gets the front cover treatment! Sadly, there is no accompanying interview with the book's artists (Steve Erwin & Jose Luis Garci-Lopez) this time around...

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2 comments:

  1. Hey Sawyer - the art was actually by Steve Erwin, not Jose Luis GL... here's a quote from Steve Erwin:

    "I penciled the book, Garcia-Lopez inked it. The same is true of the cover. Garcia-Lopez created the marketing style guides: the line art you may have seen on t-shirts, school lunch boxes, bed sheets, etc., would have come from that.

    My job on the book was to emulate the art style he established in the guide, and break the script down into pages and panels. He, then, inked it to keep the style consistent. I drew the pages in a four-panel by four-panel grid as a homage to Frank Miller's Dark Knight Returns. My editor thought it was a neat idea at the time. About mid-way through, I regretted doing it just because there were so many panels per page for the whole book. It wasn't written that way, I adapted it that way."

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    1. My bad... I actually meant to list both in the parenthetical credit there, but when I was writing up the text & code for the post, I had a brain fart on the spelling of Erwin. I went ahead and posted it without it so that I could check the solicitation pic's spelling, meaning to go back and add it in after, but I totally forgot to do so. I have fixed it now though. Thanks!

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