Jim Aparo and The Phantom Stranger

If you're like me, and I know I am, you've been following the Phantom Stranger blog where rob! has been leading us through every single appearance of the Phantom Stranger, from his first comic book in the 50's up to, presumably, the current day. The blog holds obvious interest for any Aparo fan, since Jim made such a mark on the character--many would say he owned the character! Despite following artists Carmine Infantino and Neal Adams, both of whom are known for establishing definitive looks for the characters they worked on, it's Jim's version that seemed to have the most resonance and durability. I've been thinking about that as I've been following the aforementioned blog, which is currently spotlighting the Stranger's appearances during the 1990's. At this point in time, the Phantom Stranger's "costume" had been revised, based on a new look designed by Guy Davis. This design ditched the cape with the high folded collar for, well, a trench coat, and swapped the swinging medallion for a glowing, well, thing on his chest, traded the white gloves for black ones, traded the white turtleneck a plain shirt, and exchanged the sporty, 50s-era hat for a silly looking flat-brimmed model.

It doesn't sound like too drastic a change, in text, but looking through the examples on rob!'s blog, you can see how it really takes the zing out of the character's visual impact, and how the new design was, apparently (and surprisingly), no less difficult for more modern artists to draw.

But PS may have been a challenge even if he'd remained in a cape, although I can't help but think rendering his suit in solid blacks would have hidden a lot of poor attempts at drawing real-world mens' formal fashion. In particular, few artists of the 90's onward seem capable of drawing convincing mens' hats. The early PS artists of the 60's and 70's (Aparo, Neal Adams, Bill Draut) all had a good grasp on drawing street clothes, not in small part, I am sure, to their experiences in advertising and in the ubiquity of civilian garb in comics of that era. And of course, the fact that mens' dress hats were actually still in style when they learned their craft.

I made the claim that Jim's version is the definitive one. Although Jim's version followed Neal Adams' redesign very closely (the turtleneck, the medallion, the collared cape), it was a single daring innovation that Aparo contributed that made all the difference to me.

When Bill Draut began drawing the 60's revival, he emphasised shadows over the Stranger's eyes, although he still frequently showed those eyes, inside the shadow. Adams adopted the convention of drawing the character's eyes as solid white shapes, glowing from the shadows of his hat brim, much like the Spectre's eyes glowed under his cowl.

Jim continued this approach for a while (and continued it on the covers), but after a few issues, he took it a step further: the shadows swallowed the eyes entirely in an inky blackness. No longer could readers misconstrue (as some have admitted) that the Phantom Stranger was wearing a domino mask under his hat. Instead, there was that eerie, eternal night cast over his face. The conceit may have seemed unlikely to some readers, but I found it haunting, and richly symbolic of the Stranger's mystery and ultimate unknowability. No matter how hard we try, we are prevented from connecting with this enigmatic hero on the most instinctively direct level.

I called this move "daring", and it was. Consider: when Jim began doing this, writer Len Wein had begun humanizing the character, giving him a love interest in Cassandra Craft, with more emotion-charged plots and physical danger. And in the midst of this, Jim Aparo willing gives up one of the artist's primary means of conveying emotion: the eyes!

And yet Jim never appeared to struggle with that choice. The Stranger's emotions, when on display, were unmistakeable, and in those trademark moments of inscrutible grimness, those blackened eyes made the images all the more effective. Even when the Stranger would lose his hat, Jim found ways to make the unlikely shadows still work.

But not all artists are up to the challenges Jim could tackle, and as others took on the character, they invariably fell back to using the easy glowing white eyes (or, more disappointing, actually showing the character's eyes: I recall being hugely disappointed in Romeo Tanghal for giving us a straight-on look under the brim in a DC Superstars that came out soon after the cancellation of the Stranger's own comic.

And so I tip my hat to Jim Aparo for his visual definition of one of my favorite characters. Only I'm tipping my hat down, so you can't see my eyes.

Egyptian Aparo

Indulge me--I'm an Egyptian buff. I've been studying learning how to read Middle Egyptian (the language of the familiar hieroglyphs) for a couple of years now, and it's been a fun hobby to pursue. So it occurred to me that it might be fun to visit the occasions that Jim had to evoke the land of the Pharaohs. Four covers came immediately to mind:

The Phantom #32:

Our friend Scott has warned us about this issue: "Not even Aparo can save this one." Maybe not, but it's really cool seeing the design of the Pharaoh Phantom here. By 2009, comics fans have seen countless translations of their favorite heroes' costumes into period garb: pirate Batman, western Wonder Woman, barbarian Superman, post-Medieval Marvels, but this is surely one of the earliest whole-hearted attempts. Yeah, the World's Finest team made plenty of costume changes in their time travels, but those were always minor adjustments, like putting feathers on the cowl of "Indian Chief Batman" or a fur cloak over the familiar costume to depict "Caveman Superman."

The Brave and the Bold #112:

Y'know what else we've seen a zillion times by 2009? Other comics artists' renditions of Jack Kirby's Fourth World characters. But with this issue, Jim Aparo becomes the first artist other than Kirby to tackle The World's Greatest Escape Artist, Scott Free, Mr. Miracle. And an exceptionally fine job it was, too! Not much Egyptian content on this cover, other than the sarcophagus and the vault reminiscent of pyramid interiors, but I sure love those poses, even at the unfortunately reduced size necessitated by the 100-page size.

Batman and the Outsiders #17 and 18:

"BATO" and its Batman-less followup had more than its share of unusual and innovative eyecatching covers. With member Metamorpho's roots in Egyptian (he gained his powers and his unfortunate appearance from exposure to a mythical "Orb of Ra" hidden inside a pyramid), writer Mike W. Barr had a good opportunity to send the gang to ancient Egypt, in a sequence that gave Jim the opportunity to produce these two winners:

Most of the hieroglyphs on #17 are authentic, although chosen mostly at random, so they don't say anything meaningful so far as I can tell. Obvious exceptions are the "bat" and the "lightning" glyphs. My favorite touch is Jim's resurrection of one of his old signatures, the "JA" in an oval. In Middle Egyptian, characters were enclosed in an oval like this (a "cartouche") only when writing the names of gods and pharaohs. And Aparo is certainly comic book royalty!

Grooviest Cover Artist of All Time?

Our pal, the Groovy Agent, has tallied the results of his poll for Favorite Groovy Age Cover Artist, and the winner is...

JIM APARO!

(Not much of a surprise, is it?)

GA's spotlighting a few of his favorites over there at his highly-recommended blog.

In celebration, I'm posting one of my favorites, the relatively unknown cover of DC's Weird Mystery Tales #4:

This one appeals to me not just because of the nifty composition and the great coloring, but I love that tentacle-waving monster, being a big Lovecraft fan myself! I make up a really cool story to go along with this one, mixing Cthulhu mythos with earthy crime...I bet my story's better than the one in this comic (I have a copy, but I don't remember if there's actually a cover-related story in this issue...we all know how often these spooky comic covers were unrelated to anything inside.

Ghostly Tales #79

Here's a lovely Charlton cover that they reused a time or two. One thing interesting about Jim's Charlton covers is that they often had him do the lettering, too, while at DC, they generally did not. This is Jim's lettering (well, below the logo, anyway), and I've always felt that his lettering was integral to his style, making this cover all the better. The lightning-streaked sky is something he would use again many a time, and the grassy lawn has technical hallmarks you'll also find in a lot of his works. I really like the way the scruffy ink lines add texture to the tombstone, too. This was good training for his upcoming work on Phantom Stranger, with all its lightning, capes, and spooky settings.

Flash Poster

This was a poster I saw in a comics shop in Memphis in the early 80's: a Jim Aparo Flash. The dealer didn't know anything about it, but he had it up on the wall and sold it to me. I still haven't tracked down its complete explanation, but I know it was one of a series of four promotional posters of DC characters. One of those might have been an Aparo Aquaman.

As far as I can determine, the art was original for this production, rather than cribbed from a previously-published source. I've got to admit, Aparo wasn't at his best doing The Flash: the motion lines are a bit silly-looking, and the pose isn't nearly dynamic enough. But you know, posters like this played by different rules than, say, cover art. The important thing was giving a good look at the character and his costume, and conveying the premise of his powers. And the costume alone is so eye-catching that this makes for a pretty snappy-looking piece of art, especially at large size.

[In the comments, Scott detects that this is in fact recycled art, from Brave & Bold #151. How did I miss that all these years?]

Aparo's Aquaman Aester Agg at Gorilla Daze!

Allan Harvey at Gorilla Daze highlights a classic Aparo panel from Aquaman #50, in which Jim integrated the names of several of his peers in the panelologic profession into the background. One name--"Pike"--is listed twice, by accident. In demonstration of Jim's characteristic loyalty to his employer, the writers, artists, and editors are all folks known for their DC work. Jim had plenty of appreciation for the fine folks at Marvel, who tried a time or two to woo him away, but he would have felt it highly inappropriate to plaster names like Kirby and Buscema into a DC book at a time when they weren't doing any jobs there. I asked Jim about this panel because I was confused by the inclusion of "Barr" in this panel. The only person I could think of was Mike W. Barr, his partner on Batman and the Outsiders. That was the only name Jim could think of at the time, too, but I pointed out to him that Barr was not a professional at the time--he might not even have been letterhacking yet, then. We remained stumped. It was only later that I concluded Jim had probably been tipping his hat to science fiction artist George Barr, who had done a few jobs for DC around that time and therefore qualified. Jim might have been a particular fan of Barr's SF book cover and magazine work, since he was a science fiction buff, and assumed that Barr would eventually have a larger role in the comic book industry than he ever went on to actually have.

In the comments, reader Scott suggests that Aparo intended to salute Ken Barr, not George Barr. I believe Scott is correct, and I think I had come to that same conclusion before, but in putting this post together, could only think of George Barr. I knew it was someone who'd been known for cover paintings, and who had done some war comics for DC. I found some comics credits for George, but not war comics, and figured I just wasn't finding those elusive few credits. Ken did far, far more comic book work than George ever did, including some of my favorite covers for the Marvel black and white magazines in the 1970's, and was active at DC when Aparo drew this page, making him the much more appropriate fit. Thanks for the correction, Scott!

Playful Signatures

Before we dive into a look at Jim Aparo's evolving signatures, let's take a quick look at a couple of examples where he got a little playful with the way he signed his covers.

First, here's The Brave and the Bold #152, starring Batman and The Atom:

Now look a little closer at the signature, down there to the right of the UPC box:

Cute, hunh?

And next, let's turn to Weird War Tales #53:

War comics were not a genre Jim delved into very often; aside from some war-themed team-ups in B&B, this is about it! Jim was supposed to do a backup for Blackhawk when Mark Evanier was writing it, but it didn't happen. I'd have enjoyed seeing him play in the battlefield more often: he certainly had the devotion to research that would have yielded convincing results.

Come back soon to see "A Survey of Signatures", where we examine Jim's more familiar marks!