Aparo Draws the New Gods

Here's an easily overlooked Jim Aparo page. This scan is from DC Special Series #8 (the Brave & Bold Special), and we see Jim Aparo handling the penciling, inking and full lettering for this house ad. I believe this was the only time Jim drew the New Gods Orion, Metron, Forager, and Jezebel, although he did draw a Darkseid cameo on the cover of Adventure Comics #459. (The undisclosed Number 3 on this ad was, of course, DC Comics Presents, Superman's counterpart to Batman's Brave & Bold.

Aparo: 2019 Eisner Hall of Fame Inductee

Jim Aparo will be a 2019 inductee into the Will Eisner Hall of Fame, as reported on the official Comicon site.
Aparo will be inducted along with Tarpé Mills, Dave Stevens, and Morrie Turner. Four others will be selected according to votes from a list of nominees. The Eisner Awards are the "Oscars" of the American comic book industry, and Jim's recognition here places him among an elite group, recognized for an exceptional and excellent body of work.

"The Coward" by Steve Skeates and Jim Aparo

From Charlton's Gunfighters #52, October, 1967, comes one of Jim's early comics jobs. The Steve Skeates script hints just enough at the supernatural to give the conclusion an eerie vibe, and Jim demonstrates the strong artistic skill that saw him quickly graduating out of Charlton's minor league publications up to DC. Fortunately for us, Charlton allowed Jim to do his own lettering, sparing us the work of "A. Machine" on this 9-pager.

Aparo--Ghosting for Romeo Tanghal?

Here's the lead story from World's Finest Comics #268, May, 1981. 

The art is credited to Romeo Tanghal, pencils, and Bob Smith, inks. 

Tanghal is probably best known as an inker, particularly over George Perez on New Teen Titans, but is a talented artist who has done some penciling in comics for DC in the late 70's and early 80's. 

But...

Only one of those pencil jobs looks as suspiciously like the work of Jim Aparo as this one does. I could buy Tanghal swiping a few poses or faces, but I find it very unlikely that he would adopt as much of Jim's page layout style for a single story as I find herein. 

Not every page looks like Jim's layouts, though. The page 1 splash doesn't look anything like Aparo's work:

Page 2, though? The poses, the rendition of Batman's cowl, the Dutch angle of panel four, the street light-illuminated overhead shot on panel 6, all scream "Aparo" to the experienced art spotter:

Page 3, and the layouts continue to look like something straight out of a contemporary issue of Brave & Bold:

 Page 4 is a little less obvious, and the prominence of Jimmy Olsen and Clark Kent, two characters Jim wasn't known for drawing, are a little distracting. But there are clear Aparo touches here as well, from the emotive lines flying off of Morgan Edge's face in panel 1 to the poses of Bruce and Clark on the phone on the bottom tier.

 Page 5, with a very Aparoesque Batcave.

 Page 6: the inset of Superman's face in the final panel looks faithful to a tightly drawn Aparo face, and the bearded wizard looks a lot like a villain Jim drew in an Aquaman story:

 Page 7 looks the least like Aparo since the splash.

 Page 8, and the first two panels are crude but highly reminiscent of Jim's Aquaman work. The final panel shows the Dutch angle that Aparo frequently employed:

 Page 9, and we're back to very familiar Aparo settings, in his comfort zone with a Batman-focused scene, and the kind of cloudy night sky in panel one that Jim often drew:

 Page 10, and we're still in a page straight out of Jim's Batman ouevre:

 Page 11, with more Aparo-style Batcave, overhead spotlights, Dutch angles:

 Page 12 is very unlike Aparo. The bended knee on the crab-man suggests Ross Andru to me.

 Page 13 has some more Andru-like touches, in particular the turban-wearing villain, but I can see traces of Jim's style in panel 3:

 Page 14 wraps things up rather crudely (artistically speaking), but I can see hints of Aparo in panels 2 and 3:

I asked editor Jack C. Harris directly whether Aparo ghost-penciled this story, and he denied any awareness of such a thing. But believe it or not, comic book editors are not always skilled at spotting art, and this has too many hallmarks of Jim Aparo's work for me to believe he didn't have a hand in it. Some pages may have been more fully reworked by Tanghal (or Andru, or someone else), but I'd wager good money that many of these pages were drawn from fairly tight Aparo layouts.
There was at least one other comic book that Jim ghost-pencilled, that I hope to cover here once I get my hands on a copy, but it's a pricey little item that I haven't managed to snag yet.

Link: Jim Aparo's Schlocky Batman

"I.M. Baytor" offers a perspective on Jim Aparo that's not nearly as negative as one might infer from its title.

Unused Adventure Comics Cover: Plastic Man

Only the lower right corner section, with Starman, was used on the published cover of Adventure Comics # 469, cover dated March 1980. Aparo's Plastic Man was replaced with a Joe Staton-drawn illustration:

Staton (who pencilled the interior Plastic Man story) has kept the same basic layout, but Plas is defensive and intimidated rather than fighting back, so the editor must have wanted to convey threat instead of a more active engagement.
It's interesting to see Jim work in a more intentionally cartoony style, hearkening back to his earliest comic book work. The villain is clearly in the vein of Ramona Fradon, who had recently handled Plas in his self-titled series, ending in October 1977. Other than Joe Staton, who was penciller on this run in Adventure Comics, Aparo was the only other artist to have drawn Plastic Man in the intervening years, in Brave & Bold #148.
Jim did the full cover of the previous issue, Adventure Comics #468.

Aparo inked by Bill Draut--Girls' Love #142

Here's a rarity! From DC's Girls' Love #142, an uncredited story pencilled by Jim Aparo, and inked by Bill Draut! If you're having trouble spotting Jim's work underneath Draut's oppressive inks, you're not alone...but look at panels 3 and 4 of page 3 to see the most distinctive evidence of Aparo's style!
Click the pages to expand for a good look at the original art pages!

Career Girl Romances

Originally posted February 2009:

Here's an Aparo job so rare that it's not in my collection...yet! Career Girl Romances #40 has an Aparo cover and an 8-page story illustrated by Jim.

Our cover girl here strikes me as very reminiscent of the girls that John Romita used to draw when he was one of DC's primary romance artists...and, for that matter, when he was drawing groovy chicks like Gwen Stacy and Mary Jane Watson on Spider-Man! The jazzy backing musicians, though, are a bit more in the Aparo style.

This one's from 1967, during Jim's first year in the comic book business, toiling away at Charlton. At this stage, Aparo's line work is delicate, which was generally expected of artists on romance comics. The inking is, in fact, barely recognizable as Jim's, but he was doing what was expected as he started to make his way in the business.

Note that he's drawn a left-handed guitarist here...I wonder if he was working from some photo reference of a lefty, or whether he just opted for a figure that better suited the cover composition? Whatever the case, I've got to give him credit for drawing a more convincing guitarist than many comics artists of the era that attempted to depict musicians. The microphone position is a little off, and the drum kit is sparse, but over all, it's a good stab at drawing a combo with a sexy girl singer, don't you think?

UPDATE:
Now that I've got a copy of the actual issue, here's Jim's splash page from the interior story:

It looks like Dick Giordano did the cover, based on Jim's interior work. Dick altered the girl's face and adjusted her pose, but the guitarist and drummer adhere to Aparo's work. 

Aparo credited in Batman v. Superman!

If you watched through all of the film Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice, you saw Jim Aparo thanked in the credits:

Presumably, the credit is in acknowledgement of the filmmakers' taking some inspiration from Jim's rendition of Bruce Wayne and Diana Prince in Brave and Bold #158:

The film includes a visually similar scene with Bruce and Diana attending a high class social event, although one without Dick Giordano attending!
Then again, it could be a more general acknowledgement of Jim as the Graphical Guru of Batman team-ups!

An SF illustration from Phoenix, a 1970 Fanzine

Aparo Art in Convergence: Green Arrow #1, April 14, 2015

OK, not much Aparo art, but look closely at this page, the second of two recapping the history of Green Arrows Oliver Queen and Connor Hawke:

Down there at the bottom? A panel from one of the issues of Green Arrow that Jim drew in the 1990's:

More Aparo art is used here for their look back at Azrael as posted at DC's website.

An Aparo Cover on a New DC Comic?!

The Chip Kidd Variant cover to DC's Batman and the Outsiders #1, part of DC's April "Convergence" event, will be using a Jim Aparo drawing of the team's Geo-Force character as its source. Other variants are employing the work of classic Silver and Bronze Age artists, such as Joe Kubert (Hawkman #1), Don Heck (Wonder Woman #1), Dick Giordano (Justice Society of America #1), and even Sheldon Mayer (World's Finest Comics #1)! It's nice to see the work of these legends appearing on covers again, if just this once.

Brave and Bold: The Lost Issues?!

Check out this wild blog from Ross:

http://braveandboldlost.blogspot.com/

Starting with scans of classic (mostly) Aparo covers (from Brave and the Bold as well as other series), Ross produces imaginative glimpses of team-ups that never were...and, in many cases, never could have been! The digital surgery is much more neatly done than most of the Photoshopped work one often finds on the web, with Ross very neatly merging Jim's work with the art of artists like John Byrne and Gil Kane (among many)--an impressive job considering Ross uses the much-maligned Microsoft Paint to get his results!

Favorites of mine include the team-ups of Batman with Captain Kirk of Star Trek, Air Wave, and Black Panther!

Great fun, Ross!

Aparo on the Web: The Spectre

At The Bronze Age of Blogs, Pete Doree treats us today to "The Wrath of the Spectre". Pete offers up some well-deserved praise for the Orlando/Fleischer/Aparo/Carley run from the 1970's in Adventure Comics, and serves up scans of the first installment for your reading pleasure. I was struck by this comment of Pete's:

[Aparo's] art also had the 'cool' factor, something indefinable that only Gil Kane's could match. Every one of his characters somehow just looked unspeakably cool, like the greatest Rat Pack movie never made.

Well said, Pete! Anyone who's seen Jim's rendition of the Spectre's alter ego, Detective Jim Corrigan, would probably agree. Corrigan wasn't the only stylish and suave gentleman to grace Jim's pages--I'd add his renditions of Bruce Wayne, Oliver Queen and Scott Free to the Aparo "Rat Pack", just for starters.

Elsewhere on the web, the Groovy Agents serves up Brave & Bold #116, a team-up of Batman and the Spectre that ran contemporaneous to the Spectre solo series that Pete samples (see above).

One Wreck of a Cover!

Here's a look at one of the few comics missing from my own Jim Aparo collection, the cover to Charlton's Grand Prix #31, from 1970. Nearing the end of his stint at Charlton, Jim supplied this smashing piece of art. To the best of my knowledge, it was Jim's only contribution to the racing comics genre (Charlton, I believe, was the only publisher of American color comics still exploiting the subject by the 1970's). That's Jim's distinctive lettering on the "Last Chance" title, by the way. Charlton was often quite happy to let Jim letter his covers (not the logo, of course), unlike DC, which was far pickier about its cover text. I've usually found that comics artists struggled--often unsuccessfully--when they tried to convey the speed and excitement of racing. Depicting a crack-up like this obviously makes the job a lot easier, with the wheels spinning off the axle and comics-style impact explosion, but I especially love the way Aparo incorporated his trademark landscape tilt to add dynamicism to an already-energetic design. I'll bet the Charlton editors wished they'd assigned Jim a few more of these kinds of jobs after seeing what he turned in here.

Jim would revisit the race tracks a time or two in his career at DC, although not in comics devoted specifically to the genre. Typical of the comics vets of his generation, he could and would draw anything he was assigned to draw, any setting, any time, any genre. And as evidenced by this terrific piece, he usually drew it very, very well.

Something Very Different

Here's a sketch Jim did in his retirement years for a commision job of Sherlock Holmes! Well, he was a DC comics character, I suppose, appearing in one issue of his own comic as well as in Batman and in The Brave and The Bold Special (in an issue with a Jim Aparo cover)! But Jim never got to draw any of those issues. Click it to see it big!

Holmes underwent a surge in popularity in the early 70's, when Jim Aparo was in his prime. I was a big Holmes fan as well as a comics fan, so I really love this piece!

Phantom Stranger Collectible Card, 1993

Our friend rob! at the Phantom Stranger blog has posted a 2006 trading card featuring the Phantom Stranger today. That reminded me of this little gem (which I do believe rob! has missed; I'll have to mention this to him!):

Here we see the front and back of a 1993 card released by Skybox, with pencils and inks by Jim Aparo. I'm not sure what set this is from, but it's #118 out of 150. This particular card was signed by Jim at a comics show in Connecticut. There's not a whole lot to say about it: Tannarak was miscolored, unfortunately. It's a classic representation of the Stranger in an interesting "sinister costume party."

Zip Tyro

Steven "Booksteve" Thompson spotlights Jim Aparo's Zip Tyro strips in a new post at his Hooray for Wally Wood blog. Like many comic book artists of his day, Jim longed to break in to the newspaper adventure strips, and "Zip Tyro" was one of a few of his attempts to do so. ZT was a traditional outer space science fiction adventure, with rockets and space stations and dashing astronauts, and it seems like it should have had a good shot at syndication in the mid-1960's, when America was in love with the space program.

Green Aparo

Back when I was producing the print version of the Jim Aparo Fan Club Newsletter, Jim sent me an exclusive heads-up that he was about to take over the art on Green Arrow as of issue #81. It was (to me, anyway) an unexpected reassignment, but it wasn't one that I objected to. Jim had done some good work on the character in Brave & Bold, and had done one of the few Green Arrow solo covers during that long stretch between his Golden Age days in More Fun Comics and Mike Grell's Green Arrow: The Long Bow Hunters miniseries:

Jim informed me that his inker on this one was to be Gerry Fernandez, and that this guy was Eduardo Barretto's brother-in-law.

Fernandez brought a very different feel to Jim's pencils, and even after all these years, I haven't quite decided whether or not I really like Gerry's inks on Jim.

More Savograns Ads from Popular Science

From 1965 issues of Popular Science magazine comes a bigger selection of these ads from Jim Aparo's pre-comics career (long-time Fan Club readers will recall the first post on this blog was one of these Savograns ads, courtesy of Red Oak Kid!).Well, R.O.K. was thoughtful enough to point out an online source for reading these magazines in their entirety! And there's lots of fun stuff besides these nifty Aparo ads.
If you're interested, you can start with this page featuring Jim's ad from the February 1965 issue.