A Death In The Family Cards

In 1994, DC teamed with Skybox to release yet another set of "collectible" cards, this time featuring scenes from the Batman story "A Death In The Family", the infamous story that documented what turned out to be, thanks to the final votes in a telephone tally, the murder of the second Robin, Jason Todd, at the hands of The Joker. Jim Aparo was the artist on the comic book version of that story, but for the card set, a number of different artists contributed. But Jim was invited to participate, recreating some key scenes from the story with inker Dick Giordano, the guy who hired Aparo for his first comic book job way back in the mid 60's at Charlton Comics. By today's standards, the colors here look a little garish, and, with Jim edging toward retirement, it wasn't his sharpest work, but there are at least a couple of pretty nifty renditions in this handful of scenes--I rather like the bottom tier here. Jim was approaching his retirement years, and his figure work was starting to look rather stiff and awkward. I always prefer to see Jim's work in panel-to-panel continuity, though, rather than individual images. Given the format and size restrictions--and the sometimes less-than-dynamic content required, I think we can be lenient with the less-effective samples from this set.

That gas-sucking Superman-with-a mustache is a hoot, though, isn't it?

Unpublished Detective Comics #481 Cover, featuring Batman and Hawkman

As promised, here's my other example of excellent but unpublished cover art. From Detective Comics, scheduled for issue 481:

Why was this one never used? In this case, it's fairly easy to deduce DC's decision. With issue 481, 'Tec was suddenly merged with the recently-cancelled Batman Family, expanding from a then-standard 50 cent format to a jumbo "Dollar Comic". The merged series featured characters from the Batman family exclusively, so Hawkman was dropped. The nifty little Hawkman shot (Jim did a great Carter Hall!) would have had to go, but that's far from the only problem preventing the use of this cover. As a Dollar Comic, 481 had lots of extra features: Robin, Batgirl, Man-Bat, and a second Batman yarn. DC needed some cover space to advertise these new additions to the contents, and there's just not enough available space on Jim's cover to fit it in. DC replaced it with the jam-packed Michael Kaluta Jim Starlin (thanks for the correction, Groovy Agent!) cover on the right. Just look at all the additional blurbage, the cameos, and the Marshall Rogers panel--that's a lot of cover real estate. They could have simply reduced Jim's artwork--they'd done that back when Brave and Bold was a Super-Spectacular, to make room for shots from the reprint backups, but I think most comics fans would agree that that reduction really hurt the impact of the art. And Jim's original for this issue was a pretty detailed rendering which would have suffered significantly (Note that Kaluta Starlin, with less space for the main image, went with a far simpler design: Batman and a skull). And thus, alas, DC had to scrap a heckuva good cover. Nowadays, with generic pin-up covers in vogue, covers are frequently so generic that they could be slapped onto any issue at all, but Jim's art was too tied to the actual contents of the comic, as was expected back then, to be useful, say, on the next issue of the standard-format Batman comic book. And thus, into a drawer it went, until after entering the original art market in the Internet age, it finally emerged into the light at last.

Pogs by Aparo

POGS! I don't honestly have much to say about these. To my thinking, pogs were one of the stupidest "collectibles" ever perpetrated on the gullible kids of the early 90s. In case you missed the craze, pogs originated as a sort of prize available under the caps of a brand of mixed fruit juice (hence the acronymic name, from the words 'passion fruit', 'orange', and 'guava') popular, I believe, in Pacific island states. Pogs are small cardboard disks with a picture on them. There was a simple game associated with them, which involved stacking your pogs, flipping a special disk at the stack, and then scooping up those pogs which landed face down (or maybe it was face up--I saw my nephews playing the game once, but I forgot the very simple rules). The game reduced trading to a game of (mostly) chance between kids who'd pool their pogs into the stack. Or something like that...I've already admitted that I thought the whole thing was pretty stupid, haven't I?

Sensing that the collectible card craze was waning, comics publishers joined in on the pog craze, pumping out tons of pogs with comic book connections. I didn't care much for the card craze, either (although we'll see some cards soon with exclusive Aparo artwork), but at least they were a little better at depicting an actual story, given the larger size (and a complete collection).

DC put out a series of pogs spotlighting the then-recent story in which villain Bane broke Batman's back, and Jim Aparo was one of those whose art was featured. I'm not very impressed with the selections, including an unattractively-drawn Poison Ivy and a bizarre scene of Robin cutting Azrael's hair! It's not clear from the scan, but the Bane pog (#B2) was a "chase pog" (Please don't get me started on "chase" collectibles!): it has a metallic-looking background on an otherwise ordinary cardboard disk. (NOTE: As noted in the comments, the art on the Bane pog is from the talented Graham Nolan, not Jim Aparo!)

It's not Aparo at his best, but it's something that many Aparo fans would never even have thought of looking for, now that the pog is (so far as I can tell) extinct.

And that's ok with me, since I've got my Aparo pogs.

Heroes Against Hunger

This page was pencilled by Sal Amendola, who did a few stories for DC back in the 70's, and inked by Jim Aparo. It's from "Heroes Against Hunger", DC's contribution to the African hunger fundraising effort of the 80's. I think Jim and Sal were a pretty compatible pair, but Sal did very little work, and is largely forgotten. It's worth another look, anyway. Kinda weird to see eyes in an Aparo Batman, though, isn't it?

Aparo, Orlando, and Andru--Together!

Back in 1992, when Chris Khalaf and I first revived the Jim Aparo Fan Club and began publishing our Newsletter, Chris lamented that he wished he had bought a "young readers" Batman book that featured art by Jim Aparo inked by Joe Orlando (his old Phantom Stranger and Spectre editor!). Chris couldn't remember the details of the book, which is surprising given his astounding skills at recall in the world of comics, but I knew it was something I had to look out for; after all, I've always aimed at amassing a complete Aparo collection. About 5 years ago, I found the book Chris had remembered. I stumbled upon it at an antique store, marked at $3.00.

It's this:

"The Case of the Laughing Sphinx", written by Andy Helfer, and illustrated by Ross Andru, Jim Aparo, and Joe Orlando. It's a hardback, heavily illustrated book that originally came with a cassette tape, presumably with a reading/dramatization of the story (several familiar names from DC are listed in the voice credits).

Chris hadn't remembered Ross Andru's contribution, which was obviously the layouts. I've got a lot of love for Ross, but I've never liked the layouts he produced for other artists. Aparo pencilled from his layouts for many covers, including Detective Comics in its "Dollar Comic" era. I can spot Andru's hand most easily by looking at the legs: Ross seems to have believed that a dynamic cover required knees bent at rather extreme angles. Batman's bended knee here is not too bad, but some of the squats that Aparo had to draw on those 'TEC covers were pretty awful looking.

How about the interiors? Here's a sample for you all:

Unpublished Pencils

Back in the early 90's, Jim sent me a note updating me on his assignments. One of them was an inventory issue of Detective Comics, featuring Batman and Robin, during the period when the "real" Batman was out of commission (Aparo noted that his story featured the legit Bruce Wayne). The story was never published. In fact, it may never even have been inked. But here's a page of Jim's pencils (back then, DC was having someone else ink his work).