[Greg’s post, which went up on 23 March 2012, can be found here, with a lot of images missing, sadly, and while I could figure some out, I couldn’t figure them all out. Oh well. Good stuff in the comments, as some punk tries to explain why he didn’t like Aparo in the 1980s and the discussion turns to why he was so good in the 1970s (which he was). Enjoy!]
Last week I talked a little bit about that moment of discovery, when you become a fan of something, rather than just a casually-interested member of the general audience, and gave a few specific examples. This week, we do it again with a different list.
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Jim Aparo: I was a Bat guy from the moment I encountered the character on TV in the days of Adam West, but it was the coolness upgrade Batman got from Denny O’Neil and Neal Adams after the television show was canceled that sealed the deal. (I wrote about that particular tipping point here, a couple of years ago.) [Edit: Not yet reprinted, but will be one day!]
So I was all about this new, darker, scarier version of THE Batman. (It was very important to all of us back then to be sure and say “The” Batman, because no one wanted our new, cool “comics are serious!” version to be confused with the mocking BIFF BAM POW! television one.)
Occasionally I’d see a question from a reader in a Batman or Detective letter column about getting Jim Aparo to draw a story. I had no idea who Jim Aparo was, but the way the letter-writers carried on, it sure made me curious.
When I did finally see the work I was blown out of my chair. That was in one of my favorite issues ever of The Brave and the Bold, #112, teaming Batman and … the Joker??
It was heresy at the time but I thought Aparo’s Batman was even better than the Adams verison. The emotions felt more visceral, the action scenes looked more heated somehow; and I especially dug his use of light and shadow. It probably didn’t hurt that the story itself, a clever and suspenseful mystery from Bob Haney, was my first exposure to the scary homicidal 1970s Joker after years of Cesar Romero’s bubbly television version.
It also didn’t hurt that DC immediately thereafter embarked on their experiment of turning many of their books into 100-page Super-Spectaculars, and that Brave and the Bold was among the best of those.
But Aparo’s art, itself, was a delight all its own. I stared at it for hours trying to figure out how he was doing it. It seemed so much more authentic than anything else from DC at the time … especially when he was drawing something dark and spooky.
Years later I realized that the reason it was all so seamless was because Aparo was doing everything himself. Pencils, inks, even the lettering — every page was the result of a a singular artistic vision. I think Jim Aparo was the only guy at either Marvel or DC at the time that was that kind of one-man band, other than maybe Joe Kubert.
As much as I loved Aparo’s Brave and Bold stuff, though, my feeling is that his finest hour was when he got to do solo Batman stories. In particular, the first two chapters of “Bat-Murderer!”
It was a seven-issue serial — really an epic event, back then, especially from DC that was usually the company that was all about the done-in-one. I’m annoyed to this day that Jim Aparo didn’t get to draw (and ink, and letter) the entire thing. Ernie Chan did a perfectly acceptable job on the concluding chapters, but his work just didn’t have the power Jim Aparo’s did.
DC did reprint the whole of “Bat-Murderer” once, as one of its digests, back in 1981. (Best of DC #9, for those who were wondering.)
A digest is better than nothing, I suppose. But that story really deserves its own trade collection, even if the art’s not quite up to snuff in the back half. Anyway, it was all the amazing work Aparo did in the 100-Page books that really made me a fan, and those are still some of my favorite Bat-stories today.
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Doc Savage: I’ve mentioned them here many times, so you’d think that the Bantam paperback reprints of the original Doc pulp stories would have been where I first fell in love with Doc Savage. Not so!
Of course I was interested in the Bantam books. The covers were amazing, and the back cover copy teased what sounded like an incredible adventure series: To the world at large, Doc Savage is a strange mysterious figure of glistening bronze skin and golden eyes. To his amazing co-adventurers – the five greatest brains ever assembled in one group – he is a man of superhuman strength and protean genius, whose life is dedicated to the destruction of evil-doers. To his fans he is one of the greatest adventure heroes of all time, whose fantastic exploits are unequaled for hair-raising thrills, breathtaking escapes, and bloodcurdling excitement.
When I was in eighth grade a kid at school loaned me two of his Doc books: The Green Death and The Crimson Serpent. I liked them okay, but that was all; they didn’t send me scurrying to the bookstore looking for more.
But, a few months later, the first issue of Marvel’s Doc Savage black-and-white magazine appeared at the local Sentry Market. It was the only Marvel magazine that ever showed up there, although they did install an actual comics rack a couple of weeks after that.
Anyway, I bought the Doc magazine on a whim, and the balls-out adventure story by Doug Moench, John Buscema and Tony DeZuniga really sold me, it genuinely had the kind of action and adrenaline rush the Bantam novels’ back covers had promised. From that point on I was on board.
So the next day I was back at the market looking for more Doc paperbacks on the spinner rack. What I found was The Devil Genghis, the only Doc Savage novel to feature a villain (the sinister John Sunlight) coming back for a second try at world domination; and Philip Jose Farmer’s biography of Doc Savage, just out in paperback.
The Devil Genghis I liked a lot more than the other two I’d read; I liked the idea of an actual recurring Doc supervillain, it felt very comic-booky. And Farmer’s biography of Doc Savage fascinated me … especially his explanations and theories about the Wold Newton Universe.
It hit me right where I lived, since I was getting into the Marvel universe pretty seriously for the first time that year, as well — so the idea of all these heroes from pulp magazines and classic adventure stories ALSO living in a shared universe sounded awesome to me. From there I branched out into other paperback pulp reprints — the Avenger, the Shadow. I made it a point to seek out their comics incarnations as well. But none of them hit it out of the park with me the way Doug Moench and Tony DeZuniga did with those black-and-white Doc Savage magazines. There were only eight of them, and it took me quite a few years of hunting through back-issue bins throughout Washington and Oregon to find them all (in those pre-internet days, that’s how you had to do it) but it was worth the hunt. I loved every one.
You don’t have to get those books the hard way, though. DC just reprinted all eight in a Showcase Presents volume, as it happens, and I really recommend it.
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Well, this is getting rather lengthy, and honestly I have a long weekend of work ahead of me as the Emerald City Comic-Con is bearing down on our household like a runaway freight train. So I think we’ll save the rest of the list for next week’s column.
Do come and see us, if you are at the show — we are at table B-12 and B-13 in Artist’s Alley, and this year we’re bringing both Cartooning and Young Authors. It’s shaping up to be an amazing show for us and I hope to see you there. [Edit: Hey, I was there, and I did say hello to Greg!]
Otherwise, feel free once again to share your similar experiences of fan discovery below in the comments, and I’ll be back here with the last of my list of reminiscences about these tipping points … next week. See you then.
Green Death and Crimson Serpent are not A-list Doc Savage, no question. I don’t think Devil Genghis is either — John Sunlight is nowhere near as chilling as in his first appearance, in Fortress of Solitude. In total agreement about how cool James Bama’s covers were.
My first Doc Savage was Devil on the Moon. Despite a ridiculous climax (a fake prison supposedly built on the moon) it’s a clever one where we spend several chapters in the villains’ POV and the crime ring is one of the more interesting ones.
And yes, Jim Aparo is damn awesome. I don’t have the artistic eye to say why, but he is.
I am a huge Aparo fan, and would rank him in the top 2 of my personal favorite Bat-artists (along with Breyfogle), but by dint of being born in the ’80s, my Aparo is the one from the late 80s/early 90s Bat-books. To date, the only page of original art I own (which I picked up at New York Comicon… over a decade ago!?) is an Aparo, from his Peter Milligan penned Library of Souls issue of Detective. And being Aparo, he pencilled, inked, and lettered all on the page.
I also prefer Aparo to Adams, though it’s hard to articulate why. Their styles are quite similar, but I have always leaned more toward Aparo.
It also took a million years, but, largely based on Greg promoting it, I recently stumbled upon and picked up some vintage Doc Savage paperbacks, including the Devil Genghis seen here. Though I have no idea when I’ll get around to reading them!
Aparo, for me, is Charlton Phantom and Brave and the Bold Batman (and Adventure Comics Spectre).
My first Doc Savage, aside for house ads with the Marvel comics, was the Ron Ely film, then the very first book, from a college library. The formulaic nature of the stories kept me from reading many, with Fortress of Solitude being the best of the ones I did read.
“Good stuff in the comments, as some punk tries to explain why he didn’t like Aparo in the 1980s…”
Kind of afraid to look at the old comments, I didn’t like Aparo that much in the 80s.
I did just pick up Brave and the Bold 111 last month at HeroesCon.
Well, the punk was me, and I think I explained it pretty well, and also that I love 1970s Aparo. Everyone agreed that because Aparo did the inking and coloring (and lettering!) in the 1960s and 1970s, his work was better. Once others started getting in on the act as he got older and presumably couldn’t work as fast, his work suffered a bit. That seems to be the consensus.
What a relief! 😉
70s Aparo is awesome, and I think I might be one of the people who prefer him over Adams.
His 80s Batman (and Outsiders) lacked a lot of the atmosphere and texture that made his 70s work stand out. His construction of the human form could also get a bit wonky, I always think of his Batman swinging on his rope, cape billowing behind him, and a head and neck that look to be drawn from a different perspective and pasted on the rest of the drawing.
I think he had some inkers that were better suited to adding stuff back in, but I can’t recall anyone specific. Byrne or Art Thibert probably would have looked really good over him.
The 80s coloring and red/magenta skies did not do any favors for the finalized art either.
Since you mentioned Byrne, we do have a vice-versa case, i.e., the first issue of The Untold Legend of the Batman (the 3-issue mini-series from 1980) was penciled by Byrne and inked by Aparo. And it looks quite lovely.
I remember the first time I saw Aparo’s artwork was when I was a kid reading Knightfall back in 1993 and I wasn’t a fan at all. I thought he was easily the weakest artist of the bunch especially compared to Norm Breyfogle and Graham Nolan. I felt his work was extremely old fashioned and undynamic. It took years later to discover his glorious 70s work thanks to the golden age of comic blogging and I did a complete 180. Since then I’ve picked any and all of his 70s output that DC reprints. It’s a shame how his art deteriorated in the mid 80s and 90s due to various reasons already stated.
Far as I know, the Bat-murderer story still hasn’t been collected anywhere except that digest, which I ended up buying a few years after this column was originally posted. It’s one of my favorite digests, too, specifically because it’s so much like the later trade collections.
Also, re: “I’m not normally that big on signed books but I really treasured both of those experiences GETTING the signatures.”
This, so much this. I would never get a book solely because it’s signed. To me, the importance of the books that I had signed or the sketches I’ve received rests in the experience and memory of meeting and talking to the creator.
The Bat-Murderer story was reprinted as part of the Tales of the Batman: Len Wein hardcover DC put out about ten years ago.
Here is an overview of what’s collected: https://dc.fandom.com/wiki/Tales_of_the_Batman:_Len_Wein_(Collected)
Unfortunately, it’s been long out of print and going for high prices on the secondary market unless you don’t mind getting it digitally.