Tuesday, February 27, 2018

Batman Week starts with Norm Breyfogle

Again I have lined up a few posts about the same hero so I have decided to try and get a theme here going. It gives the blog visitors an illusion of structure and helps me to really dive into the history of a character. And who could be better qualified to inaugurate it then somebody who has drawn one of the best representations of the Dark Night Detective ?


Especially since he celebrates his 58th birthday. At least I hope he does. I tried to find an update on his medical condition but I could not find any data if it has improved or deteriorated. So I hope he is in good health.

It has been two years since I wrote my last Norm Breyfogle post I went back and re - read it and it has a lot of information for all of my german readers who want to know where they can find his comics - mostly his Batman comics here - in the german version. Yes, sometimes I do write about german comics. Today´s post will be more art centric with not a lot of text since there is not much about Norm Breyfogle´s work on the bat books that hasn´t been said more eloquently then I ever could by others.

And I have also written about it ad nauseum so there is no need for me to repeat it. Most of the pages in this post can be found in the first LEGENDS OF THE DARK KNIGHT - NORM BREYFOGLE hardcover which is a book I can only recommend. No matter if you are already a big fan of his work or just want to support him pay his medical bills this is a nice collection to have even if you already have all the single issues. There seems to be a second volume in the workings but so far no release date has been announced.


Man, sometimes I really miss living in Spain because there his entire Batman work has already been collected in thick affordable hardcovers.


Before we come to the art pages by Norm Breyfogle there are two things I want to mention. The first one is for my german readers who might think about buying volume one of the LEGENDS OF THE DARK KNIGHT - NORM BREYFOGLE ( to my knowledge there is no german version of it so far ).

Go to a comic shop because if you order it from amazon you will pay more.

I don´t know why but at the moment the collection is at 4 EUROS above the regular in store price at amazon. Now that is not a huge difference but if you can get a discount of another 2 or 3 bucks at your local comic shop things are starting to get interesting. Also if you order from an online comic shop most of them give free shipping with orders of more than 25 bucks and since this is a 50 Dollars book you got that covered. Also some of those online stores give you a free comic book per 10 bucks of your order so you get five free comics alone from ordering this collection.


Speaking of collections, if you don´t want to wait until the release of the second volume to read more Batman stuff by Norm Breyfogle you can find the HOLY TERROR miniseries written by Alan Brennert in the first volume of the new BATMAN - ELSEWORLDS trades. Now I haven´t bought it myself because I have most of the stories in hardcover so unless DC releases it in a hardcover omnibus it makes no sense for me to again spend money on this but if you don´t already own these stories I can only recommend it.


And that´s all I have to say at the moment so let´s get to the comics. 


Now this post should have been up earlier since I had already prepared the pictures two days in advance and I also planned it down to last minute - go to bed early, get up early, draw on my comic for a few hours and then do the post - but as usual something threw a monkey wrench into the works and the whole plan went to the crapper. In this case it was a beer and anybody who tells you that alcohol is not a solution has not paid attention in chemistry class. Anyway, I do not know if it was my long soberness or if it was just a cheap brand but I had stomach cramps all night and on top of that I was pretty drunk so instead of watching all the episodes of Are You Afraid Of The Dark ? that are taking up space on my laptop I did a re - post of last years post of cult siren Jolene Blalock which was supposed to be a quick post. At first I just wanted to change one or two things that I was not happy about but then I started adding more pictures of Jolene Blalock because there were a lot of her as T´Pol but not a lot of her as herself. And then I started adding new videos so it´s worth doing  a new version and to make a long story short in the end it took me until ten o´clock in the morning to finally finish the post because I could not decide on the fifth video. The bad part is that it delayed this post but the good part is that there will be a new version of Jolene Blalock´s cult siren entry - next month. Which is when her birthday is so to all who are wondering what happened to her post, it will be up at the right time.


So I woke up very late and felt like crap but now it´s okay and the only link I have is an article on FUNNY BOOK FANATIC about Norm Breyfogle´s work on Prime and his further career and I am not so sure if I have not included this in a previous posting. The birthday list is equally short with only two candidates of which the first is Andy Kubert, another artist connected to the Bat - titles. He celebrates his 56th birthday and while he and his brother are very busy at DC right now when I started reading US comics all three of the Kuberts were almost exclusively Marvel ( the sons a bit more than the father ) and working on the x - books and Ghost Rider.


We also have Jeff Smith, one of the pioneers of independent comics in the 80s who turns 58 and - at least to my knowledge - never worked on Batman. There is however the fantastic Shazam and the Monster Society of Evil 4 issue mini series he did ( which I completely forgot, sorry ).


He is of course best known for his work on Bone which for me was a wonderful and frustrating experience - at the same time. Wonderful because it´s one of those books where everybody tells you you have to read it because it´s so good and you just don´t want to read it because you already have so many other books to read but then you finally cave in to find out what all the hype is about and then you find out that it IS actually that good. Frustrating because I was reading it while it was still coming out and even though I was late to the party - as always - and got the first issues I was missing in trade ( through which I just plowed ) waiting for every new issue to arrive in shops was just pure agony. Of course once a new issue found its way into my pull box I was happy again.


Which only lasted about five minutes - which was the time it took to read the whole thing - then it was back to frustration again. Now a lot of people say that a comic that you read in five minutes is not worth what you pay for it but let me tell you that any issue of Bone is like a master class in how to make comics so it´s totally worth it. And I am even going so far as to say that the quicker you read a comic the better it´s written.


In most cases. With Bone you read an issue in five minutes because what happened in the issue was happening so fast but afterwards you wanted to know more. With Today´s comic books there are some you read in five minutes and it seems like an eternirty. Anyway, I never read Rasl, mainly because I don´t buy into the romanticizing of robbery ( anybody who got something precious stolen know that there is nothing glorious about stealing ) so I always have problems when the main character is a thief.


But who knows, I think the series is already finished so maybe I just need somebody who convinces me - again - to give Jeff Smith another chance. 


Since we have such a short birthday list Today I got free choice with the videos so I´m doing an almost complete all - Batman entertainment section starting with one about Alan Grant and Norm Breyfogle´s groundbreaking run on the Batman titles for my spanish readers.



I always like to include at least one video that is a bit longer so here is Batman - City of Scars a fanfilm that I bookmarked so far back that I didn´t even remember when. In any case it´s better than the actual DC movies.



Speaking of DC movies, Mask of the Phantasm is a good example of how perception can become reality. The animated movie was originally slated to be a direct - to - video film but when the higher ups saw the incredible quality of the movie they decided to bring it to theaters. Somehow that enthusiasm didn´t go hand in hand with any kind of big promotion and when the film underperformed because almost nobody knew of its existence or even that it was in cinemas it undeservedly was forgotten.



We continue with the breast .... I mean best of Batman and a video with cosplay girl extraordinaire Angie Griffin a.k.a. Miss 41E Busenwunder.


What drives me crazy - besides the fact that her breasts are 100 percent real - is that she also would have been a better Catwoman than Anne Hathaway. I mean, compared to Anne Hathaway even Halle Berry did a decent job playing family friendly not Selina Kyle / Patience Phillips.



Deciding on the last video was a struggle since none of my bookmarked music videos are really Batman related so that in the end I decided to go with some unadulterated k - pop action with the flexible 4Minute girls.


Now longtime readers might recall that about a month ago I posted their video for the smash hit Hit You Heart plus their best live performances. Well, here are an additional four videos that did not make the cut.






New to the blog ? Everything you need to know about TALES FROM THE KRYPTONIAN : top ten posts / more posts of interest / best of the best


Stupid stupid rat creatures.

No comments: