We are taking a break from JUSTICE LEAGUE MONTH - although one could argue that the super hero we are spotlighting Today is indeed a member of said eclectic team so technically speaking we are in Justice League territory - to look at one of the most underrated, underappreciated or outright forgotten runs on the adventures of the Dark Knight Detective by one of my favourite artists / inkers, namely the great late Ernie Chan.
Because when people talk about great Batman runs you have your Denny O'Neil's, Frank Millers or Grant Morrisons, Len Weins, Jeph Loebs, Gerry Conways while others are more focused on artists like Jim Aparo ( he's still my number one Batman artist of all times ), Norm Breyfogle , Neal Adams , Marshall Rogers, Gene Colan , Irv Novick , Alan Davis , Kelley Jones ,Greg Capullo or Jim Lee since everybody has their own favourites.
But rarely does the name of Ernie Chan come up in these Bat discussions.
Now one might think that this might be because his run on the Battitles was during a time when Batman's books were not particularly good but that is not true because Ernie Chan was on BATMAN - and DETECTIVE COMICS too - when other great artists like Neal Adams and Jim Aparo were turning out some of the most beloved and most memorable stories.
With Jim Aparo for instance one of his most remembered stories - and a personal favourite of mine - is the four part BAT - MURDERER ! storyline that ran from DETECTIVE COMICS 444 to issue 447 and Ernie Chan did the pencils for that issue. He also did the pencils for DETECTIVE COMICS 463 introduced the new villain Black Spider and DETECTIVE COMICS issue 446 which introduced the revamped Signalman after a 15 year long absence from Batman comics. So why is Ernie Chan's run not more celebrated ?
One could argue that he was working on the Batman books during a time that has been categorized by later generations more by the writers like Len Wein and Gerry Conway and less by artists since they had different artists on those books around that time. But on the other hand you DO have collections of Jim Aparo , Gene Colan or Neal Adams which fall into the same time frame. Another argument might be made that it's because Ernie Chan did a lot of scattered issues and so doing a collection would not have a straightforward narrative. But on the other side it has been done for the artists I just mentioned and if somebody wants to read the Batman series in consecutive order or ordered by storylines from a certain writer you find find those collections too. So I am not sure why Ernie Chan is always absent from the lists of the great Batman artists.
And I have to say that I too have to look at myself in that regard. Not that there is a lack of Ernie Chan content on this blog. Longtime readers are probably already sick of my ramblings of my favourite runs on CONAN THE BARBARIAN or THE INCREDIBLE HULK where Ernie Chan lent his inks to such artists like big John Buscema or Sal Buscema . But I never did a spotlight about Ernie Chan's time on the Batman titles despite him being a big influence for me during the formative years of my misspent youth.
I know what you are thinking and maybe nostalgia does play a big role in this but back when I was solely dependent on german translations to get my comicbook fix Ernie Chan was the main man thanks to Ehapa Verlag's BATMAN SONDERHEFT. As regular blog visitors know I am always writing that the very first image that comes to mind when I think about Batman is some cover by Jim Aparo but we all know how our memory plays tricks on us and it might be that it really is a cover of BATMAN SONDERHEFT by Ernie Chan. Full disclosure : this was originally intended to be an Ernie Chan JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA post but while he did a few covers they are not enough for a post even when I put all of them together.
So instead I have opted for this spotlight on Ernie Chan on BATMAN and we even will have a second part with more material from DETECTIVE COMICS - and some more BATMAN pages that I couldn't fit into this post.
sonderheft
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