13 COVERS: An IRV NOVICK Birthday Celebration

Back to late ’60s Gotham City…

Hey, let’s have a little fun. Irv Novick β€” born 107 years ago on April 11, 1916 β€” is one of my all-time favorite Batman artists and part of the reason is that he was front and center as the Caped Crusader evolved into the Darknight Detective after the 1966-68 TV show was cancelled, a substantial shift in tone ultimately cemented by Denny O’Neil and Neal Adams.

So let’s play compare and contrast, like in, I don’t know, Highlights or something. In 2019, I posted our first 13 COVERS salute to Novick, which was looooooong overdue. It mostly featured Novick’s lighter, more Silver Age-y covers. The ones below are much more somber, pre-Bronze Age in tone, so if you flip back and forth between that post and this one, you’ll get a great feel for how our favorite hero stepped away from the light.

Ready? OK. Click here for the original post, then come back and check these out:

Novick inks

Novick inks

Possible Dick Giordano inks

Novick inks

Novick inks

Novick inks

Novick inks

Carmine Infantino layout

Possible Mike Esposito inks

Novick inks

Possible Esposito inks

Novick inks

Possible Giordano inks

Click here again if you’d like one last look at the other selection. Neat, huh?

Special thanks to newly minted 13th Dimension contributor-at-large Peter Bosch for the idea and inspiration!

MORE

— IRV NOVICK Takes Center Stage in Upcoming Landmark BACK ISSUE #150. Click here.

— THE FLASH #204: IRV NOVICK and One of the Grooviest Pages of the Bronze Age. Click here.

Author: Dan Greenfield

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6 Comments

  1. Thank you, Dan, for the mention at the end (and for the title!). However, the affection you show in the writing of article about Novick’s work is you. All I did was give you a push in the right direction, LOL.

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  2. I love all of theses covers. DC should have let Irv do more cover work in the β€˜70s. He’s definitely one of my favorite artists of my youth.

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  3. Great stuff..you can tell these are all layouts by infantino…

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  4. Did Novick do the Batman 1966 opening titles art? Like when we see the villains gallery as the camera pans across them and we later see all the bad guys powed bammed? Was he the artist on those?

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