Behold the Simplistic Beauty of JOHN K. SNYDER’s Golden Age BATMAN Homage

Win Mortimer would be proud…

Driving along the information superhighway — remember when it was called that? — I came upon this utterly lovely commission by artist John K. Snyder III:

My, my, my, that is so pretty. The wonderfully integrated shades of blue, the uncluttered cityscape, the beaming Batsignal. (Familiar, no?)

Best of all: That smoothly, swinging Batman, smiling as he takes in the Gotham City night.

If this Caped Crusader looks familiar, it’s because he’s based on Win Mortimer’s 1949 Batman #52 cover — an issue I own that might be the oldest in my collection:

Mortimer is probably my favorite Golden Age Batman artist — no disrespect to the others, including Jerry Robinson and Dick Sprang — but I appreciate how John improved upon the Masked Manhunter by dispensing with much of the original linework and adding what looks like gum soles to the boots.

The result is a finely honed image made elegant by its confident simplicity. This is hard to do and I admire illustrators who are able to create such an indelible image with so few strokes.

This isn’t even the complete commission. This is:

“This Batman commission is actually a portion of a larger piece including Jay Garrick, the Golden Age Flash,” John said. “The commission was a specific request featuring both characters. I have always loved the first appearance of the Flash illustrated by Harry Lampert since I first read it in Jules Feiffer’s landmark book, The Great Comic Book Heroes.

“As with the Batman Golden Age era illustrated by Shelly Moldoff, Dick Sprang, Win Mortimer, and others, to me, there is a wonderful classic, comic strip and comic book melding of rendering styles from this era of comics. And I wanted to capture some of that vibe in the commission. Plus I threw in a hint of the silhouette of Gotham City and the Batsignal from the closing credits of the 1966 Batman TV series, which also echoed that bold graphic style.

“The original piece is the Batman/Flash commission,” he explained. “I then altered the piece in Photoshop to feature Batman.”

Beauteous.

MORE

— Dig This Beautiful Pulpy BATMAN Sketch by JOHN K. SNYDER. Click here.

— Dig JOHN K. SNYDER’s Gorgeous Homage to the Classic BATMAN #11 Cover. Click here.

Author: Dan Greenfield

Share This Post On

2 Comments

Leave a Reply

%d bloggers like this: