A BIRTHDAY TRIBUTE… — UPDATED 4/11/26: The late Irv Novick was born 110 years ago, on April 11, 1916. Perfect time to reprint this piece from November 2020. Dig it!. — Dan — The unsung hero of Batman’s Bronze Age comics was Irv Novick. He was no Neal Adams and Jim Aparo looms larger with every passing year. Marshall Rogers, on the other hand, was Batman’s Hendrix – a brilliant virtuouso with a limited catalogue. But Novick was the journeyman, the utility player: easily taken for granted but a real pro who was a superb storyteller, able to go light or dark depending on what the situation warranted. As is the case with almost anyone, he was at his best when inked by Dick Giordano, the artistic glue who helped give the Darknight Detective a consistent look regardless of who wielded the pencil. Right now, I’m in the middle of a Batman/Detective re-read that began with 1964 and has now reached the mid-’70s. I just recently finished 1974’s run of 100-Pagers and was happily surprised by a story whose details I’d long forgotten – Batman #259’s The Night of the Shadow!, teaming the Masked Manhunter with one of his great inspirations. Written by Denny O’Neil with art by Novick and Giordano, The Night of the Shadow! is a sequel to the less compelling Who Knows What Evil — ? six issues earlier by the same team. The exact details of the issue are less important than its themes – a rumination on childhood trauma, PTSD and gun violence. It’s the first story to maturely explore Batman’s aversion to guns – utilizing the Shadow’s dual pistols as a counterpoint. It’s typical O’Neil: emotional social commentary disguised as whiz-bang adventure. It’s effective and moving, especially when you consider it came at a time when not every single story mentioned Batman’s murdered parents or showed a bunch of pearls mournfully dropping to the ground. It’s also some of Novick’s best Batman work, which is saying something when you consider that he worked on Gotham’s protector on and off from the late ’60s to the early ’80s. But there’s one page that really jumped out at me when I read it again recently – a bold reminder of just how skilled an artist he was: Novick wasn’t one for flashiness. His work was...
A BIRTHDAY SALUTE… By PETER BOSCH It is good and proper that Frank Gorshin wore a large question mark on his costume as the Riddler in the epic first episode of the 1966 Batman TV series. Many people – especially us kids – had no idea who he was before that night. It’s even likely some of us thought he was a new actor — without realizing that Gorshin was already accomplished, with a decade’s experience on TV, in the movies, and in Las Vegas (opening for the likes of Frank Sinatra, Bobby Darin, Red Skelton, and Judy Garland!). But who was Frank Gorshin before the Riddler (and after)? Since it’s the late entertainer’s birthday today — he was born April 5, 1933 — this is a good chance to look back and find out. He was born Frank John Gorshin Jr. in Pittsburgh, the son of a railroad worker and a seamstress. That’s all good but let’s jump ahead to a bunch of kids coming out of a movie house, trying to imitate the star of the picture, the great James Cagney. Frank did it a little harder than the others. He would later become an usher at the same theater, watching films over and over during their runs. A boring job for some… but for Frank, it meant having the chance to study in detail the mannerisms and voices of the actors onscreen. He got to be so good at mimicry that he won a local talent contest when he was 17 years old. The prize was a week’s spot performing in a New York nightclub. Just another small leap forward, this time to 1953 when Gorshin enlisted in the Army. He was assigned to the Special Services division, which handled entertainment for troops stationed abroad, and became part of the USO shows in Europe. While overseas, he met Maurice Bergman, who worked for Universal Pictures. It was through Bergman, after Gorshin left the service in 1955, that he got the introduction to a talent agent. The following year, Gorshin would appear in four movies, as well as having a small walk-on part as a page in an episode of the Alfred Hitchcock Presents television series. Jump to the 3:14 mark to see Gorshin as a studio page. June 10, 1956. Just three days after the Hitchcock episode aired,...
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