ANDY FISH

ANDY FISH is a comic book artist

Sunday, November 27, 2011

Comics from My Yutes...


As a kid I got most of my comics as a hand me down from my best friend who got them from his older brother which meant we had comics from the 60s even though it was the mid-seventies.  This was from the first comic book I ever saw.  It's Detective Comics #388 and the main story featured Batman and Robin racing in the Batmobile towards Gotham City under a giant moon which featured The Joker's face.

This was totally different than the Batman and Robin I was accustomed to-- i.e. the Adam West and Burt Ward versions from the 60s TV show that was rerun every afternoon between The Three Stooges and Gilligan's Island on Channel 56.

I was intrigued by the idea of a Batman with white eyes, which made him look much scarier-- as well as the thought they fought crime mostly at night.  That completely made sense to me, they were, after all, dressed as night creatures.

And this backup story in which Batman is pulling a gun on Batgirl really struck me.  That gun was a hitman gun-- with the silencer on it-- I knew that from many episodes of Hawaii Five O-- and before I could even read comics I pondered as to what Batgirl could have possibly done to make Batman want to shoot her?  Jimmie Hendrix HEY JOE played in the background of my mind.

The art on this is by Gil Kane, one of the giants of the industry and someone who knew how to make drama come to life on a comics page.