DC Announces Batman 66/Wonder Woman 77 Comic

[SprangFan]

Hmm...then you'd be 4/5ths of the way to a live action Super Friends. Too bad there was no 70s Aquaman. Maybe we could substitute Patrick Duffy as The Man From Atlantis?

[The Boss]

Hmm...then you'd be 4/5ths of the way to a live action Super Friends. Too bad there was no 70s Aquaman. Maybe we could substitute Patrick Duffy as The Man From Atlantis?

Or this...
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BcfmnpnMqFo

[SprangFan]

Actually, Sam Jones would've been a great choice, though not in a tank top and riding on a jet ski. Only Marvel's heroes were screwed up THAT bad in the 70s.

[AndyFish]

This new Mike Allred cover leaves me luke warm at best, (as a lot of his Batman 66 work did), especially when we were spoiled with the Alex Ross art for the first issue of 66 meets 77.

I'm completely on the opposite side-- I find Ross's work lifeless. WAAAAAY too stagnant and model based. Mike's work has energy-- although I agree this cover doesn't do much for me.

[BATWINGED HORNET]

This new Mike Allred cover leaves me luke warm at best, (as a lot of his Batman 66 work did), especially when we were spoiled with the Alex Ross art for the first issue of 66 meets 77.

Yeah, his work is so uninspired. I've seen MAD caricatures (e.g., Drucker) capture the heart of actors (or the characters) better than Allred's work.

[SprangFan]

Wow, poor old Mike's not getting a lot of love on this thread!

For the record, I've enjoyed a lot of Allred's work, going back to "Madman." His "Solo" issue was the only issue of that DC series I bought. And in the dark days when DC wasn't touching '66 Batman with a 10-foot batpole, he was one of the very few artists who slipped images from the show into his work (he even tried to work a West-Batman image onto the cover of that "Solo" issue, but DC got cold feet).

That said, I agree he doesn't seem overly concerned with capturing likenesses of the actors consistently, and there's always just enough details "off" to frustrate me. But I wouldn't go so far as to call him "uninspired." And it could be argued that drawing doggedly faithful presentations of the actors means adhering to a level of restraint that's anathema to inspiration.

The bottom line, for me, is that Batman '66 isn't really suited to a comic book interpretation, as much as I was looking forward to it when first announced. If the TV show was "a comic brought to life," the comic has been, overall. "a TV show with the life squashed out of it." The transition from 3 dimensions to 2 has been both literal and figurative.

[robinboyblunderer]

I totally take that on board, in many ways that's what's great about the range of artists that worked on the Batman 66 run of comics, there was something for most tastes in terms of artwork.

Returning to this briefly, I also think he does a good job drawing women, especially in contrast to someone like Jim Lee. Sure, I enjoy looking at the cheesecake Lee has done, but there's something different with Allred's women; drawing an image in the sweet spot between the photorealism of Alex Ross and the anime like extreme art of Lee. As a side note I prefer the cheesecake of Bruce Timm to that of Lee.

Perhaps not so much in his '66 Batman work but overall a lot of Allred's women seem more real in terms of body type, a perfect melding of the real dimensions of women and a cartoony way that is pleasing to the eye.

I agree about the range of artists covering the title; who'd think one day we'd not only have the series on dvd, but a reunion cartoon movie and a comic book!

cheers

[Ben Bentley]

I agree about the range of artists covering the title; who'd think one day we'd not only have the series on dvd, but a reunion cartoon movie and a comic book!

cheers

Here, here! I remind myself of that almost daily as I read our current threads and talking points.