Someone made a Kelley Jones Batman mask

[Mr. Comic Book]

Since the "Troika" Batsuit thread pretty rapidly turned into a discussion of Kelley Jones' Batman work overall, it seemed appropriate to bring up something that a Jones fan made in April 2018.

As everyone knows, one of the things Jones is famous for is giving Batman massively tall ears. So a guy on Facebook called the Bat Texan decided he was going to make a real-life Kelley Jones Batman mask. This is what he came up with:



And for context, here's the original Facebook post:
https://www.facebook.com/TheBatTexan/ph ... =3&theater

I will leave it to you folks to determine how well Jones' version of Batman translates to three dimensions, or if it could translate to live-action easily. Props to the Bat Texan for successfully making this mask in the first place, though.

[SprangFan]

It's appropriate he's from Texas, anyway.

It's Longhorn Batman!

[Ben Bentley]

Walking through doorways could be very interesting for anyone over 5'7'

[Mr. Comic Book]

Walking through doorways could be very interesting for anyone over 5'7'

One does wonder how Batman can do so when his ears are that long.


But to be fair to Jones, he does often parody the long ears, whether it's doing Thanksgiving joke art where the turkey has absurdly long wings or actual Batman issues where the ears on the mask get bent out of shape or chopped off in combat. He doesn't take it all that seriously.

[SprangFan]

Bernie Wrightson beat him to it by more than ten years.



Jones drew Bernie's Batman with a Marshall Rogers jawline and a body by Hans and Franz. The one thing (I think) he did originate was claws for fingers. That was...interesting.

[SprangFan]

Later Wrightson:



Simon Bisley: ears as wings.



Todd McFarlane: ears as knives:



Neal Adams: more my speed.

[Mr. Comic Book]

Bernie Wrightson beat him to it by more than ten years.



Jones drew Bernie's Batman with a Marshall Rogers jawline and a body by Hans and Franz. The one thing (I think) he did originate was claws for fingers. That was...interesting.

The clawed gloves showed up in some of the earliest Bob Kane/Jerry Robinson issues just before Robin came in. If you look back at The Batman Archives Vol.1 or some of the other Golden Age reprints since then, you can spot them in certain panels. Todd McFarlane even drew Batman with clawed gloves in Spawn Batman (the infamous Frank Miller-penned crossover train wreck), so it was never a foreign concept to the character. It's just not one that's ever been overly popular.

Speaking of Wrightson, Jones was tasked with completing Frankenstein Alive, Alive when Wrightson became terminally ill and unable to draw anymore. So apparently the two guys were pals. For what it's worth, I do think Jones' style is better suited to horror and vintage sci-fi properties. It's superheroes he's at odds with visually.

[SprangFan]

Yeah, there's a lot of wiggle room with Batman: you can distort him pretty far towards what looks like a junkie's nightmare vision without necessarily losing the reader. But if, say, Aquaman or Superman were to show up for visit, it would all fall apart. The Flash could never run with Jones-drawn legs.

[Mr. Comic Book]

Yeah, there's a lot of wiggle room with Batman: you can distort him pretty far towards what looks like a junkie's nightmare vision without necessarily losing the reader. But if, say, Aquaman or Superman were to show up for visit, it would all fall apart. The Flash could never run with Jones-drawn legs.

Yeah, about that...Jones gets commissioned to draw Superman quite a bit for private collectors....



He's also done Spider-Man as well, both professionally (on Venom and Spider-Man 2099) and for commissions:


I'll leave it to you to decide how well he handles these characters.

[SprangFan]

That first Supes isn't bad. It has almost a Steranko vibe to it. Not sure how he could stuff those arms into a shirt and sportcoat as "mild mannered Clark Kent" but that's typical of most depictions these days (and soon to be irrelevant, apparently).

Spidey seems a logical leap, as he can "do" horror as well as Batman. Still hating the legs, and the head's tiny, but overall it's a good image, with strong blacks and a good use of negative space. Any idea whose shadow that's supposed to be?