The greatest Batman artist ever died yesterday.
Towards the end of what might be humorously referred to as my college career, which had already taken far longer than my parents had ever expected, I was somewhat bereft. I not only had no job prospects, I didn’t have the slightest idea of what I wanted to do. I’d taken the GREs but, being a stereotypical college student and hungover, I fell asleep in the middle and, needless to say, did *not* end up doing well on them. I was therefore unsure about where my life was going.
Top Management, naturally, was practical. "Well," she asked. "If you could have one thing in the whole world, no matter how far-fetched, what would it be?"
Without hesitation, I replied, "To have Jim Aparo draw a Batman story I wrote."
So she leapt into action. She found out how I could get an internship at DC Comics and then helped me to do so. Which is how, six short months later, I found myself talking for the first time to Jim Aparo and introducing myself as his new assistant editor.
My predecessor had admitted that he too had been awed by the idea of talking to the great Jim Aparo. "But don’t worry," he said. "He’s like the grandfather you never had."
"What do you call him?" I asked.
Kelley laughed. "Well, the first time I talked to him I called him Mister Aparo, but he just laughed and said, ‘Oh, hey, call me Jim.’"
"Jim." I couldn’t imagine calling him that. But I phoned him and introduced myself. He’d been in the bidniz long enough that he’d probably run though four dozen assistant editors, but he was incredibly friendly. And, sure enough, when I called him Mister Aparo, he just laughed and said, "Oh, hey, call me Jim."
I was working with my favorite comic book artist ever. And I even got to call him by his first name.
About six months after that, my officemate was lambasting one of the most popular artists for being all style and no substance. As was his way, he got on a roll and began to rip apart more and more artists, some young, some old, all famous. Other editors gathered around to listen to his rant, including Michael Golden, who had an office across the hall.
Now, in addition to being an editor at DC, Michael was one of the most respected artists in the history of comics, the kind of artist about whom other professional artists speak in the most reverent of tones. So it was bad enough when my officemate turned to me and said challengingly, "Who’s your favorite comic book artist ever?" It was worse when Michael got up from his chair in his office. "Oh, yeah, I’d like to hear this," he said, coming closer.
See, almost everyone else in the editorial department were artists of some sort. Most had gone to art school and even those that hadn’t, that were writers on the side, had been cartoonists in high school and college. They knew the history of art in comics better than I did at that point—although I put myself through a crash course over the next three years—and they were just plain able to draw, giving them an advantage over me at that point when it came to specifics like anatomy and perspective. I was also much the youngest person there, in some cases by fifteen years.
So I felt tremendous pressure as the five of them stared at me. I quickly ran down my mental list of artists I thought most likely to win approval but decided to just be honest instead.
"Jim Aparo," I answered.
My officemate visibly deflated as the others started nodding quietly. Michael looked pleased. "Ooh…good choice," he said approvingly.
"Yeah," my officemate agreed, sad that he couldn’t lambaste me but pleased that I had enough sense to choose so wisely. "Jim’s all comics."
When comic fans get together to talk about Batman artists, there are a handful of names which’ll come up again and again. Neal Adams will probably be the first, followed by Frank Miller. They’ll mention Bob Kane, of course, who first drew Batman, and if they’re knowledgeable they’ll go on to talk about Jerry Robinson and Dick Sprang, who took over the art chores after just a handful of Kane’s first few; Robinson, in fact, created The Joker and Robin, the Boy Wonder, although he receives no credit for it. After that, you’ll get people mentioning names like Carmine Infantino or Dick Giordano, who worked on the character for long runs, or David Mazzucchelli or Brian Bolland, who didn’t do much Batman work in terms of quantity but who drew perhaps the best Batman stories ever.
And those guys were all great. What’s more, I worked a little bit with them and they were all not only great artists, they were wonderful gentlemen. Particular shout-outs go to my boys Tim Levins, Graham Nolan, Rick Burchett, Dave Taylor, Brian Stelfreeze and the late Mike Parobeck, all of whom did phenomenal work on Batman and with whom I’ve been privileged to work and several of whom I even care about a frankly unseemly amount. So I’m sorry, fellas, but at least I know most of you will agree with me.
Jim was better.
Jim was the best.
Allow me to explain. When the Adam West Batman show hit the air, it became a sensation, Batmania sweeping the nation. But it burnt out quickly and it left in its wake Batdesolation. Following Wertham’s ludicrous "Seduction of Innocents" witchhunt, the Batman in the comics had become something of, as it’s said, "a benign boy scout," walking down the street in the middle of the day, appearing at state fairs and getting kitties out of trees. This was the Batman that inspired the Adam West show, but they of course took it over the top, with great results, and the comics sales boomed accordingly. But when the show began to tank, so did the sales of the comics.
So they handed the book to Dennis O’Neil, who decided to make Batman dark again, grim and gritty, as he was for the first year of his creation. Neal Adams joined Dennis as the book's penciller and Dennis and Neal made the Batman darker, and far better done, than ever before. Looking at those issues now, you can see why they caused people’s heads to spin around—the writing is lightyears ahead of where it had been just a few issues earlier and even today, Neal’s Batman is simply phenomenal. And yet, there’s something about the way every one of his muscles ripples that gives the impression of a strong lightsource. The stories may have been set at night, but there was still something of the daylight about Neal’s Batman.
To be blunt, Jim wasn’t quite the draftsman Neal was. Then again, few artists in the history of comics have been. But Jim was very *nearly* as great a technician. And much more important, Jim’s Batman was a creature of the night, with far more mood and atmosphere than anyone—*anyone*—had ever had before given The Dark Knight.
About fifteen years later, Frank Miller came along and blew people away with his graphic novel The Dark Knight Returns. It was grim, it was gritty, it was mature and adult and sophisticated. And most of all, it was a damn good story, well-told. Frank’s never been accused of being a great draftsman, but he is often held up as one of the great storytellers in the history of the medium, as well he should be. Frank’s storytelling is always crystal-clear but it’s also tremendously exciting and surprising and inventive, as Frank’s always looked for new ways to tell a story more clearly and more excitingly, in ways never before explored.
To be blunt, Jim wasn’t quite the storyteller Frank was. Then again, few artists in the history of comics have been. But Jim was very *nearly* as great a storyteller. Jim’s stories were always crystal-clear and pulse-pounding. He never had the reputation for being a groundbreaker, which is too bad, as a look at his Phantom Stranger and Spectre work in particular will cause anyone who’s not seen it before to practically get whiplash from the double-take.
I don’t mean to make a case for Jim by defining what he wasn’t…and yet I’m now going to list some of the things he wasn’t.
He wasn’t a guy who ever complained. No matter what assignment he took on, he was unfailingly cheerful.
He wasn’t a guy who ever, ever missed a deadline. When you offered him a job, he’d tell you when you could have the pages. And that was the day you’d get the pages. Not a day earlier and not a day later. Ever. He’d send them the day he said he would. If you didn’t have them the exact day he promised, it was on account of the shipping company, guaranteed. There has never been a more professional artist in comics than Jim.
He wasn’t a guy who blew his own horn—he never bragged or asked for more high-profile assignments. He was happy to draw whatever you asked him to draw. And if he wasn’t, well, he kept that to himself. Unless you asked him, of course—he may not have complained, but he was unfailingly honest and if thought a script was lacking in some way, he’d tell you. But only if you asked. And the thing was, after drawing so many hundreds or thousands of stories, if Jim said a story was lacking in something, it was.
In short, Jim Aparo wasn’t only the greatest Batman artist ever. He was also one of those incredibly rare and valuable artists who makes the lives of everyone with whom he works immeasurably easier and more pleasant. Most of the guys who are like that are like that because they have to be—they’re not good enough to get regular work otherwise. Jim could have been a prima donna and still gotten more work than he could have handled. But that notion would have been anathema to Jim, had anyone ever suggested it. He had a job to do and he did it as well as he could and that was all there was to it.
Jim was like the second baseman on a World Series winner. Maybe he’s the second-best hitter and the second-best fielder and maybe he wasn’t the golden boy who got all the attention from the fans or the media. But every one of the players on the team always knew exactly who quietly saved their bacon with game-saving play after game-saving play, the kind of play that looks routine from the stands but which the players themselves know to be incredibly difficult. He lays down the perfect sacrifice bunt, giving up the glory to advance the runner, always putting the team first. Jim was the bedrock of any book on which he worked, allowing the others to perhaps take more chances, knowing that no matter what, even if they somehow screwed up, at the very least, Jim would always be there to make sure it all came out just fine.
Jim once drew a story of mine. Almost nobody knows this—until today it was only me and my boys Darren and Jordan and my own beloved Top Management. But I reckon now I can let everyone else in on our little secret.
See, we were putting together a Batman holiday special, with lots of short stories. And we had this idea for how to end the issue, just this little wordless two-pager we thought would cap the entire thing nicely. We knew Jim would be the perfect artist for it, but who could we get to write it? After all, it was only two pages and we knew exactly what we were going for, and to hand such specific instructions to a pro would have been insulting. But none of us could write it ourselves—we were always extremely sensitive to charges of nepotism.
So I wrote it and asked Jim if he’d do me the favor of not only pencilling it but also taking credit for writing it. He felt a little bit weird about it, and understandably so, but I explained that since it was a wordless story, the drawing of the pictures was virtually the same as the writing of the story. Jim laughed at that rationalization, but went ahead and did it because I’d been his editor for five years at that point and he trusted me, I guess. And I suspect he took pity on me, knowing deep down that I was really trying desperately to angle for getting a story drawn by my favorite comic book artist.
And of course the story came out absolutely perfectly. And it didn’t matter that there were only five people in the world who knew that it was my story that Jim Aparo had drawn. What mattered was that I had written a Batman story. And the greatest Batman artist ever had drawn it.
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