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Bryan Hitch and Mark Waid's Last Days Of Lex Luthor has been finished, and will return in March and April 2025
Posted in: Comics | Tagged: Batman, batman eternal, Comics, dc, dc comics, ian bertram, stephanie brown
Before The Haters Arrive – When Stephanie Brown First Met Batman In Batman Eternal
I get the feeling there's going to be a lot of discussion about Batman Eternal today. Principally about the artwork. Because this is not DC house style. Anything but. In fact it's possibly the least expected style for a regular ongoing Batman comic book you might come across and it's to be celebrated.
Because this is the work of Ian Bertram. A style that sits somewhere between Frank Quitely and Tony Millionaire – both of whom have also drawn Batman. Bertram also had a strip in the recent Detective Comics #27, though that was flanked by other styles in an anthology format.
It is scratchy, it is cartoony, it has characters with pudgy faces and big eyes.
It looks to all intents and purposes like a seventies underground Batman comic book. There is no spotting black here, the darkness is scribbled in. Even the men have sticky up nipples, the kind of thing that you are just not used to seeing in a superhero comic.
I know that some folk are just not going to be able to get their heads around this. It is going to be hated by those who prefer a narrower artistic influence on their superhero comic. But I'd say, please, stick with it, Bertram creates a new kind of reality with these characters.
And then he does something rather wonderful, within that strange reality he portrays. We get to see Batman through the eyes of a child. A young child. Stephanie Brown, in fact. And this is what he looks like…
And this is what Bertram does so spectacularly in this issue. The portrayal of Batman in the first panel is possible, is consistent with the warped reality shown, and it just fits as something very real and understandable in a small child's head. That wouldn't have been the way if it were Kelly Jones. It's a remarkable use of an idiosyncratic style in today's Batman Eternal and it's something I'd love to see DC Comics do more of.
Although the editor of the comic was Katie Kubert…
Batman Eternal #11 is published by DC Comics today. Comics courtesy of Orbital Comics, London, currently exhibiting the work of Shaky Kane.
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