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Val Kilmer, Signing the Chris Achilleos Batman Print He Once Rejected

Published Sat, 27 Jul 2019 08:00:05 -0500

Last updated Sat, 03 Aug 2019 03:59:37 -0500

Today's London Film and Comic Con sees two disparate media types, on other sides of the show, joined by a common bond. Val Kilmer and Chris Achilleos

Now Achilleos holds a special place in my heart, as the illustrator of all those Target novelisations of Doctor Who which, when I was young, was the only way to experience those stories after the initial broadcast, and especially stories before I was born. So much so that my visual experience of those stories is solely through his illustration. And it also provided the source of my very first Swipe File spot at the age of eight, his cover to The Three Doctors being taken from the Jack Kirby cover of the coming of Galactus from the Fantastic Four, which has been just been reprinted in Marvel UK's weekly Fantastic Four comics at the time. Achilleos told me what a fan of Kirby he was, and of the large stack of Fantastic Four comics he had piled up at the time.

We also got chatting at the show about his print of Batman…

It was creating and commissioned from Achilleos as part of the promotion for the third Batman film starring Val Kilmer. But unknown to the marketing folk, Kilmer had had it written into his contract that no visual version of him be used in promotion of the movie. Once this went public it was very quickly taken down.

Thee's nothing to stop him making prints though. And today a number of people have picked prints up from Chris' booth in the Comic Zone at London Film And Comic Con and taken them over to the Movie Zone for a now-very-willing Val Kilmer to sign away…

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