Jim Aparo

But I was noticing as I was staring at this earlier, even though Two-Face's feet are hidden behind those buildings, I was looking at Dr. Light's foot.

It's so minimal, but it's so accurate how Jim Aparo has drawn it.

And then I'm looking at Hal Jordan, the Green Lantern's foot, And Hawkman's foot, they're all different.

They're all different kind of angles in how the foot is positioned, but they all look solid.

And what caught my attention was two of my favorite Batman related creators were involved in it.

Jim Aparo, who was, I think, you know, right up there with Neil Adams as the definitive artist for Batman in the 70s.

He handled the Brave and Bold book.

and also Batman and the Outsiders when it changed over to that.

And really, really one of my, you know, probably right there in the top three with Neil Adams, Joe Kubert, and Jim Aparo.

And so he was honored.

And I thought, well, gosh, it seems like he should have been honored years ago.

Okay, that's right.

I think like, um, yeah, again, there's a half dozen missteps in it too, but, but, um, but it's not a boring comic and it is important and there's a lot of good stuff in it too.

You know, I think like, Just getting, just having Jim Aparo on art here is a boon towards making this feel really classic and important.

And I don't know if that was the feeling at the time, but like now looking back at this, I mean, he's one of my favorite artists of all time, favorite DC artists for sure.

He's the best Joker

I mean, according to Wikipedia, I feel like

it's real.

According to Wikipedia, Danny O'Neill did not tell his wife, Jim Starlin or Jim Aparo what the results were.

Interesting.

And of

course, Jim Aparo is one of the great Batman artists.

Yeah, for

sure.

And I found this old, well, then it was fairly new, Brave and the Bold comic.

And I still have yet to put my thumb on which one it is, but I know it was Brave and the Bold because it was Jim Aparo art and it was Batman.

And I instantly was drawn to this, like, tall, lean, svelte, athletic Batman who was very different than the one that I was seeing on TV every afternoon.

And I complained to my brother that that's not Batman because they're not the same.

yeah.

Why Jim Aparo now? Why after all this time did you guys decide to do a book on Jim Aparo?

The funny part is back when I was starting doing the Modern Masters books and you're coming up with who do I want to cover? You make a list and I like to ask people in person as much as possible because I want to be able to show them the book, show them a previous volume.

Obviously I couldn't do that with the first couple, but Show them a book so they can see what I want to do.

So you make this list that I can have this in mind when I'm going around to conventions and things.

And Jim Aparo was one of the guys I had wanted to do a book on.

So he was on the list, but that's like, for me, he was like my first favorite artist.

He was the first one at the age of four, I knew his name.

All of the Hall of Fame inductees were associated with Batman in some way or, or another, the first one going to David Mazzucchelli.

But they also awarded, you know, DC president and publisher Jeanette Khan, uh, Frank Miller, Klaus Janson, and, and then nine posthumous Harvey Awards as well for Jerry Robinson, Dick Sprang, Carmine Infantino, Frank Robbins, Denny O'Neil, Dick Giardino, Jim Aparo, Marshall Rogers, and Tim Sale.

And most of those people had family members represented that got a chance to speak on the stage, and that was a really emotional moment in the show.

And there was a lot of anticipation leading up to that moment because we had not fully worked out how that was going to be done, like how we were going to pass out the awards to the people who were there and who weren't there and who were speaking.