Batman... before Brave and the Bold.

We're now less than two weeks away from the release of our first issue of Batman: The Brave and the Bold. So it seemed like this would be the appropriate time to start making some Batman related posts.

When we announced our work on this book, I mentioned that Eric and I had already been developing something conceptually similar to the current Brave and Bold animated series. Well, I found some of the images. This was very much a work in progress, but I'm going to share it anyway.



Above is the first batch of images Eric created. He was shooting for a 1960's approach. But I wanted to see a bit more of a 1950's lantern jaw look. So this was his next batch:



I was of the opinion that this Batman was to smiley.

We envisioned the series would be titled: Batman and Robin. Robin would have been a key player in the series. But, having just come off of a Supergirl series, we would likely have avoided Batgirl.

Our intent was to revive some of the long lost TV show Batman villains, along with certain iconic trappings of 1950's-60's Batman. It would start off as goofy weird fun, but edge a little to the creepy side by the end of the series. Batman: The Brave and the Bold is a different animal. As it is based off of the current cartoon, we have a little less latitude than we might on a series we created. But sometimes imposed structure strengthens artwork rather than curtailing it. Eric and I work well with guidelines, and we're having tremendous fun on the series. Eric just finished drawing his third issue, and I'm writing my 6th, with at least 3 more mapped out.