I just finished checking out Brian Bolland’s new book, COVER STORY: The DC Comic Art of Brian Bolland, and when I thought that Mr. Bolland could not impress me anymore, I am proven wrong. THANK GOD! The book is really awesome and presents multiple facets of Bolland’s DC art covering every character he has worked on for DC Comics, even some of his earliest art. Since this is mainly a Joker-centric site, I will begin highlighting his Joker art on the book as well as some trivia and then I will present his non-Joker art in another post. Now for my psycho Clown.
There are a few Joker articles covered in the book. All of them include awesome art, sketches and descriptions in Mr. Bolland’s own words. Along with that, Mr. Bolland adds intersting trivia and anecdotes.
BATMAN: THE KILLING JOKE
As everybody knows this is Brian Bolland’s pet project. He was asked by Dick Giordano what he wanted to do next for DC and Bolland sparked the idea of a Batman Joker graphic novel (a very new term that was just starting to be used in the late 1980’s) and he said that he would like Alan Moore to write it. After negotiations, Dick Giordano got Alan on board and the project started to take shape. Here is what Bolland says on the subject:
He (Dick Giordano) asked me what I had in mind. To be quite honest, I’d been drawn to the Joker even more than Batman. My character Judge Death had been a kind of forshadowing of the Joker for me. I told Alan that I’d like it to be more of a Joker story with Batman as a less defined background character, and he said okay. During the writing of it he rang me up once to talk through a dark place he’d reached in the story—the maiming of Barbara Gordon, I think.
I talked in other places about the drawing of the story and my reaction to the finished book, so here I’ll stick to comments about the cover. What the Joker does to Barbara in the story was, at the time, a darker thing than was usual for DC Comics. The fact he also takes photos of her also provided me with the single obvious cover idea. I was never in doubt about the cover. To push the idea I drew a pencilled , inked and colored version and presented it to Dick
There is something very likable about the Joker. He smiles at his victims – and the viewer – before killing them. There is something seductive about that face, with its slutty eyes and lipstick lips. He emotes and plays with his audience drawing them in. Batman doesn’t. He under emotes. He disguises his humanity. He doesn’t want to be your friend. On the cover to the KILLING JOKE, Joker uses his charm to woo you into liking him, and it’s not until you’ve fisnished the story that it becomes clear that you the readers, are the victim of one of the most henious crimes. Only the ones who have read the story are in on the “joke”!
Some KILLING JOKE Joker Trivia (or technical points as Bolland calls them):
My Joker was the Neal Adams Joker, specifically from Batman #251 (Sepbtember 1973)
Around the camera lens are the words for “Joker” in German and Polish. (This, friends I had to see for myself so I pulled my KILLING JOKE copy, checked it out and….HOLY CRAP! There they are: WITZMACHER and KAWALARZ. Here is a close-up scan.)
Look at the birdie!
I used to ask people to guess how many times the actual word “Joker” appears throughout the book. The answer is…NONE!
THE GREATEST JOKER STORIES EVER TOLD
The collection first came out in a hardcover edition in 1988 with a very nice Kyle Baker cover. For the later soft cover, I have Denny O’Neil and the late Marshall Rogers to thank for my voer idea. They crafted the memorable series of stories that featured the Joker poisoning Gotham City’s fish stocks. The Joker always had something up his sleeve (or in this case, his inside coat pocket0– something that he crealry found quite amusing but was actually a bit fishy.
Of all the Joker covers that I’ve drawn, this is probably my favorite.
WONDER WOMAN #96-97
To some extent, I felt that I had made the Joker my own–so I was pleased to see him in a Wonder Woman story. In #96 he turns up the scen and opens his coat to reveal an explosive vest. The best visual gat I thought, was in my first rough where he appears to be flashing Wonder Woman. That was judge to be too risque choice (and my least favorite). The “flashing” rough proved very popular, however, and I’ve been commissioned a couple of times by comic art collectors to draw fisnished ink versions with Wonder Woman wearing her original costume.
Unfortunately none of these covers made it to the final issues. These are the final covers to WONDER WOMAN #96-97
JOKER: LAST LAUGH
During my GOTHAM KNIGHTS run I was asked by DC’s Bat-department to draw the covers for a 6- issue miniseries entitled JOKER: LAST LAUGH. The Joker hadn’t turned up for me to draw in GOTHAM KNIGHTS and I was feeling a bit possessive of him, so I took the assignment even though the tight deadline meant that I’d have to miss an issue or two of GOTHAM KNIGHTS. I like doing unbroken runs on covers if possible, but sometimes you have to make sacrifices. For the first issue we went with a big pin-up shot. After I’d sent in the artwork an email came back to me containing a version of my cover with the almost black background replaced by bright yellow. I’m glad they took my answer “NO!” to heart.
Scripts and reference images arrived for the rest of the issues, and I discovered that there was something about the characters. All of them where new to me, which didn’t fit into how I saw the world of Batman and the Joker. I just couldn’t find the willpower to draw the cover of #2. It’s always a very bad time for me when , having said I’d do something, I have to take it back. I agonize about it for a day or two and then make the call, feeling a failure. I imagine that people must see me as unreliable, a prima donna, that the trust between myself and my editor has been eroded. In this case, however, I was asked to round off the series with the cover to #6. A simple two-head shot. The original artwork I sent in was consisered too bloody, so I supplied a slightly cleaded up version. You can see them both here.
NOTE: All material in this post is copyrighted by BRIAN BOLLAND and DC COMICS and is presented here for entertainment purposes only and as a promotion of Bolland’s book which contains much more beautiful art to enjoy. If you’re a serious Joker or Bolland fan, go and grab a copy of the book. It will enrich any art collection.
