On Norm Breyfogle

I wrote this column you’re about to read on Monday and Tuesday nights, before word broke on Breyfogle’s death Wednesday afternoon. Sometimes, the world works in mysterious ways…

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Breyfogle’s contribution to the world of Batman for a generation cannot be underestimated. In the outpouring of love and support for him that’s followed since news of his death, I repeatedly see people talking about how his Batman was their Batman, a sentiment I echo in the column below.

It was only coincidence for me that I started reading Batman the summer Tim Burton’s movie hit. For others, one lead directly to other. That summer of stories from Alan Grant and Norm Breyfogle with Etrigan and Clayface will forever be etched in those fans’ memories as their first. Breyfogle was in the right place at the right time but, more importantly, he was the right artist for that moment.

There was no “house style” that could contain him. His Batman stood apart.

Breyfogle’s stunning line work will not soon be forgotten by a generation of comic readers.

Prelude to a Column

I re-read “Detective Comic” #601 today. It sparked a flood of different thoughts.

This is my attempt to harness them.

Comics and Nostalgia

One of the problems I’ve had in the past with getting rid of my old comics is pure nostalgia.

I don’t mean that I really liked that character in that series at that time. I mean nostalgia in the way comics spark memories and feelings of what life was like around the time I bought them.

And then there’s the silly little details I can remember. I can tell you which store I bought most of my comics collection in. I shopped in three different stores in twenty years, with a little overlap… This book was before even that. This was the local stationery store, the likes of which don’t exist anymore.

I can possibly even tell you what my storage system was at the time: Four recycled envelope boxes and shoe boxes. A piece of paper taped to the front told you how they were organized, mostly by creator. Ron Lim had his own box back in those days…

When I look at “Detective Comics” #601, I’m taken back to the summer of 1989. I was 13. The Tim Burton movie was coming out and it was a huge thing. I had just started reading comics, though that was coincidental. I gravitated towards McFarlane Spider-Man and Lim Captain America. On the DC side, I tried a couple spare Superman comics (still 75 cents!) and “Detective Comics.”

I was more into comic strips at the time (Far Side!) and I liked drawing cartoons. I recorded DuckTales onto VHS tapes so I could freeze frame them and attempt to draw what was on the screen.

That last part didn’t go so well, by the way. I’m awful at Ducks. I had much better luck a couple years later with Tiny Toons episode.

That was a fun summer, though.

It’s hard to get rid of comics when they can spark that many memories, you know?

But they’re certainly fun to reread!

Norm Bat-Breyfogle

I bought “Detective Comics” because it looked cool. I’m sure there was a “Batman” title on the newsstand, too, but I bet it didn’t look nearly as cool as “Detective.”

It was, of course, Norm Breyfogle’s work. For those of a certain generation, he’s the Batman artist.

Reading this issue again 19 years later, nothing’s changed for me. I see it in a new light — and we’ll get to that in a moment — but this still holds up as being my iconic Batman figure.

There’s a quality to Breyfogle’s art that doesn’t exist anywhere else in comics to this day. With inker Steve Mitchell, the inky shadows and hyperkinetic lines that infuse every page made my 13 year old heart race and engage my slightly more analytical 42 year old brain that tries incessantly to pick everything apart.

The dramatic angles, the superheroic poses, and the over-the-top emotions that are visible on everyone’s faces work extra hard to tell Alan Grant’s story. Very few artists attempt to give Batman the emotions that Breyfogle did, all while keeping the mask on. Even Kevin Maguire didn’t push Batman this far in the pages of “Justice League” around the same time.

Looking at Breyfogle’s art in this issue and across the three issues of this story arc, I was surprised at how much negative space there was on the page. Compared to what we expect in comics today, there’s far less detail. In part, that was a limitation of the printing quality. And part of that was the bold character work happening so close up to the reader that there’s not much room for backgrounds a lot of the time.

But, also, artists stuck to monthly deadlines in those days. There wasn’t time to waste with extra noodling and crosshatching. Breyfogle laid down his shapes and told his story and got the job done.

Breyfogle still had his fair share of stylistic flair, though. Mitchell’s inks worked beautifully over those pencils, capturing the dynamic energy and those swaths of thick black lines that zig zag across the page in Batman’s cape or in the dramatic lighting in every scene.

Batman’s cape was possibly the most energetic part of the any panel it was featured in. Breyfogle made that thing dance.

And while he stuck to a grid of panels in the quieter pages, Breyfogle let loose with the action pages. The characters flew across the pages at each other, popping out of panels with reckless abandon.

Panels were defined by how and where characters moved. There’s a lot of work in here that reminds me of the kind of stuff people want to make fun of these days with the more bombastic art of the younger Image founders. Breyfogle struck a nice balance between storytelling and splashy images. He can tell a story in a straightforward way, but then he can break all the rules to let things fly. It’s that ability to judge what’s right for each page that made him such a commanding artistic presence on every page.

The Downside of Digital

Re-reading this comic digitally is a new experience in that it’s been cleaned up and all the colors are brighter and clearer. You can’t hide anything in the art the way newsprint did with its muddy reproduction values.

And the overall effect is mostly not great. Colorist Adrienne Roy chose the colors she did knowing that the cheap newsprint paper would soak so much of it up. A lot of the color choices and combinations in this issue wouldn’t make sense today. They were colored for a different medium.

It’s unfortunate, but I’m glad the material is still easily available. It’s “Legends of the Dark Knight: Norm Breyfogle” and it’s available digitally and in print now. A second volume is due out soon. They have plenty of material to use….