The Brave and the Bold

Brief memorial entry before I take off for the weekend.

First, of course, we say goodbye to James Doohan, who played Scottie on “Star Trek.” A genuine pop culture icon. Yaron has a nice little piece about him.

But I also want to commemorate one of my favorite comic book artists of all time, who also passed away this week. Jim Aparo was a largely unappreciated master of the superhero genre, and one of my favorite artists of all time. As a kid, I didn’t read credit boxes, but I bought an awful lot of The Brave and the Bold, the Aparo-illustrated book that had Batman team up with a different hero every month. I was a Superman fan, yet here I was buying Batman. Why? I’m guessing it was the art, and I’m guessing that means Jim Aparo was my first-ever favorite artist.

Also, in my opinion, he drew the post-Neal Adams Batman (ie, the real Dark Knight that DC went back to after the TV show) better than anyone except Neal Adams. And frankly, I think that’s debatable … Adams might be number two on my list.

But Aparo also drew everybody else well. This made Brave and the Bold a perfect fit for him. And, as Fred Hembeck has pointed out, it makes it a real shame that he never got to do Justice League. He drew all the members at one time or another, but, man, would it have been cool to see him draw ‘em all at once, every month.

(And, gosh, imagine if he’d got to do some Marvel stuff … who wouldn’t love to see him try Avengers or X-Men on for size.)

Anyway, I’ll let the man’s art speak for him …
























Thank you sir.