Jim Aparo

Jim Aparo Article in Back Issue Magazine issue 50

[Above: Cover to issue #50 of Back Issue magazine from TwoMorrows Publishing.]

The "Batman Bronze Age" issue leads off with an editorial about Jim Aparo written by Michael Eury, which contains praise for Aparo's 1970s work, and speculates how much a bigger name Aparo might have become if he had stretched out beyond DC Comics. Along with several pages of lovingly chronicled issues of Aparo's 70s work, Eury gently raises the issue of Aparo's decline later in skills:

"If you discovered Jim Aparo after the early to mid- 1970s, you may not share my passion for his work. When scheduling permitted him to comfortably draw one comic per month (he generally alternated between two bimonthlies), Aparo's artwork was lush and memorizing. Once he became a DC commodity and was expected to produce at a quicker pace, his art lost a little of its luster. By the late '80s, as DC's main Bat-artist, Aparo was relegated to penciling. With all due respect to his embellishers, no one inked Jim Aparo better than Jim Aparo. That, coupled with the artist's advancing age and declining proficiency, made the latter body of Aparo's work seem like a pale imitation of that from his prime."

Aparo's later work is often marred by shortcuts and lack of attention to details, once one of Aparo's main hallmarks. His style became 'cartoony' and had a placid sameness. A thorough biography of the man might help explain what happened, something that hasn't been done yet, to my knowledge, only the drip-drop of short articles (like this one) which address in miniature the career of a comics artist who deserves a longer examination.

The August 2011 issue of Back Issue has a cover price of $8.95. Issue also features Neal Adams and Denny O'Neil, a feature on Ernie Chus (Chan), Bob Rozakis, Len Wein, and the Frank Miller Dark Knight Returns.

Batman and Joker

Added August 2011:

Brave and the Bold Issue #111 "The Strangest Team-Up in History"

The Cover of Issue #111 of Brave and the Bold with Jim Aparo Art

Page 14 of Issue #111 of Brave and the Bold with Jim Aparo Art

Go Go Comics: Miss Bikini Luv

[Below: Jim Aparo cartoon art of "Funny and Chair" from "Teen Tunes", 1967.]
See more of this at the Jim Aparo Fan Club blog.

Jim Aparo / Michael Fleisher DC Comics
The Spectre - Adventure Comics #431

Click on image to view enlarged pages

Jim Aparo: Brave and The Bold Volume 2 from DC Comics

Jim Aparo book THE ART OF JIM APARO was
announced in 2005 by twomorrows publishing.

DC Comics has come out with a second volume collection of old Brave and the Bold comics. Part of their low budget black and white "Showcase" series, this book is priced retail at $16.99 USD - or $11.95 USD from amazon.com. It's a "phone book" style tome, and uses pretty cheap newsprint paper, which is interesting because all the comics in this volume were originally printed on that fairly awful newsprint paper in days of yore.

This particular volume has a lot of the early Aparo Batman work (also some nice Nick Cardy art, too). Aparo is only just coming into his 1970s style, and in these pages you can see his compositional strengths are pretty much established, but his detailed inking work has yet to begin to streamline (the most recent art printed in the book is from 1973.)

Click to view the page below (from Brave and the Bold #107
from 1973) enlarged.

Brave and the Bold #117, 1974 DC Comics

Batman from Detective Comics

Detective Comics Page #437

The Creeper

Brave and the Bold page #478

Detective Comics #445 Cover

Jim Aparo Cover
Detective Comics #446