The greatest comic ever made...

Ladies and gentlemen… BATMAN: MAD LOVE.

I was going to have a stupid-awesome movie review today, but I’ve been sick off my ass for a few days here, so I haven’t gotten around to re-watching it yet. So I’ve been laid up in bed reading a lot of older comics I got from my friend Jason Moser, and it occurred to me… I talk about stupid movies and stupid comics, and silly ideas I had all the time… But I’ve never come right out and talked about what I consider to be the greatest comic of all time. So if you’ll indulge me, allow me to talk about the comic that was probably the single most important comic book I have ever read, that if it wasn’t for it… I would have probably given up on drawing comics and just went to be a plumber or something like that. Now when I say it’s the most important comic to me, I’m not saying I’ve never had any other influences. I have many. But not like this, and this one was particularly important for a good reason… It came out and that exact right time for me, and you probably still see the influence in my art today.

The year was 1994. Being an aspiring comic artist in the 1990s was the greatest time in the world, and the absolute worst. It was the best because the energy and enthusiasm that came from the industry was at an all time high, and I have yet to ever see it come close to that since. We dreamt big, and hoped bigger. We all had big elaborate comic ideas that we were hoping could be picked up by Image comics and be the next Spawn or Savage Dragon… Or if you drew a little funky, The Maxx. Generally, the idealized pinnacle of comic art was Jim Lee, Marc Silvestri or Todd McFarlane. Very rendered and often detailed artwork that quite frankly made most up and coming artists feel somewhat impotent. Now try to understand, that at this time mainstream comics had a distinct house style they demanded. (Mainstream comics were of course Marvel, Image and DC.) We often make fun of the 1990’s and how they drew people, particularly the spray-on costumes, the shoulder pads, the bent spines, the over muscled bodies… But you need to understand, we were told me needed to draw like that. Sure you can say "no one made you draw like that" and it’s easy to make fun of now, but it’s like trying to explain living in the Cold War to someone born in the late 80’s, or explaining sex to a virgin… This was DRILLED INTO OUR HEADS that if you weren’t at least as good as the big popular artists in the Wizard Top Ten List… Don’t bother submitting! Sure, they always ‘encouraged’ you, but you know what they were really saying: “You suck, draw more like me.” But it was the worst, because when you realized how the industry worked, you got crushed and crushed big time… It’s easy to mock artist that still seem stuck in the 1990s, but they went several years being beaten down, told they needed to draw like this, just to find out that the person who told them that, was full of it. Especially when you realized that the entire system was built around “who you know” as opposed to “how good you are.” (I remember seeing this one artist standing in line with us, and his artwork was soooo damn good. He had a beautiful style, that I can only describe like Marc Silverstri inked by Kevin Nowlan. And he got rejected like he was just some putz learning how to draw with a crayon. I always wonder what happened to him.)

Stephen Platt's artwork, who was one
of the hot artists at the time.
(however this art comes from a later
year than 1994.)

And the thing is, it was just starting to sink in that I DIDN’T want to draw like that. I found a clean lined style more appealing than rendering the hell out of a grimacing visage. So people like me who didn’t want to draw like that, our options were very limited. Either we had to grin and bear it, and learn to love drawing disproportioned bodies and snarling teeth and hope we’re good enough to impress a cynical and fatalistic editor, or go the independent comic route, and hope we had a potential Bone, Usagi Yojimbo or Ninja Turtles to impress a cynical and fatalistic publisher. Remember, this was before computers the Internet was in every household, before cell phones were common place, and at a time when Photoshop was so early on, they had just added “layers” to their program. (None of that last sentence was sarcasm, exaggeration or a joke. It’s amazing how different things are now compared to then.) To top it all off, it’s not like there was serious camaraderie among the aspiring comic artists then. If you were trying out for “The Big Boys” you were in competition with every single one of these people to catch an editor’s eye. And if you said you wanted to be an independent artist, you were literally looked down upon by others. (That is NOT a joke. I’m serious when I say I understand what it’s like to feel like a second class citizen.) For someone like me who didn’t want to draw like the Wizard Top Ten, my future in comics didn’t look too promising. Top it all off, I was unemployed (wow, history repeated itself), wasn’t going to college, no major plans to do with my life, and going through some silly nonsense with my soon to be ex-girlfriend. (Really, aren’t they all silly nonsense?) Then one day, I was at the grocery store, and they still sold comics on the racks there. And I saw Batman: Mad Love. Now the Batman Adventures, I never bought prior to this, because it didn’t appeal to me yet. The cartoon show was dark and moody, but the comic pages were way too bright and cheery looking. Comic adaptations of shows to this day still have a problem pulling off that feeling. But it was the origin of the Joker’s sidekick, she seemed kinda fun, and it was done by the show’s creators Paul Dini and Bruce Timm. I was bored and I bought it...

HOLY... SHIT.

I was blown away. It was everything I wanted in comics, and everything I wanted to attain. Story telling was fluid, it wasn’t over detailed, the story was dark and moody, but not grim and gritty. I could hear the characters voices perfectly with the dialogue… It was a complete solid story that was better than just about anything I had read. It literally felt like I was reading an episode of the cartoon show. (And by now, I believe you all know the influence that animation has had on me.) The choreography was just so perfect for me, it all worked so harmoniously, I could even hear the theme music playing in my head. The scene that really gets me is the scene near the final climax, where Joker knocks Harley out the window… Showing me how using a rapid sequence of panels and then POW! You’re hit with these tall panels showing the poor girl falling… It really opened my eyes and showed me that comics weren’t just moments frozen in time, but that comics had their own methods of storytelling that had been forgotten in those days of splash pages and confusing panel layouts. (I can’t say it’s gotten better.) It really showed me how to tell a story, without getting drawn out and melodramatic. It told a very dark and psychological story… And it was ALL AGES. That’s that blew my mind the most. It was the most mature and sophisticated comic I’ve read in years, and it was all ages. I was about to give up on comic art in general, and a mere 64 pages of an all ages comic totally changed my outlook and refreshed my hope in comics.

Bruce Timm’s art was such a big influence on me, that I went out and bought the Batman Adventures comics, the toys, and everything related to Batman: The Animated Series, just to learn how to draw more like him. And after a while, I started learning from those artist who were working on the associated comics, like Rich Burchett and the late Mike Parobeck. (Seriously, there’s someone who was taken from us way too early!) And these artists didn’t follow it to the letter, but gave their own twist to the style, which started to influence me as well. And this dedication carried over to the other DCAU books, like Superman and Batman Beyond. And their artists also played with the style. Craig Rousseau, Aluir Amancio, and someone who became a favorite of mine, Tim Levins. And they all had their own styles, but followed the simple of “less is more”. And the writing on those books was also influential like you wouldn't believe, teaching me the power of a self contained story. Of all the things I’ve learned over the years, that’s the biggest lesson that’s stuck with me… And it all started with Mad Love.

The one thing I remember the most about it all, was I had gone over to my friend Katie's house and brought some comics with me. She was not a devout comic book reader. She used to read Wonder Woman when she was a lot younger, but Crisis on Infinite Earths sort of lost her readership. (I wonder how many readers CoIE lost back then. We know it helped out DC, but I do wonder if it's a similar situation with the current DCnU.) I had brought over a few books, WildC.A.T.s, Spawn, the Maxx, a Tim Sale Batman story ( I don't remember which one), some Keith Giffen book (I think either Lobo or Trencher) and of course, Mad Love. She just casually flipped through the other books, as they were convoluted or just too busy. Nothing caught her eye, but she picked up Mad Love, and I remember her sitting down and reading the entire thing from cover to cover, and she loved it. And that moment stuck with me. All the detailed artwork, flashy covers, or gritty critically acclaimed story telling in the world means squat if it's not entertaining!

It made me realize that I wasn't wrong in trying to go for an animated style. Sure, some of those fellow artists from before would still try and look down on you for liking these artwork and comics, but instead of feeling sorry for yourself, you actually felt sorry for them… Because they didn’t know what they were missing, just because it was labeled ‘All Ages’. I've seen so many so many people pass on well written and truly entertaining works, be it comics, movies, books, or even music... Just because it's all ages, meaning 'it's kids stuff'. But the truth is, a lot of great works of fiction are indeed all ages. Star Wars, Harry Potter, Indiana Jones, even Lord of the Rings. All that "All Ages" means is that it's written on a level that BOTH children and adults can appreciate. What I find hilarious is that there are people that when you point out that these works of entertainment are all ages, they'll say "No, it's not! It's totally made for adults! They have some mature stuff in there, like people dying and some swearing!" They're so against that all ages label, that they refuse to see the obvious. All ages means ALL ages. But some people still can't get over that. Even after Mad Love was the first superhero book to win the coveted Eisner Award, followed a year later by winning the Eisner award for an excellent Mr. Freeze short story. (Which by the way, the link I gave you at the top there to Mad Love, is a collection that contains these stories, as some other really good ones too.)

As most people know, they later adapted Mad Love to be an episode. It was good… But it was better in print. With the holidays coming up, if you’re wanting to treat yourself to a really good read, I cannot recommend a book more than Mad Love.

 

If for no other reason than just to see Harley in her near see-through nightie. 

___________________________

One last thing, a quick picture of my original copy of the comic, just to show you how influential it's been to me. You can seen how much it's been read, re-read and re-re-read over the last 17 years. All the scans from above are taken from this copy. There's probably Silver Age books in better condition!