...Or, "Guess Who's Coming to Bat-Dinner"?
No sooner than I asked about the 1968 Filmation BATMAN animated series in THIS POST, than comes this announcement of February 05, 2014!
YES! It's finally coming... on authorized DVD!
And, as if that's not enough to please Silver Age DC Comics Geeks like me, were also getting the balance of Filmation's SUPERMAN.
Hmmm... Is SUPERBOY still in some sort of litigation? The SUPERBOY episodes are not mentioned as appearing as part of the SUPERMAN set.
Oh, well, I can't complain too loudly, given all this great news! June 03, 2014, is gonna be a great day!
7 comments:
I love how Warner Home Video prefers to use Jose Luis Garcia Lopez's artwork on the packaging - that includes the recent Superfriends DVDs as well. Much better looking than the art on the box for New Adventures of Batman
‘Rehab:
Even though Garcia Lopez’s artwork is not exactly “Silver Age”, as these animated shows were, it is nicely representative of “another time” (One might say a “better time” for these characters – late seventies thru eighties – than “21st Century / New-52” now). And, as I’m sure you know, it was once DC’s standard style for licensing, beyond the comic books themselves.
And, given how distorted and contorted the characters have come to look – especially since the rise of both the “manga” and “Image” (McFarlane, Liefeld, Lee) styles struck mainstream comic books like some great and deadly plague – I’d say the Garcia Lopez (and I’ll throw in Jim Aparo for good measure) style looks all the more pleasing!
If only we didn’t have that “New DC Logo” to distract us from all that pleasure!
It DOES look like the new logo was designed by the team who designed packaging for MIO "water-flavoring" drops or Vitamin Water.
All of the images Lopez created for the licensing style guide from 1983 are still popular with marketing people and continue to appear on new merchandise - but Lopez has also offered new images...his artwork is on a LOT of new stuff, even the new "Batman66" toys and "Justice League" fruit snacks. He's incredibly versatile!
Isn’t it ironic that Garcia Lopez, for all his great talent, was never memorably associated with a particular comic book?
I regard his style as something of a cross between Jim Aparo and George Perez, the former indelibly associated with THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD and other Batman titles, and the latter with NEW TEEN TITANS and CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS. Yet, try to name a specific comic book associated with Jose Luis Garcia Lopez.
"Batman vs. The Incredible Hulk" is the one comic by Jose Luis Garcia Lopez that pops up the most..also "Atari Force". Some fans might've bought a recent hardcover that collects his Superman stories, but...yeah, I'm sure a LOT of people would be surprised to know that Neal Adams/Dick Giordano-like retro Batman t-shirt or Jose Delbo-ish Wonder Woman coffee mug was not drawn by either of those guys, but a very good artist regardless. :)
True, I remember both those comics, and can recall fill-ins (like Teen Titans?) as well as certain other things. But, never anything on the order of that which I mentioned above – much less they type of strong association Curt Swan had with Superman, Gil Kane with Green Lantern, Carmine Infantino with Flash, or Neal Adams with Batman and GL. Or later Dan Jurgens, Tom Grummett, and Jon Bogdanove with Superman, Kevin Maguire or Howard Porter with Justice League, or Norm Breyfogle and even Kelley Jones with Batman. And, so on…
You’d think that, over the years, he would have had that sort of association with a particular series or character. And, I can only figure that DC kept him so reserved for marketing art that this simply never occurred. In a way, it’s a shame that he never did, because I certainly would have enjoyed it.
And, completely switching gears to another type of “shame”, I must note that, since Warner Home Video released their earlier Filmation DC Comics series on DVD some year ago – and this new round – both Lou Scheimer and Hal Sutherland have passed away. And, I notice NO announced extra features on either set that might acknowledge this.
It’s a “shame” that Warner, who was once the best in the business, at such features (particularly when it came to animation collections) no longer does so.
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