Jim Aparo

Jim Aparo

James N. "Jim" Aparo (born August 24, 1932 - July 19, 2005 ) was an American comic artist . Aparo was best known for his work on the character of Batman .

Life and work

Aparo, who is drawing autodidact taught, began working as a draftsman Art in the 1950s. After the publisher EC Comics refused him a job, he worked as a draftsman for various advertising agencies in Connecticut until the 1960s , for whom he mainly designed fashion illustrations for advertising advertisements in daily newspapers.

In 1963, Aparo drew the newspaper comic strip Star Wheeler by Ralph Kanna for a few months , which appeared in a Connecticut newspaper. In 1966, Aparo was brought to Charlton Comics by Dick Giordano , where he began as a full-time comic artist. His first job at Charlton was Miss Bkini Luv , which appeared in the Go-Go Comics series. Later he drew there mainly for the series The Phantom .

In the late 1960s Giordano - who had meanwhile changed to DC Comics as editor - brought Aparo to this publisher. There, Aparo initially drew the series Aquaman and Phantom Stranger for a few years , as well as occasional editions for series such as House of Mystery and House of Secrets .

In 1971, Aparo was hired to temporarily draw an edition of The Brave and the Bold series - the # 98 of the series. Aparo's work on this issue was so popular with readers that he was assigned to the series as a regular artist. Aparo stayed with the series, the content of which is the telling of so-called team-up stories - that is, the joining together of two or more characters, whose adventures are usually told separately, in one and the same story - in which the superhero Batman and other characters are always new shared adventures owned by DC-Verlag, received for almost 10 years. The bimonthly publication cycle of The Brave and the Bold allowed him to work on numerous other projects, for example, he drew several issues of the Batman series Detective Comics for the first time and worked on the series The Specter and Aquaman , which at the time were both in of the Adventure Comics series.

After dropping The Brave and The Bold with issue # 200 in 1983, Aparo drew Mike W. Barr's Batman and the Outsiders series for four years .

In 1987 Aparo was hired as a regular draftsman for the monthly Batman main series, or Batman for short , which he was in charge of until 1993. There were also occasional drawing jobs for the second monthly Batman series, Detective Comics . The ink revision of Aparo's drawings for the Batman series was almost always done by Mike DeCarlo . Among the most important Batman books drawn by Aparo between 1988 and 1993 are the numbers # 428, in which Batman's assistant Robin is murdered by his arch enemy, the insane Joker, and the # 497 in which the traditional man behind the Batman mask , millionaire Bruce Wayne, is defeated by terrorist Bane, who breaks his spine and confines him to a wheelchair, and the # 500, Aparos final edition, in which Wayne's successor as Batman, assassin Jean Paul Valley, can defeat Bane . Authors with whom Aparo collaborated on Batman from 1987 to 1993 included Jim Starlin , Marv Wolfman , Alan Grant and Doug Moench . His successor as the regular artist of the monthly Batman series was the young artist Mike Manley .

From 1992 to 1994 Aparo drew twenty issues of the Green Arrow series (# 81-100), most of which were written by Chuck Dixon . After this engagement, Aparo retired, but continued to design comic books - now on an irregular basis. So the miniseries GCPD written by Dixon , a page in the comic novel Legends of the Green Flame by Neil Gaiman and the one-shot written by Moench, Blackgate: Isle of Men .

Aparo died of cancer on July 19, 2005, according to unconfirmed reports.

Artistic style

Aparos drawing style is primarily characterized by its clean, clear lines, which strive in a naturalistic manner to depict people and objects in a lifelike manner. In terms of perspective, Aparo's tendency to change the vanishing point of his pictures from panel to panel instead of maintaining a fixed perspective is noticeable.

Another characteristic of Aparo was his tendency to incorporate prominent people - such as the actors Peter Falk or Humphrey Bogart - in a hidden way in pictures with crowds.

Prices

Awards that Aparo received over the course of his career include the Shazam Award for Best Individual Short Story 1972 (for the story The Demon Within in House of Mystery # 201).

literature

• The Brave And Bold Art Of Jim Aparo , TwoMorrows Publishing, ISBN 978-1893905498