Jim Balent

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Jim Balent (born before 1980 in Pennsylvania ) is an American comic book artist .

Life

Balent, who is from Pennsylvania , started working as a comic book artist in the 1980s.

In 1993, Balent began working as a contract draftsman for the US publishing giant DC-Comics , for whom he initially drew an edition of the traditional series Detective Comics (number # 660) before he was hired as a regular draftsman for the monthly comic series Catwoman , which continues to this day is considered his most famous work.

Parallel to his work on Catwoman, Balent also drew a few issues for the comic series Lobo (published by DC Comics) and Purgatori (published by Chaos!).

After Balent had supervised the Catwoman series from 1993 to 1999, he devoted himself to other projects from the end of 1999 / beginning of 2000. Staz Johnson was his successor as the regular artist in the series .

In 1999 Balent founded his own company, BroadSword Comics, for which he has worked exclusively since then. For his publishing house he wrote and drew such series as Tarot: Witch of the Black Rose , Holly's School Bites and 3 Little Kittens .

Together with his wife, Holly Golightly (!), He published the series Vampfire .

Balent's work on Catwoman

Catwoman, a so-called spin-off series of the comic series about the nocturnal criminal hunter Batman , was about the adventures of the cynically charming professional thief and facade climber Selina Kyle, who approaches her criminal activities with wit, cunning, acrobatics and a dash of eroticism also repeatedly gets embarrassed about having to do good.

Balent was widely praised for his ability to give the characters, especially the protagonist of the series, a lively appearance through his dynamic brushstrokes and, in particular, to convincingly capture the acrobatic movements of the "cat woman" in pictures. Balent's gift of giving the characters appearing lifelike faces also found general recognition, especially as he gave his "main actress" a face of classic "aphroditic" beauty.

Highly controversial, on the other hand, was his tendency to emphasize the "female attributes" of Catwoman to an extreme degree: In particular, criticism from the feminist camp - that of the series about the autonomous (cat) woman who knows how to assert herself sovereignly in a world dominated by men, was otherwise very benevolent - disparaged Balent's interpretation of female forms as "remote from life" and "product of male dream fantasies". The voluminous breasts and the anatomically-improbably slim, waspic waist that Balent gave his figure caused offense. Regardless of this, the Catwoman series enjoyed great popularity, not least because of Balent's habit of increasing the physical virtues of the "cat" into a "perfection" that was far from life - especially with the male readership.

Over the six and a half years that Balent supervised the series (mid-1993 to late 1999), he collaborated with five different authors whose scripts he illustrated for the series: Jo Duffy , Chuck Dixon , Doug Moench , Devin Grayson and, most recently, John Ostrander .

Imagery

Cover artwork by Balent for Catwoman :

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Balent, Jim
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American comic artist
DATE OF BIRTH before 1980
PLACE OF BIRTH Pennsylvania