On his blog, Josh Middleton is sharing some of the upcoming covers he’s doing for Batman, Wonder Woman and Flash. About the Batman cover, he says:
When I started coloring, I planned for the usual Batman night shot and went so far as to make an entire night-time city scape for the background. I had spotlights flying around, with a huge beam back-lighting Batman. However, even after many hours of noodling, I was really dissatisfied with what I was getting and decided to scrap almost everything (I did save the BG for possible later use). So, I started over, and instead built a new city (primarily with the line tool and transformations) based on a great old image of art deco buildings and inspiration I drew from the Batman animated series backgrounds. After a lot of experimentation, I eventually wound up with what could be seen as an early morning shot. I figure Batman has been out all night doing his thing. It was a background gradient that really inspired me to pop the sun out, and I hope it works. He has to be out in daylight sometimes, right?
March 15th, 2007 at 2:01 pm
Awesome.
March 15th, 2007 at 2:22 pm
I’m not one for frivolous petitions, but is there any way we can replace the Dodsons with Josh Middleton on WW? No offense, folks, but that would make me happy.
March 15th, 2007 at 2:39 pm
Is it me, or is that perspective a little off?
March 15th, 2007 at 3:10 pm
Man, his work is breathtaking. Let’s see some interiors, man!
March 15th, 2007 at 3:26 pm
I’m a big fan of his Flash cover. But when are we going to get some interiors out of him? He’s been DC exclusive for how long and only did the Superman/Shazam mini, right?
March 15th, 2007 at 6:44 pm
I saw this after reading through the discussion of Mike Turner’s new cover for JLA.
In my opinion, Middleton should be the go-to guy for covers on DC’s big books. His covers are fantastic.
March 15th, 2007 at 7:39 pm
The perspective is off when you take into account the position of the outstretched leg relative to the statue’s arm. It would either mean Batman has one seriously tiny leg, or the statue has one strangely proportioned arm.
March 15th, 2007 at 8:10 pm
Nice to see more work from Josh; he was one of the long-running CrossGen artists I really adored. (Even if, yeah, the perspective is a bit off…)
March 15th, 2007 at 8:56 pm
I reaallly hate the term “big guns”. It’s a cliche, it’s clearly inappropriate for a character like Wonder Woman, and Wizard Magazine uses it all the time so you should avoid it. And I haven’t even gotten into the phallic stuff, 2nd Amendment issues, etc.
March 15th, 2007 at 11:13 pm
Your life must be really, really tough.
March 15th, 2007 at 11:27 pm
I don’t think anyone needs to worry about Middleton taking over the art on Wonder Woman or any other title for the most part. He has not proven speedy enough in the past couple of years to handle a monthly. Odds are he will be used to sell comics with covers and a special project or so. I’m glad to start seeing work from him at DC since it has been months since he signed his exclusive with them. For those interested in finding more of his work at a reasonable price check out his issues of Meridian from Crossgen.
I also don’t like the cliche “Big Guns” just because its a lazy inarticulate expression, but matches post made me smirk.
I also think that of late Green Lantern and Flash have become as popular as Wonder Woman due to the JLA cartoon. Most modern readers don’t even know why these properties (Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman) are considered the three major characters at DC.