#barbara ciardo

[panelswithoutpeople]

"You have to believe people can change."

Batman: Noel

by Lee Bermejo

[dcbinges]

Batman: Noël (2012) by Lee Bermejo & Barbara Ciardo

[the-gershomite]

Green Lantern #54 -July 2010

cover 1 by Shane Davis, Sandra Hope and Barbara Ciardo

cover 2 by Alex Garner

writer Geoff Johns

pencils Doug Mahnke

inks Christian Alamy, Tom Nguyen, Keith Champagne & Doug Mahnke

colors Randy Mayor w/Gabe Eltaeb

letters Nick J. Napolitano

[ultrameganicolaokay]

She-Hulk #34 ‘Lady Liberators, Part 1’ (2008) by Peter David, Vincenzo Cucca, Vincenzo Acunza and Barbara Ciardo. Edited by Bill Rosemann. Cover by Mike Deodato Jr. and Rain Beredo.

[violent138]

top five favorite artists?

As this was unspecific a tad, I'm gonna go with top five DC comics book artists (an evolving ever changing list).

Top five in no particular order:

Dave Gibbons, Jim Lee, Tim Sale, George Perez, Phil Jimenez

Rest of the top five:

Mariko Tamaki, Jorge Jiménez, Nicola Scott Jamal Campbell, Barbara Ciardo.

As always this is an eternally changing list and very few people stay on a long time without being swapped out (except for Gibbons and Sale, I'm quite attached to their work).

Drop you guys' faves?

[burningthrucelluloid]

Christmas Carol-cember, Day 18

Taking a break from movies and TV, we dip into another form of media: graphic novels.

This 2011 comic comes to us by Lee Bermejo, an artist with a very distinct style that made him sought after due to the level of detailing he made with his penciling on several DC Comics such as the excellent “Lex Luthor: Man of Steel” miniseries and the grim 2008 “Joker” graphic novel as well as the superb Superman “What’s So Funny About Truth, Justice And The American Way?”

But Bermejo wanted to branch out of just doing art and wanted to write his own story as well. Taking influence from Charles Dickens, Berjemo wrote and illustrated this graphic novel all by himself with coloring by Barbara Ciardo featuring the Caped Crusader under the title, “Batman: Noël." While the graphic novel was widely published, it didn’t attain the praise and reputation as a fabulous Christmas comic book until word of mouth began to share the book’s quality, especially for the Christmas season.

Is there any truth to this? Let’s flip through the pages and find out.

It’s Christmas Eve in Gotham as a down on his luck man named Bob is making a drop off for the Joker until he is pounced on by Batman. He lets Bob go when he proves unhelpful in telling him where the recently escaped Joker is, but secretly plants a tracker on him to use him as bait to catch the Clown Prince of Crime, much to the displeasure of his butler Alfred Pennyworth who points out using Bob as bait endangers his son, Timmy. Showing no concern, though this may be due to Bruce Wayne coming down with pneumonia, Batman dismisses this before he heads out to continue his search, temporarily having a hallucination of seeing his former Boy Wonder partner, Jason Todd, inform him of the spectral visitations that are to befall him.

On the streets of Gotham, Batman runs into Catwoman, who drags Batman into a chase across the rooftops while memories of the past plague Batman until he falls off to the streets below. He is greeted by the Man of Steel himself, Superman, who takes Batman across Gotham to see and overhear the private conversations of Commissioner Gordon and the Gotham Police force as well as watching the poverty stricken living conditions of Bob and Timmy before dropping him off at the Batmobile, encouraging him to go home and recover. But a bomb destroys the Batmobile as the Joker drags a stunned Batman into an open grave to be buried alive where Batman’s hallucinations show him visions of the future that finally force Batman to come to Bob’s aid instead of using him as bait as the Joker is unhappy with Bob’s failure. Encouraging Bob to show Timmy the man he truly is, Bob allows the Gotham Police to arrest the Joker as he is surprised with Wayne Enterprise employees showing up to repair the damages, gift a real Christmas tree and offers Bob a real living wage and 401K to support him and his son.

But to my disappointment, nowhere does Robin lay an egg, though with this one visual of Catwoman sending a tiger at him, I wouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t drop one.

I understand the leaps and bounds Lee Berjemo had to do to force Batman into this Scrooge shaped hole in order to tell this story, but it will never stop being so strange to me to see Batman willingly put the father of a child in harm’s way. Granted Batman is punching dudes and knowingly hospitalizing them, but he always shows concern when children are involved. After all, the core of Batman’s entire war against crime is rooted in the trauma of watching his parents shot and killed right in front of him by a mugger. So to see Batman scheme to place the father of a single child into a dangerous scenario where he could be killed or jailed for abetting a criminal out of desperation and he shows little concern if the boy could get lost in the foster system? The hell? Dude outright says “better to reduce the criminal surplus population” right to Superman’s face when Supes asks him if it’s right to let this boy suffer for the crimes of his father. 

Yeah, that’s where even I kind of have to raise my hand and say “excuse me? Who the hell are you and why do you have Batman’s suit on?”

Is this the same Batman from Frank Miller’s “All Star Batman and Robin” where Batman forced Robin to eat rats, drove his car through police trucks, had sex on the docks with Black Canary and gave us the infamously meme’d “I’m the G*d d*mned Batman” line?

However, I stopped and reconsidered that when it occurred to me that all of this was not really being told from Batman’s perspective.

At least, not completely.

It is revealed that the story is being narrated by Bob to his son so it stands to reason that Bob is telling the story his way through his own perspective.

Hence why he describes the Ghost of Christmas Present as glowing like an angel while, for Batman, he just sees Superman flying past street lights. How he knows what Batman looks like with the mask off is irrelevant as I think his narration is a diagetic story he is telling to his son but the imagery we see of Batman is intended for us the viewer. I’d use the diagetic/non-diagetic discussion again but comic books are a different matter because we are reading them as opposed to hearing them.

But plot is one thing, what truly makes this comic stand up is it’s art and Lee Berjemo did not disappoint.

His artwork is stunningly beautiful, from the retro feel of the visions from the past glory of Batman and his crime-fighting days with Robin, to the Saturday Evening Post look of Bob and Timmy as well as the insane level of detail for Gotham City. The shading is truly stellar, showcasing the talents of a man who dictates the penciling for shading to showcase mood in the visual format, even when obscured by snow. Granted some times the artwork can really exaggerate a scene a bit too much, like Batman screaming at Bob that spittle flies out or Batman looking so angry that I feared he was turning into the Joker. But to be fair to Berjemo, a lot of comic books do that so I’m not gonna lay into him too much, especially when the artwork itself is so beautiful to look at.

“Batman Noël” is a fantastic comic book. While it has the occasional goofy panel and it stretches Batman’s tough on crime attitude, it makes up for it with this down to earth telling of the Charles Dickens novel through a character who could stand to remember what it is he fights for.

Not to scare superstitious criminals or beat up costumed supervillains. But to make sure children like Tim never have to experience what he did. 

To remind himself that criminals are never as easy as black and white.

For that, I respect what Berjemo was doing to take the themes of the Dickens story and place them within the haunting cityscape of Gotham City. While it feels a little out of character to throw Batman into this role of cruelty, sometimes the needs of the narrative require some character tweaking, especially when you know the end goal for the character is to be better by the story’s end.

Pick it up and give it a read. It’s one Bat Time of a compelling story.

“Batman: Noël” is available to read as an ebook on Amazon Kindle along with Apple Books and Barnes & Noble.

Next time, we return to the UK for what happens when Scrooge turns to meanness instead of kindness.

[balu8]

Wednesday Comics #1

"The twelve issues of the title were published in 14" x 20" broadsheet format, deliberately similar to Sunday newspaper comics sections."

Kamandi by Dave Gibbons and Ryan Sook

Superman by John Arcudi;Lee Bermejo;Barbara Ciardo; Ken Lopez

Deadman by Vinton Heuck; Dave Bullock;Dave Stewart and Jared K. Fletcher

Green Lantern by Kurt Busiek; Joe Quinones and Pat Brosseau

Batman by Brian Azzarello; Eduardo Risso Trish Mulvihill and Clem Robins

DC

[primepanels]

A Brief Superman Earth One Review

Synopsis:

Clark Kent strikes out from his family's home in Kansas to seek his purpose in life. You know, basically the same most Superman origin stories. Except this time, someone comes down from space looking to kill him. And other monstrous villains show up after that.

My Thoughts:

It was actually difficult to decide which I liked better, this or Teen Titans Earth One. I went with this series because it's still a Superman story, and Superman's stories usually involve him fighting to save others rather than being so self-focused like the Titans were.

I'm not a huge fan of J. Michael Straczynski. It's hard for me to look at his work objectively after he wrote my least favorite Spider-Man story ever, One More Day. He also wrote Superman: Grounded, which was Obama-rific, so I didn't like it, either. However, I do give him credit for Supreme Power and the 9/11 issue of The Amazing Spider-Man.

Superman Earth One fits squarely between those two extremes for me. I don't like the art very much. I think they want Superman to look too much like Tom Welling, whereas I prefer him to have a thicker build and squarer jaw. I don't like all the sexiness in the story. There's no full nudity, and I'm not sure that anyone actually has sex (besides a married couple in the third book), but Clark Kent's sex drive seems to be stronger here than in any other Superman story I've read. And while his love interest (not Lois) became more sympathetic to me as the story progressed, she came on very slutty in her introduction, and she never really apologizes.

I liked the determination of Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen, and I thought that Perry White had some cleverly written (though awfully harsh) lines. I liked the tension with the villains. They were all pretty powerful, and I was curious to see how Superman could defeat them each time.

One thing that seems to be a constant, to some degree, in every Earth One story is how the government isn't to be trusted. In Wonder Woman Earth One, they were suspicious of Diana the moment she showed up, and all they wanted to do was find out how to defeat her and take over Paradise Island. In Teen Titans Earth One, the group of scientists that trapped Starfire and experimented on her and the others were either working for the government or some big corporation. In Superman Earth One, the military keeps hiring people to find ways to kill Superman. In fact, in the third book, the governments of the world agree to let another powerful being who is obviously more dangerous and uncontrollable take out Superman in exchange for…him taking out Superman. No concern about what he'll do after Superman's dead. At least they're reamed out for it later.

So, yeah, overall, I thought there was more good than bad. But I would have liked it a lot better with a different artist.

[fuckyeahbatmanvillains]

[pinfildiarts]

Rorschach Tribute

Done days ago, with the real signture of Barbara Ciardo, official DC Colorist of Watchman: “Before Watchman: Rorschach”

[asmudgedmind]

So where’re you from?

Smallville. - Clark Kent/Superman

No, really. What’s the name?

Superman: Earth One Vol. 2

Writer: J. Michael Straczynski

Artist: Shane Davis

Colours: Barbara Ciardo

[panelswithoutpeople]

Batman: Noel

by Lee Bermejo

[dcbinges]

Batman: Noël (2011) by Lee Bermejo & Barbara Ciardo

[dailydccomics]

shout out to the art team wow

art by Shane Davis, Sandra Hope + Barbara Ciardo Superman: Earth One #1

[maximusmaximomax]

Superman Earth One Volume 2

Writer-J. Michael Stracynski

Penciler-Shane Davis

Inks-Sandra Hope

Colors-Barbara Ciardo

[uncannyfantastic]

“Leda” by Naples (Italy)-based artist and colorist Barbara Ciardo @barbaraciardoart . #leda #ledaandtheswan #barbaraciardo https://www.instagram.com/p/B043M2YFJTn/?igshid=1ux9o3agtefze