I finally finished this thing. For the last day of this challenge, I thought I’d give a little bit of love to the unsung heroes of the franchise, the henchmen!
As always, this was fun and it gave me a few ideas I definitely want to work with more. Though as far as actual sketch challenges go, with any luck I’ll stick to my senses until next Inktober.
It turns out my list wasn’t quite as long as it should have been so Now I’m off my leash and I’m finishing up the challenge with a few ideas I’ve been thinking about since I started this. Starting with the Royal Flush Gang.
The Royal Flush Gang are pretty much Justice League villains, and mostly considered a joke both in the universe and out. They kind of got a decent reboot in Batman Beyond where they are now a family of criminals. All of a sudden they were a little interesting.
So for this, I’m dropping the stupid costumes. (whether they have costumes I’m still thinking about.) THey’re professional criminals, in the vein of a lot of the heist films I’ve been enjoying lately. (I haven’t decided whether they’re family yet, beyond King and Queen being an item) Also as the name implies, they are part of the Joker’s network. I don’t think they work directly under him, more something in the vein of the Joker and King go way back and The Joker has them on retainer. Based on this I think they’ll work well in the Batman Rogues Gallery.
A very Happy Birthday to Mr Duke Ellington. Let’s celebrate by listening to him and his band perform Mood Indigo!
I was beginning to lose hope, but the magic Tupperware finally relented and let me draw Catwoman.
One thing I’ve always liked about the lovely Ms. Kyleis she’s probably the best example of the difference between criminal and villain in the entire DC Universe. Where she’s just a thief, the best thief out there but a thief. She doesn’t want to take over the world or anything, she’s there to do the heist, but once the vigilante’s show up she’s out of there.
These days it’s popular for all of the artists to follow Adam Hughes’example and cast Audrey Hepburn in the role as Selina for me I think I’ll go with the unforgettable Eartha Kitt! (The only problem going that way is that having her wear any sort of mask would interfere with Ms. Kitt’s phenomenal eyebrows!)
So in the homestretch of this sketch challenge, I finally got to Nightwing. I can’t say I was looking forward to it. It’s not that I like Dick Grayson, It’s just that I don’t think there’s anything to him.
At first, I had a completely uninspired idea of doing just a generic shot of our boy walking towards the camera looking badass. I managed to spruce it up by having all the Robins cheering on their hero
He is the first of them to ever finish his apprenticeship, after all.
I’m beginning to scrape the bottom of the Magic Tupperware here where I’m just getting the remaining civilians on the list, starting with Harvey Bullock.
When I first came across Harvey in Alan Moore‘s Swamp Thing run where his general lazy and sloppy appearance made him easy to underestimate. I later saw him in other stories as the face of the Gotham Police Department, to make it clear there were other people we knew besides James Gordon. Later he even became a secret agent in DC’s Checkmate title.
It was only with the animated series and doing my own research that I learned he was also originally introduced as a standard corrupt cop.
They’ve been pretty much writing him that way ever since, and conveniently forgot about the checkmate storyline.
For my purposes, I’m pretty much casting him as Orson Welles as Hank Quinlan in Touch of Evil.
