Great Covers #4 – Batman 310 & 319 by Joe Kubert

Batman 310 cover

Batman 319 cover

I chose these two covers as a showcase of Joe Kubert’s art, well, frankly because they include Batman and Gentleman Ghost. There are a great many Kubert covers that show his ability, but these two just happen to include two of my favourite characters.

Kubert’s greatest strength is his ability to portray the human form naturally. If you have any doubt about this I’d direct you to pretty much any panel of Tarzan that Kubert drew, they are perfect representations.

In terms of the covers selected for this post, in the first, Batman 310, my attention is drawn more to the horses that the humans. Whilst Batman & GG are drawn dynamically enough, look at the emotion that Kubert has imbued into the horses. Kubert had a great deal of experience drawing animals, again in Tarzan, and it shows in this cover. The slightly ungainly but very natural spread of the animals legs, and of course those horses eyes are incredibly emotive, particularly the one visible eye of the leading horse. It may sound odd, but think about how many artists have difficultly rendering recognizable emotions on to human characters without the addition of dialogue boxes to help them along. Kubert can show you what a horse is thinking, let alone a human.

On the cover of Batman 319, it’s all about the Batman. It goes without saying that Kubert’s grasp of human anatomy is impeccable, but what I really like about this cover is Batman’s posture. At first glance his body seems to be relaxed, with his attention focused on to GG, but look at his legs, slightly splayed, and his arms too, again slightly bent at the elbows and maybe tipping his body weight over to his right. This is a guy that’s been drawn to look relaxed, but is really a loaded spring ready to explode at a moments notice. I hate to keep on mentioning this, but this is another recurring theme handed over from the Tarzan books.

So for anyone reading this and looking for Joe Kubert recommendations, top of the list for incredible art would be the Tarzan: the Joe Kubert Years, three volumes published by Dark Horse. But a very, very close second place would be the Enemy Ace stories, available as either a single Showcase Presents volume or two Archive Editions from DC.

Happy Reading,

Mad Thinker.