World’s Finest: The Supergirl-Batgirl Plot

At the time, the deadline for submitting fan art to DC FanDome was 2-1/2 days away. It was just about enough time for me to start and complete a third and final piece.

https://www.dccomics.com/dcfandome

The Plot Thickens

Superman is my favorite DC Character. This may not be a surprises if you’ve read the two previous posts about my DC FanDome submissions featuring Lois Lane and the Teen Titans. Following my strategic decision to avoid creating new Superman art, this third piece was going to be Superman adjacent. It was going to star Supergirl and (because why not) also Batgirl.

Dis-cover-y

I don’t have a favorite classic Supergirl comic story. As for classic Supergirl & Batgirl team-up comic stories, there are that many to begin with. Regardless, I proceeded with searching for a pre-Crisis era comic book cover featuring the two super side-kicks and came across issue #169 of “World’s Finest” from September 1967. The feature story is titled, “The Supergirl-Batgirl Plot.” According to the online wiki synopsis, Supergirl and Batgirl apparently team up to undermine their male mentors, then a twist is revealed and everything goes back to status quo, just like most of the comics of the Silver age and American super-hero comics.

The original cover is pencilled by Curt Swan and inked by George Klein. Here, Superman and Batman visually remain the stars of their own team-up book, but Supergirl and Batgirl combined are a close secondary read. The sky/background is a flat honey-amber and like A LOT of covers in the day, flat yellow was both more energetic than white and allows for characters with predominantly red and blue colored costumes to standout.

Sketch ’n’ Stretch

Unrestricted by the events of the original 1967 story, I attempted to re-imagine a cover/poster with the same or similar elements to elicit that “What in the world is happening here?” response in the audience/reader that was goal of those Silver age comic covers. 

A few quick thumbnail sketches explored different camera angles for composition, Batplane designs, logos and costume treatments.

I struggled with the initial full-scale layout. There were problems with scale, perspective and generally lacking an interesting dynamic to the whole thing.

Fresh Inking

Given the squarish space for art that results from placing logos and type at the lower quarter of the poster, I pushed Supergirl as big a full-figure  that would fit. Now, at least, she appeared to be hovering and not standing on the plane wing the same as Batgirl. Made-up alien invaders were made bit larger and gives something action-heroic to do for Batgirl. Batgirl’s flowing cape obscures how the other end of the cable is anchored to an eyelet of the plane, which would help justify how she can pull up those two beings.

For additional contrast, the Superman-Batman-Batmobile vignette were shrunk significantly while retaining enough for telltale details.

The ball of stuff in Supergirl’s hand doesn’t end up reading as well as it should. They began as big cannon barrels, that turned into space lasers, that got busted up with tangles of wires and tied in a large knot. It is literally space junk- weapons that no longer pose a threat. Story-telling wise it is simultaneously a success and a failure.

Super Friends

I don’t know why both Supergirl and Batgirl were kept as individual sidekick heroes and didn’t team-up more often and neither were part of the Teen Titans. I think that if a book like “World’s Finest” could successfully FORCE Superman and Batman on shared adventures, then the same could be done with Supergirl and Batgirl for their targeted audience. Their personality dynamic would be and should be different from their mentors, which could have been interesting. That is, as long as it didn’t become super-hero Betty and Veronica.

In this piece, I imagine that Supergirl/Kara is a couple of years younger than Batgirl/Barbara. I also imagine that she speaks with an Australian-like accent.

I Lost My Bat Shoe

I think dulled colors does a lot for this vignette of the former heroes struggling with the hum-drum task of changing a flat tire. It’s so average looking, that it takes a while to realize that Superman is struggling to carry a mere car tire.

The smoke was a late addition, which ended up also being a great place to hide a bat icon.

Incomprehensible

For giggles and elucidation, the art is presented without the word bubbles and other graphics.

What I Drew Sunday, September 23rd - Top 3

At comic book conventions, the top DC Comics characters that I draw as commissions are Harley Quinn, Wonder Woman and Supergirl. That did not play out the same in the suggestions folks pitched for last Sunday’s What Shall I Draw Today? all DC Comics-themed session.

Here are the top 3 liked things that I drew that day:

#1 — Burnside Batgirl Babysitting the Teen Titans Go! (suggestion by @haightstreetgirl)

Right off the bat (no pun intended), I was hesitant to draw this six character scene - when one of my goals is to produce as many drawn pieces as I possibly can in the set 8-hours of the session. Obviously, I felt it an interesting enough idea to go ahead and take it on. 

So what kind of babysitter would Batgirl be? Responsible - yes. Studious - yep. Strict - maybe to take the task seriously, but maybe lenient on the hero-ing stuff. And how would the TTG! react to being baby sat by another teen? 

So I contrasted Batgirl with Batman- The Animated Series proportions making her appear more grownup. This allows for antics of Beast Boy trying to escape retaliation for swiping Raven’s cape and hood, that, while in keeping with TTG!, comes off as childish. Cyborg is caught in the cross-fire. Robin is either antsy for not be able to leave when he would like or is trying to impress Batgirl with his maturity. Strarfire attaches herself to the sitter with a million questions.

To help off-set the minimal background, it’s inked with a uniform line contrasting the brush strokes used on the characters.

#2 — Krypto the Superdog and Ace the Bat-Hound as Puppies (suggestion by @akoymdf)

This is an imaginary story because we all know that Krypto was a grown Kryptonian dog when he landed on Earth in the test rocket Jor-El had placed him.

Borrowing the puppy designs of Disney’s animated One Hundred and One Dalmatians, I went for something cute. Story-wise, I landed on the conflict of Ace being less than a match to Krypto on a physical level, and Ace’s resulting frustration. I chose not to outfit them with their respective tell-tale capes, figuring that neither has grown into their roles as canine sidekicks to the world’s finest super-heroes.

#3 — Batgirl and Harley Quinn Going Out for Tea (suggestion by @stariie5829)

This is the second idea that I drew on Sunday that featured Batgirl. There were, in fact, four suggestions featuring Batgirl. I guess she was trending.

I went with Batman: The Animated Series inspired costumes if not accurately depicting their animated designs. I also tweaked the story to “having tea” rather than “going out for tea” because I thought the former had the telling teapot and tea cups. I also thought the latter would have been more about dress-up and/or a walking pair of women which could very well be going shopping or to send off a cruise ship.

The next decision was to choose Batgirl over Harley for pouring the tea. I didn’t think that Batgirl would at all trust Harley to pour ANYTHING. In turn, Harley is suspicious of what’s in her cup because she wonders what could Batgirl possibly sneak in the liquid - because that’s what she herself would do. That or she just suspects the novelty of the whole setup.

Here are the rest of the 10 pieces drawn:

Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson as Black Adam

Raven (in the style of Bill Watterson)

Ragman

Barry and Iris from The Flash

Halo (top) and Looker from The Outsiders

Supergirl, Green Arrow and The Flash

Scooby-Doo and Wonder Woman

All ten of these sketches are going into the collection of original art for sale at my table at whichever comic convention I first show next year, 2019. That could be WonderCon, Anaheim.

Please checkout my Instagram feed for these and more: @monstergram7

This was the last WSIDT session of the year. Time for me to start thinking about Christmas card making.
Left over suggestions may be drawn and posted at anytime before the end of the year.


THANK YOU for your clever suggestions, for following and for the likes and support.


All art Black ink and color pencil on Bristol Board. 
Batgirl & Teen Titans GO! - 17.78 cm x 12.70 cm (7.00 in. x 5.00 in.)
Krypto & Ace - 6.35 cm x 8.89 cm (2.50 in. x 3.50 in.)
Batgirl & Harley Quinn - 8.89 cm x 6.35 cm (3.50 in. x 2.50 in.)

The LEGO Batman Movie

Black India Ink and watercolor on watercolor paper.
12.7 cm x 17.8 cm (5.00 in. x 7.00 in.)

Black India Ink and graphite on watercolor paper.

Graphite on watercolor paper.

Read my quick review on “That’s Good Spam”

[The LEGO Batman Movie]

Insta-Friends

Batgirl, Supergirl, Krypto & Ace
Color pencil and black ink on Bristol Board.
22.86 cm x 30.48 cm (9.00 in. x 12.00 in.)

Let’s talk about this Batgirl, Supergirl, & super-pets piece which in a few days, arguably, garnered over 600 Instagram “likes” on my feed, a.k.a. monstergram7. I say “arguably”  because this specimen highlights the mysteries of Instagram.

What’s To Like
The photo of the finished color version of the Batgirl, Supergirl & pets piece above had received over 100 Instagram likes in the first few days. However, this contrasts to the over 600 likes the teaser detail shot of Batgirl had received a few days prior. The “likes” count isn’t an accurate reflection of the number of views granted. Is the difference an indication of the app experience when at the time Instagram did not natively support zooming in on posts on one’s smart phone? Did the detail shot just the right hashtags drawing in all the Batgirl fans, or was there some other favorable mix of things to make the detail particularly discoverable? Was there an at-the-time post convention bump? I may never know.

Also for context, monstergram7 had less than 1500 followers and regularly any given post received something over 100 “likes” and over 200 for the more popular posts. Over 600 “likes” was and continues to be a record-breaking level or a weird anomaly or both.

Detail photo of Batgirl
as posted in monstergram7

Con-siderations
I had begun work on the composition at this June’s Heroes Convention as a spec (speculative) piece. This means that it was not a ordered commission, but done to be sold like any other pieces of original art I have at my comic book convention showings. You can also consider it a bit of busy-work to do inbetween actual commissions and talking to folks. This detail shot is from its unfinished state at the end of the con. At the top left corner can be seen the pencilled, not yet inked paw of Krypto.

Other spec pieces done at Heroes was a portrait of Harley Quinn (sold) and the mash-up of Snow White in a Star Trek red officer uniform (not sold). Anything Supergirl or Harley Quinn tend to be the default speculative topics I’ll do at comic cons. In “World’s Finest” fashion, I wanted to team up Supergirl with Batgirl and then I wanted to add the respective super-pets. Of course, in that line of thinking, I should have drawn Streaky the supercat, but having 2 dog had a certain instinctual balance. I’m sure that a future Batgirl & Supergirl team-up will have Streaky and Ace. I also default to 1970s costumes. Come to think of it, I’m not sure if Ace the Bat-hound is part of current continuity were I to draw the lot in their modern costumes.

The most obvious differences from the tease are added blacks to Batgirl in the finished stage. In this case, as I some times will do, I inked according to animation cel practices and leave nearly all areas to be filled with color. This would have been fine. But before starting the coloring, I changed my mind in the manner of realizing that I had forgot to align her costume’s appearance to that of the comic book and added more black areas.

Detail photo of Krypto
as posted on monstergram7

The Krypto detail tease had only received about 100 “likes” in its first few days.

Lastly, this piece also reflects some of my interests that I put into my own comic adventures of Tuff-Girl. See how I made it about Tuff-Girl (wink)?

You can follow me on Instagram @monstergram7:
https://www.instagram.com/monstergram7/


[The Top 9 of 2016]