Kevin Nowlan's Batman vs. Man-Bat!

While Christopher Nolan was still in high school dreaming about making movies, Kevin Nowlan was busy revitalizing the Batman image and mythos. Kevin being something of a perfectionist produced stuff that looks so polished that it seems somewhat unreal. And add to this the fact that he does everything on the comic, pencils, inks, and colors, and does them better than almost anyone in the comic business. 

 His pencils are beautifully stylized, expressionistic designs; His inks are economic and stunningly subtle, one would think he works at twice the size of the comic page or larger to get such delicate and precise effects; And his color pallet is strikingly moody and original, eschewing conventional comic book coloring of the time that relies on garish color contrasts to distinguish objects. The only drawback to being a Kevin Nowlan fan is that his work comes out so slowly. In the 80's you would most often see him designing dazzling covers for various Marvel comics but occasionally he would treat us to a rare stunning interior job like this one he did for Secret Origins #39: "The Secret Origin of Man-Bat" Apr/1989 with Jan Strand.

If this work looks somewhat familiar it may be because Kevin Nowlan went on to work for Batman the Animated series contributed character designs for Man-Bat and other characters on the show.

If you want to see more of his amazing work, check out his blog!