Norm Breyfogle

For more than a year now, DC Collectibles has been making Batman: The Animated Series fans' dreams come true with an action figure line that captures everything we loved about the legendary cartoon. While the process of putting these figures out hasn't been 100% smooth all the way through, DC Collectibles' efforts have given us one of the deepest and most screen accurate action figure lines in the company's history. However, there have been a few characters fans have been looking for that haven't made the leap just yet. This August, it looks like that all changes when Renee Montoya, Bane, Killer Croc, Mr. Freeze and Poison Ivy get their own box set.

Of all the strange transformations Superman has undergone in his 78-year history, none has been quite so derided as the year where his familiar costume and powers were replaced with a blue and white "containment suit" and a tenuous relationship with electricity. But that raises the question, was it really all that bad? Two decades later, we want to find out, so ComicsAlliance is taking a look back at the Electric Blue Era of Superman to find out not just what worked, but if anything worked. This is... Electric Bluegaloo. This week, the Electric Blue era officially comes to a close in Superman Forever, but we're never actually sure why.

Very few artists are as strongly identified with a particular time in a character's history as Norm Breyfogle is with the Batman of the late '80s and early '90s. In a lot of ways, it was a look that defined the era, full of heavy shadows, high drama, and even a little bit of comedy. Last week, DC released a hardcover collection of Breyfogle's earliest work on Batman with Legends of the Dark Knight: Norm Breyfogle, and to mark the occasion, I went through it for the very difficult task of picking out five of my favorite images from over 500 pages of comics, highlighting some of his best work.

For 2000 AD, this year's Free Comic Book Day wasn't just going to be a platform to get their comics into the hands of new readers, it was going to mark the debut of legendary Batman artist Norm Breyfogle on their flagship character, Judge Dredd. Unfortunately, Breyfogle stuffered a stroke in December, leaving the left-handed artist partially paralyzed on his left side and facing massive bills for medical care and therapy. With Breyfogle unable to draw the story, Mike Hawthorne stepped in as the artist of "Judge Dredd: In Through The Out Door," and today, Hawthorne announced that he has arranged for a portion of his fee to be donated to Breyfogle to help with his recovery.

Legendary Batman artist Norm Breyfogle has been in the news quite a bit lately, owing to the recent tragedy where he suffered a stroke, leaving the left-handed artist paralyzed on his left side and stuck with $200,000 in medical bills. A crowdfunding campaign has brought the comics community together to raise $86,000 for Breyfogle's care, but now it looks like we're getting another opportunity to support him and his work. This week, DC announced the solicitation of Legends of the Dark Knight: Norm Breyfogle, a new hardcover collection of the highlights of his work on Batman in the late '80s and early '90s -- one that seems to have been rushed to publication to help out.

Last month, we brought you the news that legendary Batman artist Norm Breyfogle had suffered a stroke and turned to crowdfunding to help cover his medical bills as a result. The good news is that the comics community has come together to raise over $60,000 so far. The bad news is that the total still falls far short of the goal of $200,000. Plenty of readers have already donated, but if you need something else to entice you, it has arrived: Artist Tom Fowler has just finished a beautiful painting of a "battle-damaged' Batman (complete with missing ear), and is now auctioning it off on his website, with 100% of the money raised going to help Breyfogle.

Last week, ComicsAlliance brought you the news that legendary artist Norm Breyfogle, whose beautiful, stylized art graced the pages of Batman and Detective Comics from 1990 to 1996, was hospitalized after suffering a stroke. While Breyfogle is expected to recover with time, the stroke has unfortunately left him paralyzed on his left side, which is particularly devastating since Breyfogle is a left-handed artist. The stay at the hospital and his treatment have wiped out Breyfogle's savings and left him with $200,000 in medical expenses. Like so many veterans of the comics industry, Breyfogle doesn't have insurance to cover these costs. As a result, his family is turning to a crowdfunding campaign to cover Beyfogle's treatment and, hopefully, help him fully recover.

Norm Breyfogle, one of the definitive Batman artists of the late 80s and early 90s, is in hospital as a result of a stroke, according to a Facebook post by his former partner Barbara De La Rue. De La Rue says that he is expected to make a full recovery, and has asked that people keep him in their thoughts and prayers. We at ComicsAlliance extend our best wishes for a full and speedy return to health.

We make a regular practice at ComicsAlliance of spotlighting particular artists or specific bodies of work, as well as the special qualities of comic book storytelling, but because cartoonists, illustrators and their fans share countless numbers of great pinups, fan art and other illustrations on sites like Flickr, Tumblr, DeviantArt and seemingly infinite art blogs that we’ve created Best Art Ever (This Week), a weekly depository for just some of the pieces of especially compelling artwork that we come across in our regular travels across the Web. Some of it’s new, some of it’s old, some of it’s created by working professionals, some of it’s created by future stars, some of it’s created by talented fans, awnd some of it’s endearingly silly. All of it is awesome.

I'm not a big fan of Tim Burton's 1989 Batman movie, which is celebrating its 25th anniversary this week, but there's definitely one thing that I think it did right. Burton's Gotham City, redesigned for the screen by Anton Furst, is absolutely beautiful. The Academy Award-winning production art direction is stylish, terrifying, visually engaging and arresting on a level that the rest of the movie has a hard time living up to, creating a world that looks like Batman could exist there. It's also one of the movie's lasting influences on the world of the comics. Ever since Furst and Burton unveiled their version as a backdrop for the Joker blasting Prince from a boombox while trashing an art museum and Batman blowing up a chemical plant with his remote-control car, Gotham has adhered to their vision of the city, transforming from the bustling stand-in for New York that it was before and becoming its own unmistakable entity. And in true comic book fashion, the comics accomplished this by blowing everything up and starting over.