Jim Lee's Batman Cover for the Comic-Con 2014 Souvenir Book
Comic-Con International has unveiled the cover art for their 2014 souvenir book created by comic artist Jim Lee. I love Lee's style, and this is the perfect cover for this year's Comic-Con as 2014 marks the 75th anniversary of the caped crusader. Comic-Con also points out three other separate notable anniversaries for Batman:
- It’s the 100th birthday of writer Bill Finger who wrote many of the character’s adventures, from the earliest stories through the 1960s, and is responsible for such additions to the Bat-legend as Commissioner Gordon, the Batcave, the Batmobile, Gotham City, and Alfred, plus some of the Dark Knight’s most infamous villains. Finger is the namesake of the Bill Finger Award for Excellence in Comic Book Writing, given each year at Comic-Con since 2005;
- It’s the 50th anniversary of the “New Look” Batman, which started in 1964 under editor Julius Schwartz and including artist Carmine Infantino’s interpretation of the Caped Crusader, which saved Detective Comics from possible cancellation;
- And it’s the 25th anniversary of Tim Burton’s Batman movie, which brought the character back to a whole new audience, in a new—and much darker—form.
Here are some additional details on the souvenir book:
This year’s Souvenir Book—a 224-page full-color trade paperback given free to all Comic-Con attendees, while supplies last—features a long section devoted to the Caped Crusader, and includes articles by Michael Uslan (executive producer of all the Batman films since 1989), Paul Levitz (writer/editor and former DC Comics president and publisher), Marc Tyler Nobleman (author of Bill the Wonder Boy: The Secret Co-creator of Batman), Todd Klein (Eisner Award-winning letterer and designer), and more. The book also features salutes to Marvel Comics’ 75th anniversary, Daredevil’s 50th, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’ 30th, Usagi Yojimbo’s 30th, Hellboy’s 20th, and much, much more. It’s the kind of keepsake book you’ll want to take home with you to read again and again. The CCI 2014 Souvenir Book is available only onsite at Comic-Con to registered attendees.