One hundred comic book artists have come together over the past year to create the next great joint art project, this time featuring the Dark Knight Detective and Bruce Wayne alter ego, Batman.  Previous subjects have included Adventure Time, Wonder Woman, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Hellboy, The Uncanny X-Men, and Captain America.  This year a new group of some of the best-known names in the world of comics volunteered an original work of art featuring the Caped Crusader (how many nicknames does he have anyway?) penciled, inked, painted, or otherwise colored on a DC Comics Batman #75 blank comic book cover.  It’s all for a good cause that gives back to–and in effect pays forward–comic book creators that have come before.  It’s called the The Batman 100 Project.

All proceeds of the auction of the original artwork will go to the Hero Initiative, an organization that helps out the comic book industry by contributing funds to individuals and their families in the event of medical and financial crises.  Most of the comic creators the fund helps were piecemeal workers in their careers over the past decades or those without any kind of retirement program.

And for those who can’t afford the original artwork, the Hero Initiative is creating a hardcover and softcover edition compiling all the covers that will be for sale beginning in November, with proceeds of those books also going to the Hero Initiative.

You’ll find some of the very best Batman-inspired sketch images in this year’s project.  Many are from well-known artists, but some of the finest works are showcased by more recent artists entering the industry.

Bill Sienkiewicz, Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez, Mike Grell, Phil Hester, Walter Simonson, George Perez, Jim Lee, Frank Miller, Tim Sale, Arthur Adams, Tony Daniel, Tim Seeley, Kevin Eastman, Greg Smallwood, Ryan Sook, Alan Davis, Joe Prado, Dale Keown, Jerry Ordway, Charlie Adlard, Paul Guinan, Alex Saviuk, Nicola Scott, Dustin Nguyen, Sean Phillips, Aaron Lopresti, Ivan Reis, Phillip Tan, Paolo Rivera, Stephen Segovia, Dan Jurgens, Aud Koch, and dozens of other artists participated.

As we said earlier this week in our discussion of the similar art homage project, Alien: 40 Years/40 Artists, what better way to showcase industry talent than a project like this?

Check out the Hero Initiative website here for more information on the auctions (starting September 13, 2020, and running through September 19, 2020), the organization, and the sales of the books, and to view all the artwork for the project.

C.J. Bunce / Editor borg