Man-Bat painting

The Super Wonder Gallery presents The TV Retro Super Show this weekend at its giant new Bloor Street space. As always, the opening will be a huge bash with entertainment and entertaining people. The TV Retro Super Show leans heavily towards TV and Movie pulp imagery and features the work of over 100 artists.

Bang! Pow! by Rob Elliott. Acrylic on canvas, 36″x36″.

I contributed this portrait, Bang! Pow!,Â of a machine gun-wielding Batman. According to comics canon, Batman never uses a gun. My leap over this moral checkpoint is intended to be funny, startling, and maybe make the viewer think about the real world’s rules of violence and war.

The TV Retro Super Show
Artwork Inspired by TV and Movie Pop Culture

Double night opening reception:
Friday, April 24 and Saturday, April 25. 8 p.m. to 2 a.m.
Show continues for three weeks

Super Wonder Gallery
876 Bloor St. West (near Ossington Subway station)
Toronto

Admission: $10 (portion of proceeds benefit Canadian Dachshund Rescue Ontario)

In the last Swizzle Studio newsletter, I noted that I was looking for new commissions. The first request came a few days later from Luckystar Studio’s Gene Evans:

Are you up for a painting of Batman? I collect artistic interpretations of Batman.

I started with drawing of a fully-armed Batman (part of the Batman legend is that he never uses a gun) based on poses I found in the Italian pulp comic Diabolik, but Gene gravitated towards a weird little outlier sketch:

I was ready to start on Working Title: Weird Bat-Dog when another email from Gene arrived:

Hate to change gears, but, how about a bat wearing a shirt and tie?

Sometimes gear changes are fortuitous, as the resulting painting in this case is rather nice. I switched from the planned square format to a long rectangle and got something pretty unique, Man Bat 9-5:

Man-Bat 9-5, 12″x6″, acrylic on canvas (click to view large)

Incidentally, there is a DC Comics supervillain named Man-Bat, but he lacks the charms of my little Joker-colored dude.

Tag: gun

Batman with a machine gun

Man-Bat painting