My Back Pages, Part II
- danielcolincheesem
- Jul 27
- 3 min read
Welcome back to My Back Pages! In Part I, we looked at Jim Lee, the very first artist I copied on the road to learning how to draw. Today, we're examining a totally different style when we revisit the years I spent copying the late, great Tim Sale.
Tim Sale
In the mid-90's, Batman was becoming more flashy and family-friendly on the big screen, but in the comic books, he remained a brooding, mysterious vigilante. Many writers and artists had already attempted to recapture the gritty, gangster epic style of Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli's Batman: Year One (1987), but nobody did it better than writer Jeph Loeb and artist Tim Sale.
Batman: The Long Halloween (1996) is a noir murder mystery starring Batman, Jim Gordon, Harvey Dent and a broad collection of the infamous Rogues Gallery. Its my favourite '90's comic series and was a major influence on the best Batman movie, The Dark Knight (2008). Tim Sale's moody, cinematic, emotional artwork is key to the success of The Long Halloween.
Loeb and Sale expanded their vision of Gotham and its extraordinary denizens in Batman: Haunted Knight (1993), Batman: Dark Victory (1999), Catwoman: When in Rome (2005), and Batman: The Long Halloween: The Last Halloween (2024).
Sale's approach was very stylised, but rather than taking us out of the scene, we're drawn in by the heightened atmosphere.
Chiaroscuro is a technique that was used by Tim Sale, wherein light and shadow are used to create a sense of volume and depth.
Even the most ordinary scenes were imbued with noir cool by Tim Sale.
That's it for Part II. Thanks for reading. Cheerio for now.🦇
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