Review: ‘Jerry Robinson: Ambassador of Comics’
Jerry Robinson: Ambassador of Comics
By N.C. Christopher Couch
Abrams ComicArts; 224 pages, $35
The early days of comic books was a vast frontier as the rules were being written and the flourished so rapidly that the demand for talent was voracious. As a result, just about anyone, of any age, who could hold a brush or tell a story was given a chance to work. The more successful ones built up a client base and then brought in others to assist, paralleling the development of comic strips.
When young Bob Kane added the costumed feature Batman to his list of properties produced for Detective Comics, Inc, he found himself in need of help. He had already been working with writer Bill Finger to take his shapeless ideas and turn them into witty adventures. But, Batman meant Kane also needed artistic help and a chance meeting led to 17 year old Jerry Robinson beginning an artistic career that begins today.
Robinson is one of the last of his generation and remains a vital talent, curating museum shows and encouraging the next generation of talent. His story is known in bits and pieces but for the first time, his wide-ranging artistic career is covered in the aptly named [[[Jerry Robinson: Ambassador of Comics]]].
Written by N.C. Christopher Couch, a former [[[Manga]]] editor and professor at University of Massachusetts Amherst, the book begins with a young Robinson learning to draw on his own while his family fell from the middle class during the Great Depression. It was while Robinson was on a brief vacation in the Poconos that Robinson met Kane and a friendship developed.
Quickly, Robinson was immersed in Kane and Finger’s world, brainstorming stories and characters whenever they were together. Robinson realized he was going to learn by doing and absorbed everything he could with Finger proving a knowledgeable tutor about all manner of fine arts, especially foreign films.
As organized, Couch’s work divides Robinson’s career into thematic chapters but you never really fit all the pieces together. While we know Batman had already debuted in [[[Detective Comics]]] # 27, on sale in the spring of 1939, and can intuit that by the time Robinson began working for Kane it was September, just in time for Finger to create Robin and add him to the feature but we’re never told which issue first featured Robinson’s work. Not long after, though, DC must have commissioned the [[[Batman]]] quarterly title which led to Robinson’s greatest contribution to comic books: creating the Joker. But Couch doesn’t lay it all out for us in a linear manner, so there are jumps and overlaps in Robinson’s career that would have benefitted from a better chronology or timeline as an appendix.
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