Gotham City

When I was in college, Wizard magazine (which I actually read back in those days, before the interweb), in cooperation with DC Comics, ran some kind of Batman try-out contest. The winner would get something cool--like maybe publication or something. Anyway, you had to draw this Batman sequence that they gave you the script for. The first panel described a moonlit Gotham City, and then the other panels went on to describe the Batman swooping down and I think maybe Man-Bat was in the sequence? I really don't remember the details. It was during the time of the Azrael Batman, by the way, so his costume was all Robocoppy, which definitely detracted from any kind of moody effect I wanted to achieve.

Because of this, or because I never finished anything I started back then (see Mr. Potato Head for details), I only drew the first panel for the contest. This is the result:

I wanted to amp up the gothic imagery in the cityscape, and what could be more gothic than Notre Dame cathedral? So I plopped it right down in the foreground and left the more modern buildings in the middle ground. I like how it turned out. It's certainly the most detailed architectural rendering I've ever done, and although I'm not happy with the old-school cape effect up top (looks more like Bob Kane than even I intended), or the way the right corner of the cathedral lines up with the front corner of the Natural History Museum (the cathedral should extend a bit further to the right), I think it's a cool image.

I mean, it's Gotham City! Right?

Although if I had to do it again, I'd definitely put some kind of giant dinosaur skeleton on the roof of the Natural History Museum. Nah, that would be dumb.