This morning, I attended the unveiling ceremony/press conference for the new poster with which the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is promoting this year's Oscars. The poster was painted by Alex Ross, who has been dazzling folks in the comic book industry with his paintings…particularly with his ability to take characters designed in simple line and to render them in fully-painted, three-dimensional splendor, as he did in Marvels, Kingdom Come and some recent special albums of Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman. I couldn't help but marvel, not just at a "comic book" promoting an artist to this status (especially at a time when comics sell worse than they ever have) but at all the media turning out to cover him.
Once upon a time, Jack Kirby said that comic books would someday be recognized as the greatest source of American popular art. And even as aware as I was of Jack's incredible track record for describing the future, I don't think I was prepared to accept it until I saw it for myself. The poster's tag line — "The Gold Knight Returns" — even testifies to the impact of comic books on popular culture. So how come so few comics are selling…and the ones that are selling aren't selling more? Beats me.
Anyway, you can order your own copy of Alex's splendid poster at www.oscars.org if you are so inclined. I like the design but I think I'm even more amused that, in the world of Oscar as a super-hero, his "bat-signal" is promoting a subsidiary of the Walt Disney Company. There's a call of distress if ever there was one.