Comic Book Coffee, number 125: Batman Confidential #26, penciled by Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez, inked by Kevin Nowlan, written by Nunzio DeFilippis & Christina Weir, lettered by Ken Lopez and colored by Dave Baron, published by DC Comics in April 2009.
Wishing a very happy 74th birthday to the incredible Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez, who was born on March 26, 1948. Garcia-Lopez has been one of the most iconic DC Comics artists of the past four decades, illustrating the various style guides used by the company to provide official artwork for merchandise licenses around the world. If you’ve ever purchased any kind of licensed product featuring a DC Comics character, the odds are very good that the artwork on the packaging was drawn by Garcia-Lopez.
The Spanish-born, Argentina-raised Garcia-Lopez has also worked on numerous DC comic books since the mid-1970s, creating dynamic depictions of such characters as Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Deadman, Jonah Hex, the New Teen Titans and the Justice League of America. With writer Gerry Conway he created the four issue private eye miniseries Cinder and Ashe in 1988. Garcia-Lopez also did an astonishing job illustrating Howard Chaykin’s dystopian reimagining of DC’s obscure Silver Age sci-fi heroes in the three issue bookshelf miniseries Twilight in 1990.
Here’s a page from one of the great Batman stories penciled by Garcia-Lopez, with wonderfully slick, polished inking from Kevin Nowlan. “A New Dawn” sees the Caped Crusader forced to work with his longtime adversary the Riddler to stop the new, mysterious menace of King Tut. On this page Bruce Wayne is in the Batcave having a cup of coffee while he attempts to discern a pattern to the murders being committed by King Tut. It’s a great example of Garcia-Lopez’s dynamic storytelling and highly detailed penciling.
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