Broken Frontier

ALL STAR BATMAN AND ROBIN, THE BOY WONDER #4, the next issue of the blockbuster series written by Frank Miller and illustrated by Jim Lee & Scott Williams, will feature an incredible 6-page foldout of the Batcave. This amazing illustration will give readers a view of Batman's underground lair in unprecedented detail.

"As always, the madness started with Frank Miller's script," says Lee. "Always looking for new and exciting ways to frame sequences, Frank called for a 6-page spread of the Batcave. The trick for me was to top the previous shot of the Batcave I had done in Hush. Simply working on six pages made it a challenge because of the dimensions; when a spread is so much wider than it is tall, the art runs the risk of looking like a mundane police lineup of objects in the Batcave. Flat. Small. Lifeless."

Lee continues, "Luckily, there's always a way of weaving method into the madness. To create depth, I spotted blacks and shadows on the immediate foreground elements to better pop them off the background. Multiple vanishing points helped create the sense of unending vastness that Frank envisioned for the new Batcave while canting the whole windscreen image with a slight upshot. A fisheye-lens angle helped complete the illusion of size and scope. In many ways, you have to compose the piece more as an abstract piece of art to keep it dynamic and interesting as your eye moves left to right, pulling in and out, taking in the individual parts and the whole all at once. And of course, we all prayed that the computer would be robust enough to handle the metafile for coloring this piece."

ALL STAR BATMAN AND ROBIN, THE BOY WONDER #4 (NOV050225) is available for advance reorder and is scheduled to arrive in stores on March 22. Also scheduled to arrive in stores on that date is the ALL STAR BATMAN AND ROBIN, THE BOY WONDER #4 VARIANT EDITION (NOV050226) featuring a cover by Frank Miller.