Aquaman 61 Story Page 10 by Don Newton and Bob McLeod

It’s been some time since I had uploaded a new Don Newton piece so here is one.

A great team up action page between the Bat and Aquaman fighting Kobra.

The first panel establish the evil device used by the villain for his nefarious plans ;)

The second shows Batman pointing a mean finger at Kobra who seems quite unphased. Great use of light in this one by Newton (with that diagonal splitting the panel upwards). But that can equally be said for the whole page.

Then a great action panel of the Bat kicking’s the villain. I love the realistic staging of the scene here, with Batman body actually looking like someone throwing a kick, with his right arm disappearing under his recoiling cape to give him more balance and stability and the vil-lain clearly feeling the impact. CHOOM indeed.

The fourth panel, indicated by the overlapping word balloon, sees Kobra preparing his coun-terattack and you have got to LOVE that his whip takes the form of a reptile’s tongue. Typi-cal Bronze Age cheesiness but you can’t fault Kobra for not staying in character ;)

Batman is ka-thwudded by Kobra ssssssssssssslipery attack in the next panel as we get anoth-er great full body shot of the hero.

And lastly, an amazing close up of the title hero looking worried at the fight. The page would have been great with he Bat alone but this is clearly the crown.

When you look at Newton’s Batman, you will find he was an influence on Alan Davis’(and his art, really).

I will repeat again that this is the best type of inkers for me here with Bob Mcleod providing lush inks over Newton’s pencils staying true to his line (Bob’s inks are often quite recogniza-ble and apart from the Bat profile in panel 2, I see more Newton art than McLeod’s on this page) as opposed to the Alcala type of inks which would engrave Newton’s line in stone whereas he was an artist whose style was all about fluidity.

Lastly, this issue is part of the famous Death of a Prince storyline which is a plus as that run by Skeates and (to a lesser extent) Michelinie still holds up as a great read to this day.