Most of Batman’s famous foes have been around for decades, and have had the benefit of being depicted my multiple artists in different eras. Bane is a relatively new addition, having first appeared in the mid-1990s.

Bane’s gimmick is that he’s been implanted with a device that allows him to pump a high-strength steroid into his system, causing him to increase in size and strength. The idea is grotesque enough, and his look just simple enough, to make him sort of successful.

When I say successful, I really mean prolific, as he’s appeared in every Batman TV cartoon series since his introduction, and even in one of the (worse) movies. But I haven’t read actual modern comic books on a regular basis in over a decade, so I don’t know what they currently do with the character. As such he’s remained limited in scope as far as I’m concerned and it’s interesting for me to see artists put a different interpretive spin on the character.

Still, he’s constantly depicted as overly menacing despite the fact that in concept he’s just as silly as Two-Face, the Penguin, or any of the rest. So that’s why I decided to depict him as a cartoon tough, straight out of early Walt Disney or Max Fleischer Popeye cartoons. I also figure his steroid pump can’t function perfectly all the time, so his stringy, unpumped legs are struggling to support his over-muscled upper body.

Tags: Art, Bane, Batman, Cartoons, Comics, Illustration, Rogues' Gallery

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 27th, 2009 at 7:02 pm and is filed under Art, Rogues' Gallery. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.