Interest in Batman Art Goes Boom! : Work of Comics Illustrator Bob Kane Featured in Traveling Show

Holy Bat Merchandising!

Batman shirts.

Batman shoes and socks.

Batman books and posters.

Batman albums. Batman pins.

And now Batman art.

The work of illustrator Bob Kane, who created the super-hero with a dark side 50 years ago for DC Comics, is now the subject of a traveling show, “Batman: An American Icon,” at the Brea Gallery through Sunday.

Truth be told, there’s not a whole lot to it. Only one of the sketches actually ended up in a comic book (in 1962).

The rest of the show is just fairly stock paintings of the Batman characters and quickie sketches of the Caped Crusader, apparently knocked out for Kane’s acquaintances and fans (e.g., “To my friends Abby and Shane--Best always”).

Barbara Scott, who organized the exhibit for the Titus Fine Arts gallery in Beverly Hills, maintains that interest in Bob Kane was running high even before the current Michael Keaton/Jack Nicholson movie infected us all with Bat-fever.

One of Kane’s illustrations even hangs in the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, Scott said.

Still, the frenzy sparked by the movie apparently now has lent Kane, who served as a consultant on the film, a golden touch.

Those simple sketches--which date to the ‘60s and ‘70s and were done for friends and admirers, are offered here for as much as $9,500 each.

The comic book sketch is priced at a cool $10,500. (Scott said original sketches for the Batman comic books are extremely rare: “I don’t know of another one around.”)

Kane, who stopped illustrating the comics in 1966, now splits his time between homes in Hawaii and Los Angeles and continues to paint and draw.

An oil painting titled “Batman Over Gotham,” the basis for the exhibit poster ($50) and a lithograph ($1,595), recently sold in London for $100,000, according to Claire Oliver of the Brea Gallery. A pastel with the faces of Batman, Robin, Catwoman, Joker and Penguin is on sale at Brea for $49,500.

Early interest in the exhibit was strong, according to Oliver, who said several of the posters and lithographs sold before the show even opened.

Buyers, she said, “are wanting to share something they grew up with with their kids.”

After Brea, the exhibit will move to other galleries in the United States and eventually, organizers say, to London and Paris.

Permission to photograph any of the art was denied by the show’s organizers.

“Batman: An American Icon” continues through Sunday at the Brea Gallery, downstairs in the May Co. wing of the Brea Mall. Hours: 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. today, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Sunday. Information: (714) 990-6636.