| Marshall Rogers | |
|---|---|
 Marshall Rogers, New York City, 1979 | |
| Born | William Marshall Rogers III (1950-01-22)January 22, 1950 Flushing, New York, U.S. |
| Died | March 24, 2007(2007-03-24) (aged 57) Fremont, California, U.S. |
| Area | Penciller,Inker,Colourist |
Notable works | Detective Comics Detectives Inc. |
| Awards | Extended list |
William Marshall Rogers III (January 22, 1950[1] – March 24, 2007),[2] known professionally asMarshall Rogers, was an Americancomics artist best known for his work atMarvel andDC Comics in the 1970s.
Rogers was born in theFlushing neighborhood of the New York City borough of Queens,[4] and raised there and inArdsley, New York.[5] He took upmechanical drawing in high school,[6] and then attendedKent State University inOhio,[7] where he studiedarchitecture. He said later that he felt this
would keep my parents happy, because it's a legitimate profession, and would allow me some artistic outlet as I worked. Well, I quickly found out that the world wasn't ready for anotherFrank Lloyd Wright ... and I would end up doing parking lots and designing heating / cooling systems. I had wanted to draw and be imaginative. And then there was one last stumbling block, and that wascalculus. ... I just couldn't grasp those weird theories that were running around.[6]
He studied architectural drawing, and his work was characterized by detailed rendering of buildings and structures.[5]
He left college in 1971 before graduating, and returned home to New York, where he discovered his family was moving toDenver,Colorado, where his father's employer,Johns Manville, was relocating. Opting to remain, he completed a 52-page story he had begun in college and presented it in 1972 as a sample toMarvel Comics production managerJohn Verpoorten, who found Rogers' work wanting.[6] To earn a living, Rogers did illustrations for men's magazines that he described as "[r]eal low-grade schlock sleazo magazines that had illustrations to precede the stories". When one client went bankrupt owing him at least $1,000, a friend, Jim Geraghty, offered him a rent-free house for the winter inEasthampton, New York, onLong Island, in exchange for "four or five illustrations" for a local art project.[8] The following summer he worked in a hardware store for several months, was fired, and while living on unemployment benefits approached the short-livedAtlas/Seaboard Comics and, he said:
was given a couple of very small assignments. One was to design a costume for akung-fu character they were going to establish, and another was to do a couple of illustrations for a back-up feature in a black-and-white monster book. The kung-fu costume I designed was rejected because they said, 'It was too good,' which meant, I felt, the costume was too intricate to draw over and over. The black-and-white illustrations were used. One appeared in the back of the black-and-white monster book on a little game-page they called 'Dr. Frankenstein's Brain Twisters.'[8]
At some unspecified point, Rogers recalled, he "bounced in and out of a shipping clerk job" and did some retouching work forDC Comics on reprints of 1940s Batman stories.[8] He continued showing samples to both Marvel and DC, and in 1977, his artwork began interestingMarie Severin andVince Colletta, the two companies' respectiveart directors. "That got me my first job; it wasn't really the drawing ability", he said in 1980, "as much as my design capabilities."[6]
Some of his first comic-book work appeared in the black-and-white magazineThe Deadly Hands of Kung Fu, where he worked with writerChris Claremont on a story featuring the "Iron Fist" supporting charactersMisty Knight andColleen Wing as theDaughters of the Dragon.[9] He eschewed the grey wash that was used in other black-and-white comics stories in favor of applyingscreentone.
With writerSteve Englehart, Rogers penciled an acclaimed run on the Batman inDetective Comics #471–476 (Aug. 1977 – April 1978),[10] providing one of the definitive interpretations that influenced the 1989 movieBatman and that was adapted for the 1990sanimated series.[3] The Englehart and Rogers pairing was described in 2009 by comics writer and historianRobert Greenberger as "one of the greatest" creative teams to work on the Batman character.[11] DC Comics writer and executivePaul Levitz noted in 2010: "Arguably fans' best-loved version of Batman in the mid-1970s, writer Steve Englehart and penciller Rogers'sDetective run featured an unambiguously homicidal Joker...in noirish, moodily rendered stories that evoked the classic Kane-Robinson era."[12] In their story "The Laughing Fish", theJoker is brazen enough to disfigure fish with a rictus grin, then expects to be granted a federaltrademark on them, only to start killing bureaucrats who try to explain that obtaining such a claim on a natural resource is legally impossible.[13] The supervillainDeadshot was redesigned by Rogers during hisDetective Comics run.[14] Rogers also penciled the origin story of theGolden Age Batman inSecret Origins #6 (Sept. 1986) with writerRoy Thomas and inkerTerry Austin.[15]
The two also did a sequel miniseries,Batman: Dark Detective,[16] and worked together on other series, including Marvel'sThe Silver Surfer and a short run on DC's revivedMister Miracle.[17] Englehart and Rogers' first Batman run was collected in the trade paperbackBatman: Strange Apparitions (ISBN 1-56389-500-5),[18] and the second run inBatman: Dark Detective (ISBN 1-4012-0898-3).[19] Rogers remained as artist onDetective Comics for a few issues after Englehart's departure from the series. With writerLen Wein, he co-created the third version of thesupervillainClayface.[20] Rogers' other Batman work included a story arc inBatman: Legends of the Dark Knight that was begun by writerArchie Goodwin and completed byJames Robinson.[21]
An Englehart-Rogers story featuringMadame Xanadu that sat in inventory for a few years was published as aone-shot in 1981, in DC's first attempt at marketing comics specifically to the "direct market" of fans and collectors.[22] In 1986, Rogers drew a graphic novel adaptation of "Demon with a Glass Hand", an episode ofThe Outer Limits television series, based on a script byHarlan Ellison. It was the fifth title of theDC Science Fiction Graphic Novel series.[23]
AtEclipse Comics during the early 1980s, he collaborated on the graphic novelDetectives Inc. with writer Don McGregor, drew theScorpio Rose series and the firstCoyote series written by Englehart,[24] and wrote and drew his own whimsical seriesCap'N Quick & A Foozle. In 1992, McGregor and Rogers crafted a two part-story for Marvel inSpider-Man issues #27–28 dealing with bullying and gun violence.[25]
Rogers' mother was Ann White Rogers. He had a sister, Suzanne, and an adopted son, Russell Young.[5]
Rogers died on March 24, 2007,[2] at his home inFremont, California.[5] HisBatman collaboratorSteve Englehart said he was told by Spencer Beck, Rogers' agent: "His son found him. They think it was a heart attack, and that he might have been dead for a while."[26]
Comics work (interior pencil art, except where noted) includes:
Even though their Batman run was only six issues, the three laid the foundation for later Batman comics. Their stories include the classic 'Laughing Fish' (in which the Joker's face appeared on fish); they were adapted forBatman: The Animated Series in the 1990s. Earlier drafts of the 1989 Batman movie with Michael Keaton as the Dark Knight were based heavily on their work.
Rogers drew highly detailed architectural features for the moody backdrops of Batman's exploits, down to the individual bricks in the buildings of Gotham.
...first-time collaborators Steve Englehart and artist Marshall Rogers firmly entrenched Batman in his dark, pulp roots.
Batman was now a true creature of the night, and every artist and writer team worth their creative salt wanted a piece of him. One of the greatest of such pairs consisted of writer Steve Englehart and artist Marshall Rogers...when Rogers joined Englehart inDetective Comics issue #471 (August 1977), their styles meshed with such ease that the result gave the impression of years' worth of collaboration.
After a total overhaul by artist Marshall Rogers, Deadshot developed the iconic look that would last for decades.
Madame Xanadu, a 32-page/$1.00 comic that marks DC's first attempt at marketing comics specifically to fans and collectors, went on sale in early April. The book contains a 25-page tale by Steve Englehart and Marshall Rogers entitled 'Dance for Two Demons' ... The tale was originally commissioned forDoorway to Nightmare but was put into DC's inventory when that title was cancelled.
Writer Don McGregor and artist Marshall Rogers created one of the most original Spidey stories of the year with this two-part tale. The story told of events that happened after bullied 12-year-old Elmo Oliver found a gun dropped by a bad guy during a shootout...Once again, a Spider-Man story provided a platform for real-life issues.
Marshall did a portfolio called 'Strange' in 1979 that had Batman-esque plates, sans Batman. ... It is also worth noting that in 1981, courtesy of Sal Quartuccio Publishing, Marshall Rogers released 'The Batman', a color portfolio consisting of four plates (if you purchased the signed edition of the portfolio, you received a fifth plate) that allowed Rogers to illustrate Batman and his world unencumbered by comic book panels.
| Preceded by | Detective Comics artist 1977–1978 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by Jack Kirby (in 1974) | Mister Miracle artist 1977–1978 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | Doctor Strange vol. 2 artist 1981–1982 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by n/a | Silver Surfer vol. 3 artist 1987–1988 | Succeeded by |
