Gift Guide

Mythology: The DC Comics Art of Alex Ross

by Alex Ross

Pantheon, 320 pp., $24.95 (paper)

Superheroes tend to look, well, silly in real life. That fact gets thrown in our face every time Hollywood seeks to profit from the popularity of a four-color crimefighter and subjects us to the sad spectacle of some actor trying to look convincingly valiant in Spandex long johns. And yet some part of us still longs to see these caped crusaders in the flesh, to behold these modern gods walking – better yet, flying – among us; we want their magic in our world. The art of Alex Ross plays off this desire, which helps explain his phenomenal success over the past dozen years. His photorealist renditions of superheroes in the series Kingdom Come and Marvels and on scores of covers for comics and books show us these fantastic folk in three dimensions, with weight in their muscled arms and shadows lining their noble features, which are startling in their detail and distinctiveness. They belong to our race, but they also belong in those boldly colored costumes. Silly? No, in Ross' hands, they simply look right. But to say that Ross is skilled at making superheroes look real doesn't do his work justice, to borrow a word from that league he depicts so often. As Mythology, the handsome book celebrating his work with the DC stable of powered adventurers, illustrates, Ross has a keen sense of composition and drama, where to position the viewer to heighten the impact of an image – say, behind the Man of Steel and just above his fluttering cape as he flies past the statue of Christ the Redeemer overlooking Rio or overhead and in front of the Dark Knight as he reaches through a thick clutch of his archenemies to wrap his gloved fingers around the throat of the Clown Prince of Crime. In this volume, terrifically designed by Chip Kidd, page after sumptuous page treats us to visions of gaudy do-gooders from gritty newsprint fully fleshed, which brings them closer to us and inspires fresh wonder.