Artist Daniel Johnston posthumously provides Batman, Superman, and Orion Batman #121 variant covers
March's 1's Batman #121 will feature three limited-edition variant covers featuring original pieces of art by the late singer-songwriter and visual artist Daniel Johnston, DC announced February 14. All three covers are available for preorder starting immediately.
The variant cover editions will be released by Central Texas comic book retailer Austin Books & Comics (ABC) and sold in cooperation with Electric Lady Studios, which manages the Daniel Johnston art catalog on behalf of Johnston's surviving family the museum the Contemporary Austin. The Contemporary Austin is currently exhibiting the first-ever museum retrospective of his work, Daniel Johnston: I Live My Broken Dreams, through March 20.
The exhibit - which includes more than 200 drawings along with handmade fliers, home-recorded cassette tapes with hand-drawn covers, photographs, notebook pages, Super 8 mm home movies, archival video, and audio, is described as offering visitors a window into Johnston's "elaborate iconography, including an idiosyncratic cast of characters and symbols engaged in a perpetual struggle between good and evil."
According to DC, Johnston - the subject of the 2005 documentary The Devil and Daniel Johnston - achieved cult status during this career and "early, outspoken" support from pop culture icons like Matt Groening, Kurt Cobain, Sonic Youth, and David Bowie.
How did the Batman variant covers come about? Daniel Johnston: I Live My Broken Dreams' curator Robin K. Williams found a letter Johnston had written in the '90s or '00s addressed to his friend Marie Javins, currently the editor-in-chief at DC, requesting her help getting his artwork into comics.
"I thought the letter was strange and touching," says Williams in DC's announcement,
Read more on gamesradar.com
