Batbeard, originally uploaded by vebelfetzer.

Batmans [TOXOPLASM.ORG]

Oekaki screenshot from a mixed-sketching session with friend Skinny Rydell.

Batman obsesses me.

And not even the franchise, because I simply don’t care. I’ve never stirred to purchase, collect, or read any official Batman comics. I picked up Arkham Asylum from someone’s coffee table and thought it was wonderful, but didn’t buy my own. I’ve always avoided “superhero comics” and been aggressively bored by ones I’ve opened in comic shops.

My own personal Batman is something of an archetype. A symbolic Man, an object of ridicule and affection, a torture subject, a grotesque, and a sex object. He is built for me to tear down.

Keaton is the only Batman. His smallness, his over-unctuous disapproval, his eyebrows. His petulance. His sleaze. And his performance was locked into the forty pound rubber suit, the one that fit like a spinal injury brace, preventing him even from looking over his shoulder. He was rigid, and helpless. Madness churning under a matte black shell.

Batman’s mask is lingerie. It conceals, and reveals, a face made for objectification. The leather fetishism of it, the animalism, even the aerodynamics: they turn his whole torso into a Cadillac. It is everything but human, but for the mouth, which is presented. That brilliant scene in Spider-Man where the ugly girl rolls up Spider-Man’s mask in the rain, using his mouth as he hangs there, bound up in his own sticky threads, that’s Batman all the time. He’s faceless, but orificed. His five o’clock shadow, that noir symbol of virility, is brazenly on display. While the rest of his face is armored, he is unable to defend his mouth. He is as anonymous, and accessible, as a masquerade orgiast.
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Several times a week, I host a live video broadcast of my daily drawing and sketching. It’s called the Sweatshop, and it’s slowly growing in popularity.

Sweatshops are my own personal nighttime open mic drawing lessons, storytellings, and heckling opportunities. I announce the session is starting via my Twitter, and the call to arms is bounced around by viewers as the night goes on. Sometimes I point my cam at a page, sometimes at a Photoshop window, and very occasionally at a canvas. Guests wander into and out of the chatroom, offering wisecracks, critique, and shaggy dog stories. It’s a blast.

Over the past few nights, my nibs have strayed to the Dark Knight. These are the fruits of my (and our) labor.

Uno Moralez [Artist's site - thanks Tobin!]