Marshall Rogers: Brightest Days and Darkest Knights

by Jeff Messer, Marshall Rogers (artist), Terry Austin (artist)

160 pages, Hardcover

First published July 23, 2025

Reviews

[Tim Schneider · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't remember the first Marshall Rogers art that I saw. I mean I know what it was...it was the Man-Bat story in Batman Family #11. I remember that cover, so I know I bought that comic back in very early 1977. But I don't remember any of the stories inside it...I haven't read that issue in probably 45 years. But I very definitely remember buying Detective #471 a few months later. That was the first issue that Rogers worked on with Steve Englehart and Terry Austin. And I HATED it. I didn't understand the story and I really disliked Rogers and Austin's art. I didn't buy another issue of that run until much much later. Well...what did I know? I was nine. Nine year olds are pretty dumb and generally have very bad taste. I remember seeing the house ads for Rogers' run on Dr. Strange with Roger Stern and the art looked really good...but I wasn't much of a fan of the character and I never bought those books until much later. I guess it was when the Detective issues were reprinted in the Baxter book Shadow of the Batman in 1986 that I finally noticed that Rogers was not just a great artist (aided and abetted by Terry Austin's amazing use of blacks) but that he was one of the very best Batman artists of all time. On my pantheon he probably ranks just below Don Newton...who did a whole lot more work (and also died far too young). So I was obviously going to grab this book, well knowing what I'm going to get in a Twomorrows artist book.

And what I got was a great retrospective of Marshall Rogers' life and work. A nice interview with his sister filled in his background. Long interviews with Terry Austin and Steve Englehart. A transcript of a radio program that Rogers appeared on promoting Batman: Dark Detective in 2005. Small remembrances from the likes of Don McGregor, Max Allan Collins and other co-creators. And a ton of art...which is really kind of the point.

I didn't know a lot about Rogers going in. He was never prolific and was out of comics for a long time working in the video game industry. He had never done a lot of interviews in the fan press that I ever saw. He really just couldn't keep up with the rate of a monthly book, which is why his longest run was the ten issue run he had on Silver Surfer. I learned that there were apparently a lot of people in the DC offices who hated he and Austin's run on Detective, starting with Joe Orlando. I mean I hated it when I was nine...but I got better. I learned that Steve Englehart really really hates DC as a corporate entity. Mostly I got to spend some time with a great artist who didn't do nearly as much work as I wish he had and who left us far far too early.

[Gary Sassaman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another great artist biography/career overview from TwoMorrows Publishing, this 160-page hardbound volume celebrates the life and art of comic book artist Marshall Rogers, best known for his 1970s work on Batman, and later on Marvel titles like Doctor Strange and Silver Surfer. Rogers is one of those artists who did not have a huge body of work, but did leave an outsized impact on fans, especially when it came to Batman. He died at the age of 57 in 2007, while working on a second Batman: Dark Detective mini-series. This book includes a long remembrance of working with the artist by Terry Austin, who was Rogers’s primary inker over the years and a couple of extensive interviews with writer Steve Englehart, whom Rogers collaborated with on Batman, Silver Surfer, and Coyote, their creator-owned property. There’s also a rare radio interview with Rogers from 2005, and a personal reminiscence by his sister. Messer and Cassell have compiled an art-filled tome that includes originals and comissions, plus previously unpublished art, and the book gives fans (like myself) a well-balanced look at an artist epitomizes the phrase, “For one brief, shining moment …”