Superman Embracing a Little Girl at Sunset — Print & Oil Painting

A pale disc of sun sits high in the upper half of the frame, drawn as flat bands of cream and apricot with a few horizontal cloud strokes ruled across it. It is the brightest thing in the picture and it is completely still, which sets the tempo for everything underneath.

The drawing works in a clear-line register: even black contours, flat colour fills, almost no rendering. Superman has gone down on one knee in the grass and folded both arms around a small girl in a pink jacket and purple trousers; her arms are round his neck, her cheek against his shoulder. The cape falls behind him in two heavy planes, red on the outside, deeper red in shadow.

A single speech balloon floats above them on a long thin tail and holds two words: YOU'RE SUPERMAN. That is the entire script. The lettering is small, the balloon is small, and an enormous field of empty sky has been left around it so the line has room to land.

At the edges the city is reduced to grey silhouettes of towers, and a scatter of tiny children runs through the grass at a few millimetres each. Part of our DC Universe collection. The trinity above the city shows the same character at full scale in a storm, and the back-to-back pairing sets him beside Batman.