Neal Adams

Biography

Adams attended the High School of Industrial Art in Manhattan, and shortly after graduation began working in the advertising industry. Interested in comic books, he unsuccessfully submitted art samples to DC Comics, but did find uncredited freelance work drawing Bat Masterson and Archie Comics.^[1] In 1962, Adams began his comics career in earnest at the NEA newspaper syndicated, working as an anonymous assistant on such comic strips as Peter Scratch, Rip Kirby, and The Heart of Juliet Jones before being given his own strip, Ben Casey, based on the medical drama TV series. This comic strip ran from 1962 through 1965.

Silver Age splash

After Archie Goodwin, editor of Warren Publishing’s black-and-white horror-comics magazines began running his work, Adams reapproached DC in 1967. In 1968, nearing the end of what historians call the Silver Age of comic books, but an exciting time for the industry, Adams made an immediate splash with the feature «Deadman» in Strange Adventures, and quickly became the company’s premiere cover artist.

This led to a stint at Marvel Comics, where Adams teamed with writer Roy Thomas on X-Men, then on the verge of cancellation. Though the duo failed to save the title (which ended its initial run with #66), their collaboration on issues #56-63 (May-Dec. 1969) — and on the «Kree-Skrull War» arc of The Avengers #93-97 (Nov. 1971 – May 1972) — produced what comics historians regard as some of Marvel’s creative highlights of the era.^{[citation needed]} He also collaborated with Stan Lee on two issues of The Mighty Thor.

Continuity and creators’ rights

In the early 1970s, Adams and frequent writing collaborator Dennis O’Neil did a celebrated and, for the time, controversial revamping of the longstanding DC characters Green Lantern and Green Arrow, teaming them in a long story arc in the former’s title in which the two undertook a social-commentary journey across America. Adams and O’Neil revitalized Batman with a series of noteworthy stories reestablishing the character’s dark, brooding nature and taking the books away from the campy look and feel of the 1966-68 TV series. Adams’ pencil drawings were frequently inked by artist Dick Giordano, with whom Adams formed Continuity Associates, a company that primarily supplied storyboards for motion pictures. In the early 1970s, Adams was the art director, costume designer, as well as the poster/Playbill illustrator for Warp, a science fiction stage play by Bury St. Edmund and Stuart Gordon that had had some cult success in Chicago, and which played on Broadway from Feb. 14-18, 1973, at the original Ambassador Theatre.

During the 1970s, Adams was politically active in the industry, and attempted to unionize its creative community. His efforts, along with precedents set by Atlas/Seaboard Comics’ creator-friendly policies and other factors, helped lead to the modern industry’s standard practice of returning original artwork to the artist, who can earn additional income from art sales to collectors. Adams notably and vocally helped lead the lobbying efforts that resulted in Superman creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster receiving decades-overdue credit and some financial remuneration from DC.

Also during the 1970s, Adams illustrated paperback novels in the Tarzan series and did some film work. With the independent-comic publishing boom of the early 1980s, he began working for Pacific Comics (where he produced the poorly-received Skateman) and other publishers, and founded his own Continuity Comics as an off-shoot of Continuity Associates. His comic-book company’s characters include Megalith, Bucky O’Hare, Skeleton Warriors, CyberRad, and Ms. Mystic.

In collaboration with Rafael Medoff, director of the David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, Adams has championed an effort to get the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum, which is operated by the government of Poland, to return the original artwork of Dina Babbitt. In exchange for his sparing her mother and herself from the gas chambers, Babbitt worked as an illustrator for Nazi death camp doctor Josef Mengele who wanted detailed paintings to demonstrate his pseudoscientific theories about Gypsy racial inferiority.^[2] Using text from Medoff, Adams illustrated a six-page graphic documentary about Babbitt that was inked by Joe Kubert and contains an introduction by Stan Lee.^[3] However, Adams deemphasizes any comparison between the Babbitt case and his struggle for creator rights, saying that her situation was «tragic» and «an atrocity.»

GALERIA

Neal Adams

elaltillodelilustrador@gmail.com

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