Game Stooge

Comic Con: Neal Adams Interview, Part I

• Scribbled on April 21st, 2008 by Jonah Falcon
• Filed in Comic Con, Interviews, Off Topic

Neal Adams is a comic artist legend whose involvement with the industry has run since the early 50’s when he was a teen. On Sunday, we were granted an interview felt cut short, as he gave fascinating anecdotes about comic book history.

Jonah Falcon: Let’s start at the beginning. You were born in New York, and I notice a lot of writers and artists, like Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, and a lot of other guys were born in New York.

Neal Adams: Well, what about running across the idea that most of them were all Jewish… Jewish kids in New York, that’s what comics were, like an extension of the Garment District. Garmen District, printing, Jewish kids in New York. That’s what it was all about.

JF: It didn’t hurt that most publishers were in New York as well.

NA: We didn’t call them “publishers” in those days. We called them “printers” in those days, but they were really publishers. The way it happened was printers came up with the idea - first of all, printers like to keep their presses running. No clients running their presses, the guys are standing around smoking cigarettes, the presses are just sitting there, they get quite upset. So, what happens is the printer will go, “Why don’t we print some crossword puzzle books. Okay, what else can we do that doesn’t take a lot of thinking? Why don’t we go to the syndicates and license the right to print the comic strips in a book form? That way, we don’t have to do any work; we just reprint the stuff.” So that’s what they did, that’s what comic books were: comic strips in book form. Then, what happened was, in a very short time, they were out of comic strips. They say, “Why don’t we get guys to do detective stories, cowboy stories, cartoon stories.” So they kinda put out the word that they would hire young artists who were bad, or mediocre, or whatever… so now you have practically teenagers. You know, in New York, you have a lot of Jewish kids, printers were Jewish. things were not good in the community, you know, the Irish community, the Italian community were moving outward a little bit into the society, so it was a perfect thing for a young, artistically bent student to do.

JF: The early comics were heavily influenced by the urban setting [in which the artists lived, as opposed to, say, Disney animators, who used a lot of pastoral settings in their cartoons.]

NA: Yeah, that’s a thing that very few people talk about and look at. They talk about it as if it springs from nothing. It springs from the environment. That’s the reason, for instance, why this convention has so much manga involved in it, it’s that kids have been isolated out of comics. The only comics that are popular now with kids, younger kids, is manga, and DC and Marvel Comics have pretty much said, I mean, not necessarily voluntary, that “Oh, yeah, we want to attract kids”, but that’s bullshit. The manga does, and half the people here, or more, are manga oriented.

JF: How did you first get started in the industry?

NA: I went to DC Comics in the late 50’s, I tried to present my work, and they didn’t look at it, because, in the early 50’s, a guy [Dr. Frederic Wertham] wrote a book called “Seduction of the Innocent”, and Congress attacked comic books, and essentially, ya know, we’re out. Comic book companies accepted this self-policing code. EC Comics went out of business, other people went out of business. There was just Archie Comics, Harvey Comics, DC Comics, Timely Comics (which were very innocent), and they had comics like Strange Adventures, My Greatest Adventure, Pat Boone comics. So I came up, came in at the worst pssible time you can imagine…I was coming in at the worst possible time when I came up to DC Comics with samples, which were good samples. They were excellent samples. I’d just turned 18, and uh, I thought they’d at least look at them. They didn’t even look at them. They wouldn’t let me past the receptionist. This guy Bill Perry came out, told me, “No, they’re very nice. But we can’t. We’re have no extra work.” They had no extra work. So I went to Archie Comics, because Jack Kirby and Joe Simon were doing work on The Fly, and I tried to get work doing The Fly and some other things. They wouldn’t see me, even. In fact, Jack Kirby wasn’t even in the offices. So I left my samples behind, and Joe Simon was nice enough to call me up when I was at the office one day, and tell me he was going to do my the biggest favor anyone would ever do me - and that was to turn me down. The comic book business was going to fail in a year or two, and he felt obligated not to encourage an otherwise talented young man who ought to be doing something serious with his life. I said, “Thank you, Mr. Simon.” And so, then the guys at Archie allowed me do tests for doing Archie pages. So my first work was for Archie. Archie, Jughead, Reggie, Veronica…

JF: Were you forced to, uh, I know that Archie comics always had a certain style to them.

NA: Dan DeCarlo style. That’s what I did.

JF: Was it hard to imitate someone else’s style?

NA: Not for me - I traced! I’m not above cheating!

JF: Your first big success was Deadman?

NA: It’s a matter of what is big. My first stuff at DC was The Spectre, and I made quite a splash on that. But, in the midst of doing that, they also decided they would use me on Deadman, Carmine Infantino. But the thing to understand is that when I got to DC Comics, I was a finished professional. I was not looking for work. I was doing comics as a way to make a few bucks for a short period of time, to get back to serious work. I had a syndicated strip, I did comics for advertising, I did regular advertising work. I did storyboards, animatics, all kinds of other stuff. And so, when I came to DC, at that point, the second time, I was “the guy”. I wasn’t some kid out of school.

[Part II tomorrow.]