Alter Ego #181 Preview

Vol. 3, No. 181

May 2023

Editor

Roy Thomas

Associate Editor

Jim Amash

Design & Layout

Christopher Day

Consulting Editor

John Morrow

FCA Editor

P.C. Hamerlinck

Mark Lewis (Cover Coordinator)

Comic Crypt Editor

Michael T. Gilbert

Editorial Honor Roll

Jerry G. Bails (founder)

Ronn Foss, Biljo White

Mike Friedrich, Bill Schelly

Proofreaders

William J. Dowlding

David Baldy

Cover Artist

Neal Adams

Cover Colorist

Tom Ziuko

With Special Thanks to:

Alfredo Alcala, Jr.

Heidi Amash

Pedro Angosto

Richard J. Arndt

Bob Bailey

Alberto Becattini

Al Bigley

Jackson Bostwick

Bronze Age of Blogs (website)

Gary F. Brown

Bernie Bubnis

Mike Burkey

Nick Caputo

Howard Chaykin

Bill Crawford

Shane Foley

Joe Frank

Stephan A. Friedt

Benito Gallego

Janet Gilbert

Tony Gleeson

Grand, Alex

Grand Comics

Database (website)

Walt Grogan

George Hagenauer

Heritage Art

Auctions

Robert Higgerson

Sharon Karibian

Contents

Jim Kealy

Todd Klein

Eric Jansen

Zorikh Lequidre

Victor Lim

Art Lortie

Jim Ludwig

Glenn McKay

Patrick Moreau

Mark Muller

Ron Murphy

Mears Museum

NewText (website)

Barry Pearl

Robert Policastro

Reddit (website)

James Rosen

Alex Ross

Bob Rozakis

Joe Rubinstein

Randy Sargent

Bill Sienkiewicz

Anthony Snyder

Bryan Stroud

Dann Thomas

Who’s Who of American Comic Books 1928-1999 (website)

Marv Wolfman

Mike Zeck

This issue is dedicated to the memory of Neal Adams

with Neal about his long career as a gadfly—and a great talent.

with the writer/artist about his powerful tale of the Vietnam War

Batman, Doc Stearn, and pretty much everything in between. re: [correspondence, comments, &

FCA [Fawcett Collectors Of America] #240

Some FCA regulars pay homage to Neal Adams—the man and the myth.

On Our Cover: For some reason, DC Comics decided not to go with Neal Adams’ doublepsychiatrist’s-couch cover for what publisher John Morrow (who suggested it for this mag’s cover) believes was The Brave and the Bold #85 (Aug.-Sept. 1969), in which the artist introduced Green Arrow’s new, more Robin-Hoody threads. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time it’s ever been printed in color, with tints by Tom Ziuko! [TM & © DC Comics.]

Above: Neal Adams may have drawn considerably fewer pages for Marvel than he did for DC back in the day—but, all the same, every time he touched pencil or pen or brush to a character of either, he made the artists, editors, and writers at both companies sit up and take notice. Like with this (commissioned?) set-piece of Thor confronting the Hulk. Thanks to dealer Anthony Snyder, who can be dealt with at anthony@anthonysnyder.com. [Both heroes TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

NEAL ADAMS & Me

A Personal Remembrance by Roy Thomas

A/E

EDITOR’S

INTRODUCTION: No, you’re not imagining things! I (Roy) elected to relinquish the lead spot this issue to Stephan Friedt’s obituary/tribute re the late great Neal Adams—since it needed to be read before interviews with that supremely talented artist. Also, for the second issue in a row, I’ve utilized (and greatly expanded) my “writer/editorial” space into an article. That’s because Neal Adams was my erstwhile colleague, my sometime friend, and my more-than-occasional sparring partner, and I wanted to set down my personal take on that relationship. My view certainly isn’t all sweetness and light—any more than his would’ve been concerning me, had he deigned to write one—but it’s as honest and complete as I can make it, at least in the space I’ve allotted to myself….

In the more than fifty years we knew each other, Neal Adams and I agreed about many things—and we probably disagreed concerning at least an equal number.

Starting with… when we met.

Neal stated, at least once, that he’d never even heard of me before he waltzed into Stan Lee’s office around the turn of 1968-69 and waltzed back out with the assignment to pencil The X-Men

I’ve little doubt he believed that whenever he said it, but it’s not accurate.

Some time earlier, the two of us had introduced ourselves and carried on a conversation at one of the monthly get-togethers

of comics professionals and fans held at various people’s apartments in Manhattan. I’m fairly sure it was at the domicile of fan (and future Charlton editor) Bill Pearson, no later than summer of ’67, since I don’t think I had yet seen Neal’s classic “Deadman”… and I myself had been hosting those gatherings until shortly before. I was already vaguely aware of his work, having seen at least one war story he’d drawn for DC. While I recall little of our exchange that night, I’m sure I expressed admiration for his art (I’d been impressed by his draftsmanship, mostly), and it’s inconceivable that I didn’t say I’d love to see him drawing for Marvel sometime.

Well, I suppose it wouldn’t be all that surprising if Neal didn’t recall that evening’s encounter, even though he was a cultivator of editors and by then I was Marvel’s associate editor, second only to Stan.

Be that as it may: On the day Neal became X-Men penciler, Stan informed him I was the comic’s writer, and I was called in to meet him… again. If Stan had really told him before I entered, as Neal says on p. 44, that X-Men was due to be canceled “in two issues,” he was making no more than an educated guess, since in late 1968 it was still very much publisher Martin Goodman who decided such live-or-die matters, not Stan as editor. Stan would’ve kept X-Men going till MG pulled the plug. No Marvel title in that era was ever scheduled in advance to be canceled “in two issues,” as Neal says Stan told him.

After Neal and I left Stan’s office together, I quickly

This Beachhead Marvel!

Writer/associate editor Roy Thomas (on left) and artist Neal Adams (on right) in photos taken at the 1971 New York Comic Art Convention—apparently contemplating the splash page of The Avengers #93 (Nov. 1971). Far as we know, the two weren’t participating in the same panel when these pics were snapped; but that July 4th Manhattan weekend took place not long after they’d teamed up to co-produce that epochal issue, which was destined to lead to considerable animosity (intermingled, at least, with continued respect) between them. The inking of this best-remembered issue of the fabled “Kree-Skrull War” is by titanic Tom Palmer. Special thanks to Barry Pearl. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

Neal Adams Goes To War

volunteered—since I knew Neal had written a few DC stories by then—to step aside and let him script X-Men. Of course, Stan would’ve had to okay that; but I had little desire to scribe X-Men, being busy with Avengers and other series. Neal, however, immediately informed me that, no, he’d read some of my stories and they were fine and he’d like me to remain as writer.

Now, how that squares with his later statement(s) that he was totally unaware of me and my work prior to that meeting, I couldn’t begin to say. I only know what he said to me that day.

Perhaps, in retrospect, he later regretted inviting me to remain on X-Men… since when you got Roy Thomas the writer you also got Roy Thomas the de facto editor. I wouldn’t be content simply to dialogue whatever story he handed me; I’d want to be (and was) involved in the plotting process. In fact, the first issue Neal drew—#56—he worked from a synopsis I’d typed up for Don Heck.

Roy Thomas

The next memory I have of Neal—not long afterward—he dropped by Marvel to show me (and doubtless Stan) the start he’d made on the 15-pager. I don’t remember how many pages he brought in, but I vividly recall his sitting at a drawing board in the bullpen while he tightened up the rough splash page pencils he’d already begun, which featured the mammoth temple of Pharaoh Rameses II at Abu Simbel. My synopsis had called only for The X-Men to be flying over the Egyptian desert with the captured Living Pharaoh (no relation) in tow; Neal had set that action at the site of that ancient monument, which at that time was in the process of being relocated, stone by stone, so it wouldn’t be underwater after construction of the country’s Aswan Dam was completed in 1970. (Since, as a then would-be Egyptologist, I had contributed a few bucks to that relocation project back in 1963-64, I was aware of the situation.)

What really impressed me that day is that, though Neal had a small, curled-up photo of the temple tacked to the drawing table— and it’s at least conceivable that earlier he’d used an “artograph” machine to blow up that image and “trace” its general outlines onto the original art page (or maybe he hadn’t)—he was now, before my very eyes, just freehand-drawing in the details of the temple: the giant carven faces, the time-worn columns—with a photographic likeness and detail.

Give Me The Abu Simbel Life!

This story from Our Army at War #182 (July 1967) was the first thing Adams drew for DC Comics, under editor Robert Kanigher. The script is attributed to Howard Liss. This is only a few months before the artist’s groundbreaking debut on the “Deadman” series in Strange Adventures—so this tale may pin down the moment when Neal A. and Roy T. first met, after the one but before the other had appeared. Thanks to Mark Muller & Jim Ludwig. [TM & © DC Comics.]

The first page of Neal’s that Roy ever saw in pencil form was an early stage of the splash for The X-Men #56 (May 1969), which left Roy the Boy uncharacteristically speechless. The inks are by Tom Palmer, seen at left in a photo from the 1975 Marvel Comics Convention program book. Tom’s landmark-studded comics career will be covered in depth in Alter Ego #184. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

That was the moment I truly became a Neal Adams fan—and I have remained one, at least in my own individual way, ever since. (His fellow comics great Gil Kane always considered The X-Men, not Batman or Green Lantern/Green Arrow or The Avengers, Neal’s best run of work in the field.)

I wasn’t involved in Neal’s first dispute with Marvel—when Goodman rejected the cover he’d prepared for #56, because he’d drawn the mutants shackled to the letters of the X-Men logo, making the latter a bit hard to read, which Stan was okay with but which the publisher would not countenance, period. Neither Neal nor I nor anyone else ever thought the replacement cover he drew was the equal of the original… and Neal later said that after that experience he didn’t give as much thought to his Marvel covers as he did to his DC ones. A short-sighted attitude, of course, since a comic’s success or failure was at least partly related to the impression its cover made on prospective readers… but that was Neal.

With the next issue (#57, June ’69), Neal and I cemented our working relationship for the remainder of our various collaborations—X-Men, “Inhumans,” Avengers, “Conan”: Rather than have me type up a synopsis, he said he’d prefer we simply go out to lunch and talk out the story. As I had plenty else to do and that approach would simply relieve me of having to dream up one more plot a month on my own, I was agreeable… since there was never any discussion that he wanted any part of my scripting wage. (If there had been, I’d have said, no, thanks, and I’d have delivered him a several-page synopsis every month.) I knew that, in any disagreement re the storyline, I had the final say; but I’d have been hesitant about overruling him. Not because Neal might go crying to Stan (who tended to back his editors), but because I figured that almost anything the two of us came up with would wind up looking powerful and well-drawn on the page and would probably be a pleasure to script. And that’s the way it went, for the rest of The X-Men’s remaining original run.

Except for the deadlines, of course. Before I had any real concept of the problems those would cause, I acceded to Neal’s request to drop the title’s 5-page backup stories so he could draw 20 pages each issue. That, too, would unburden me of a bit of work… or so I thought at the outset.

Very quickly, however, I realized Marvel and I were at the mercy of Neal’s other deadlines—not only re his DC work, which he had no intention of dropping, but also work in advertising, which, I knew, paid far better than either comics company. My sole concern was Marvel’s deadlines, of course, not those of DC or an ad agency. And that slowly led to rising friction between us, despite all I could do to alleviate the situation… e.g., by finally commissioning Don Heck to pencil a story introducing the Japanese mutant Sunfire, published as X-Men #64 when the time pressures became just too great to ignore.

Along the way, though, there was fun and good work to be had. I don’t recall if it was Neal or I who came up with the concept of the “psychic vampire” who

soon became the Code-approved Sauron. Neal says it was him, and it doesn’t even matter to me if he was right. I had to concur and then hammer out the plot with him, and I could’ve reined him in on anything I felt necessary. But such was his talent, and our rapport at the time, that I rarely if ever overruled him. Why look for trouble?

Neal was full of challenges to a writer using the ultrasuccessful “Marvel method.” A few examples:

• Double-page spreads like the one on pp. 2-3 of #58, where I had to use all the skill I could muster to place my dialogue balloons so they’d lead the reader’s eye in the proper sequence across the pages. (Stan hated diagonally-angled panel borders, and I suspect they might’ve hurt us with younger fans, both in X-Men and in Gene Colan’s and my Doctor Strange—but I liked them and strove to make them work.)

• That title Neal pencil-lettered in for the story in #59—“Do or Die, Baby!”—which I hated but went along with. When Stan wanted that title changed after he saw the story inked, I talked him out of it, arguing that, while I agreed it was a poor title, it would needlessly annoy Neal if we changed it, so we shouldn’t.

• The blank space Neal left in the largest panel on p. 4 of #60, wherein he just lightly scribbled “Write pretty, Roy!” and I felt challenged to come up with a piece of narration that hopefully wouldn’t derail the story’s pacing. We both agreed it worked out fairly well.

Naturally, the pluses with Neal far outnumbered the minuses, far as I was concerned: the wonderful costume he came up for the mutant I’d named Havok, which used expanding and contracting

The X-Men #56—Lost & Found!

(Left:) Neal Adams’ original intended cover for The X-Men #56 (May ’69)—not used back in the day, but later colored (probably by Neal himself!) and since then popping up here and there. Actually, even if publisher Goodman had okayed that cover with its obscured logo, he would never have allowed anything like this metallic-looking coloring to see print in 1969! From the Internet.

(Right:) The published cover for #56; pencils and inks of both covers are by NA. Thanks to the Grand Comics Database. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

“Write

Pretty, Roy!”

(Above:) In an empty space that he indicated in the middle left of the penciled page 4 for The X-Men #60 (Nov. 1969), Neal simply scribbled “Write pretty, Roy!” and left it to RT to decide what (if anything) to write there. This perhaps suggests in a nutshell the somewhat playful relationship the two collaborators had in their early days. Inks by Tom Palmer. Thanks to Barry Pearl. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

(Right-hand side of page:) Three quotations from Neal Adams re collaborator Roy’s work, from an interview conducted by Martin Pasko for Word Balloons #3 (March 1974), published by Gary Groth. Thanks to Nick Caputo. (Incidentally, in the fifth line of the second box at right, Ye Editor believes the word “can” is a mis-transcription of “can’t”; the way it’s printed doesn’t make much sense.)

(Below:) Neal’s comment on two of his Silver/Bronze Age collaborators, from a 1978 interview conducted by Gary Groth for The Comics Journal. Thanks to Alex Grand. [All typeset text in this art spot © Fantagraphics, Inc.]

“I Listened To Stories” The Childhood & Origins Of NEAL ADAMS

by James Rosen

[A/E EDITOR’S NOTE: Well-known journalist James Rosen is currently writing an in-depth biography of Neal Adams’ life and career, both in and out of comics.]

Neal Adams’ first paid work as an artist came in 1951, when he was ten years old, at a Brooklyn saloon called Clark’s Bar. He was there accompanying his mother, Lillian Rose Barry Adams. Short, attractive, she had been orphaned as a child and possessed only a third-grade education.

During the long absences of her husband, Army Sgt. Frank Wayne Adams, then stationed in Germany and never much of a family man, Lillian, “terrifically lonely,” basked in the attention of Clark’s male customers. “She went to those bars not to get drunk or to have an affair,” her son said. “She went to those bars to have comradeship with people she could talk to and tell stories with and laugh.”

Invariably, she brought Neal along. “She took me, in effect, for protection,” the artist told me in one of our lengthy recorded interviews, more than twenty hours in all, in October 2018. “What could you do if a woman comes into a bar and she’s got her son with her? You really can’t go out. You really can’t shack up…. You can just hang out because that kid is not going to go away.”

Young Neal found the scene at Clark’s “boring,” but Lillian “would go to that place a lot… laughing it up and having a good time… people buying her drinks.” At the end of these evenings, she would cadge $10 from strangers, enough to cover the cab-fare back to Seagate, in Coney Island, where she operated a rooming house for boarders. Until then, Neal would stand at Clark’s jukebox and memorize the pre-rock’n’roll titles he saw, songs like “Come On-A My House” and “Accentuate the Positive.”

In time the youngster “fell in love with” a record called “Detour (There’s A Muddy Road Ahead)” by Patti Page (“Headed down life’s crooked road/lots of things I never knowed”). But as the Adamses were perennially “on the poor end of the spectrum,” Neal couldn’t always afford the nickel Clark’s charged for the jukebox. Already aware of his exceptional drawing talent, he came up with a remedy.

“I would find a way to draw somebody’s picture, and they would be stunned and happy by it because it looked just like

them... People got used to me there because I would draw their profiles. I would draw their pictures on napkins and placemats and they would give me a quarter so I could use it on the jukebox…. It gave me something to do.”

There was another skill he honed at Clark’s. “I became a father confessor,” he told me. “Anytime there was somebody with a sad story or a bad story and nobody would listen to them, they’d trap me at some table and they’d tell me their story. And I guess I was a good listener, or I would give good advice, or I would be sympathetic… So they sought me out [and] I got to listen to lots of stories. I became a great listener at ten years old to adults telling stories…. And I’m still a pretty good— damned good—audience. People like to tell me stories.”

An alcoholic, cheater, and deadbeat, Sgt. Adams abandoned his family for good when Neal was thirteen. They saw each other one additional time, in 1960, when Neal was nineteen. Frank’s last words to his son were: “You know, I never liked you.”

That was made clear to Neal early on. Once, when he was five or six and the family lived in Troy, New York, eight miles north of

The Artist & The Arrow

Neal Adams, as per his high school yearbook (class of ’59), and a Green Arrow sketch he drew for biographer James Rosen. [Green Arrow TM & © DC Comics.]

“He Is A Giant— And No Walk In The Park— But Yes, A Living Legend”

HOWARD CHAYKIN Interviews NEAL ADAMS

[NOTE: This interview, which was conducted in August 2020, originally appeared on the NeoText website and is © Howard Chaykin.]

INTERVIEWER’S INTRODUCTION: I first became aware of Neal’s work in the pages of Scholastic and Boy’s Life, in his work shilling for GE. I had no idea who he was—I was just a kid—and the work made little or no impression on me.

I first met him in the 1960s, when DC Comics was still conducting tours of the office. He was slim, and good-looking, and a good ten to twenty years the junior of everybody else in the office. This was before I’d seen what would become his comicbook output—and before I’d seen and studied the brilliant Ben Casey newspaper strip.

Like most kids, I had no eyes, so that brilliance I mention above didn’t impress me until much

later. But the comicbook work that began to flow from Adams flabbergasted me, just as, at the same time, the small cadre of comics enthusiasts who were my friends reacted with dismay to this material—with what can only be called the shock of the new.

His work was so radical a departure from what we were used to— the Gil Kane, Carmine Infantino, Murphy Anderson, Joe Kubert stuff—that it demanded an entirely new and different way of thinking about comics.

It’s been mostly forgotten over these many years, but those early jobs were often met with hostility from fans who, even then, were constricted by a conservative shortsighted constipation in their preferences.

What struck us was the alarming(!) and eccentric approach

Neal Adams & Howard Chaykin

Two singular comicbook artists—and a color commission by Adams of his early signature character Deadman. Courtesy of Heritage Art Auctions. [Deadman TM & © DC Comics.]

to layout and picturemaking, not to mention the predominance of pen work over brush, pen employed in a series of techniques that bore no resemblance to what we identified as traditional.

It wasn’t until a few years later, with the development of those eyes mentioned here, that I and others were able to draw the line from his drawing and rendering to the work of Stan Drake [artist of The Heart of Juliet Jones] and the like—which illuminated

The Doctor Is In!

This Is The Life!

a typically sniffy dismissal of Neal’s stuff from the typically sniffy Gil Kane—another mentor of mine, by the way.

“Neal Adams makes comics safe for commercial illustration,” he said, unwilling to or perhaps incapable of getting past that old-school traditional approach to comics.

In short order, of course, Neal developed followers, fans and acolytes. I was one of the latter, and after assisting Gil Kane, and ghosting a strip for Wallace Wood, Neal got me my first actual assignment at DC—for which, to be sure, I was utterly ill-equipped.

To be specific, and to be clear—he got my professional, signing-myown-work career underway. He carried that much weight at DC.

We went our separate ways in the late 1970s, seeing each other inadvertently at conventions or social gatherings. All the while, via his studio, he attempted to reignite and keep alive the sort of commercial use for comics that he learned at Johnstone and Cushing, where he produced that GE stuff—and which he left to do the Ben Casey strip, months before he turned twenty-one, and thus had to have his mother sign his contractual release.

I’m an old man now, and Neal’s got a decade on me, but we’re both still working. He’s moved from those razor-sharp pen lines of his youth to a more organic, and frankly baroque approach to the rendering of the figure, a figure which still retains that propulsive dynamism that defined the shock of the new for comics enthusiasts over a half-century ago.

He is a giant, and no walk in the park, but yes, a living legend.

HOWARD CHAYKIN: When and where’d you spend your childhood?

NEAL ADAMS: Since I’m an Army brat, my childhood was on the East Coast of the United States, including the Bronx, New York City, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and towns up and down the East Coast, and for a time Germany and finally Brooklyn.

HC: Where you a fan of comics—either newspaper strips or comicbooks? If so, which?

The Adams-drawn Ben Casey strip for March 6, 1966. Script by Jerry Caplin. Neal was 24 years old at the time he did this Sunday. Thanks to Heritage Art Auctions. [TM & © NEA Syndicate or successors in interest.]

Neal Adams illustrated the Chip Martin comic strip for Boy’s Life magazine from 1960 to 1966—which is where many youngsters first encountered his art. Scripter uncertain. [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

“Carmine Sent Me”

NEAL ADAMS On Being A Gadfly— And A Great Comics Artist

Interview Conducted by Bryan Stroud

INTERVIEWER’S INTRODUCTION: My lifelong best friend had begun The Silver Lantern, a website dedicated to documenting the Silver Age of DC Comics that we’d loved so much as boys… and, thanks to some lucky breaks and a little boldness on my part, I started reaching out to creators from that period to interview. This began in January of 2007 with a call to letterer Gaspar Saladino. I thought I’d hit the pinnacle with interview #4, with Carmine Infantino, in May of that year. During the conversation he asked, “Have you talked to Neal?”

“Well, no.” “Tell him I sent you.” Who was I to argue with Carmine Infantino? So I sent an e-mail to Neal Adams through his webpage, which I titled “Carmine Sent Me.” Neal responded, agreed to the interview, and it took place on May 28, 2007, as only the fourth one I’d conducted over the phone. I was on my way.

BRYAN STROUD: When did you start at DC, exactly?

NEAL ADAMS: Golly. There must be some historians around who can tell you that. I don’t know. It was in the ’60s. I’m sure some geek around will know exactly when that was, probably the month and the day. [INTERVIEWER’S NOTE: Wikipedia tells us it was 1967: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Neal_Adams ]

BS: Oh, no doubt. Carmine was telling me that he knew more than one person who worshipped the ground you walked on.

ADAMS: That’s ’cause I walk in very special places. I don’t walk along those cold cracks. [chuckles]

Neal & Friends

Neal

contemplates

Seduction of the Innocent came out [in 1954]…

BS: Ah, yes, good old Doc Wertham…

BS: He also told me… this one kind of surprised me… he said he first discovered you in the bullpen working on Jerry Lewis [comics], of all things. Is that true?

ADAMS: No. I was first introduced to Carmine… Carmine was, of course, as with many comicbook artists, a bit of a hero of mine, because when the s**t hit the fan in the country when the book

ADAMS: Many, many artists had to desert the field, or were hidden among the cracks and crevices in various places, like Al Williamson was doing, I guess, ghosting for certain comic strip artists, and I guess he would do a comicbook every now and then, and Alex Toth went to California to do animation, and all these guys really disappeared, and the few guys that were left were the guys at DC Comics. There was Joe Kubert, there was Russ Heath, there was Carmine, there was Gil Kane—Eli Katz was his original name.

And Carmine had a very unique style. He was then doing The Flash, and his style kind of got covered up, but I was a fan of his original style when he was doing “Pow-Wow Smith” and some of those other things, so as a fan, you know, to meet Carmine… and Carmine was actually working on staff… not really staff, he had a desk in with the romance editor… what’s his name? Miller. Jack Miller. Jack Miller and his girl assistant, and he was in there when I first came to DC Comics. I came to DC to try to get work with Robert Kanigher. The “much-beloved” Robert Kanigher.

BS: Sometimes referred to as “The Dragon”?

ADAMS: Who was a beast in human disguise. And I got to work with Bob, partially because he had lost Joe Kubert because I had recommended Joe to do

Adams

his cover for Batman #251 (Sept. 1973). Although others from Bob Kane through Jerry Robinson, Dick Sprang, Lew Sayre Schwartz, and Sheldon Moldoff had made significant contributions to the Caped Crusader’s artistic look over the preceding three decades, it was Neal who restored to the masked hero the visual aspect of the “Darknight Detective”—on his way to becoming the grim “Dark Knight” of the 1980s and beyond. Thanks to Bob Bailey. [TM & © DC Comics.]

A Jerry-mandered Cover Neal got a chance to draw the madcap comedian plenty of times on the cover of The Adventures of Jerry Lewis #104 (Jan.Feb. 1968). Courtesy of the GCD. (P.S.: Carmine Infantino you’ll see in a little bit!) [TM & © DC Comics.]

From The Sea”

a comic strip called The Green Beret that I had been asked to do, and the comic strip people had no idea who the good comicbook artists were, and when I realized that I really couldn’t do the strip… I was doing Ben Casey and I couldn’t handle two strips… I took the people from the syndicate and the writer down the path of possibly recognizing that there was such a thing as comicbooks, and rather than try to find somebody in the Ozarks, perhaps they ought to go to some of the best artists that were left in comicbooks, among whom was Joe Kubert, who was the perfect guy for the strip.

BS: Oh, sure. All his war-comic experience.

ADAMS: Yeah. So, I recommended him for The Green Beret to Elliot Caplin, the writer of the strip. [NOTE: Neal misspoke. The writer was apparently Jerry Caplin, the brother of Elliot—and of Al Capp (nee Caplin).] They interviewed him, and Joe worked on The Green Beret for the longest time; and Bob Kanigher, coincidentally, was a little short on artists. I had ended my syndicated strip, which was based on the Ben Casey TV series, and things were just a little bit slow for me. I had been doing some stuff for Jim Warren, and I realized I was putting way too much effort into that and it wasn’t worth it to me, and I thought maybe I’d give it a crack at DC Comics, in spite of the fact that, when I was a teenager and I’d left school, they wouldn’t even let me in the door.

It was a very bad time then. An old fella came out to meet me, a guy named Bill Perry, and I showed him my samples, just to try to meet an editor, and he told me he couldn’t even bring me inside. It didn’t matter if my stuff was good, it didn’t matter anything. They weren’t interested.

BS: That’s surprising.

The Caplin Brothers

ADAMS: No, not at all. For those times it was very typical. Not enough work to go around, and they were feeding the mouths that were faithful to them, and they just weren’t interested. Nobody really got in easily. Once in a while some guys broke through, like John Severin did a little work for a while, but it didn’t seem like that lasted and I guess he found something else in Crazy [sic—Neal clearly meant Cracked] magazine. But when I went there as a teenager, this very nice old guy just told me I’m wasting my time. As far as they were concerned, any minute the comicbook business would end.

How Green Was My Beret Joe Kubert’s 12-3-67 Sunday strip for the feature whose actual title was Tales of the Green Beret. Script by Jerry Caplin, though the official writer was book author Robin Moore. [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

(Left to right:) Elliot, Jerry, & Al Caplin, from a 1940 issue of Newsweek magazine. They’re examining a toy image of a Shmoo, the creation of Al (as “Al Capp”) in his ultrapopular comic strip Li’l Abner. Thanks to Art Lortie.

Joe Kubert

“Goddess

Splash page drawn by Neal Adams for Warren Publishing’s Vampirella #1 (Sept. 1969). Script by Don Glut. Thanks to Jim Kealy. [TM & © New Comic Company.]

Things were not so good.

BS: That just blows my mind to consider it.

ADAMS: Well, I’ll tell you another story that is actually coincidental to that story. Timely magazines, which later became Marvel, really wasn’t doing anything, and you didn’t even know where they were, and I was this 18-year-old kid who was trying to get some work, so I thought maybe I could go to Archie Comics and work for Jack Kirby and Joe Simon, who at that time were doing The Fly and The Shield for Archie Comics.

So, after failing at DC and searching around for nothing… I didn’t know where anybody was… I went over to Archie Comics and I showed my samples. The Archie guys obviously felt sorry for me, because I was foolish enough to want to do comics. Nobody did. Nobody was showing samples. It was a dead field. So they suggested I come back with some samples of The Fly, and they’d introduce me to either Joe Simon or Jack Kirby. So, I came back a week later with my samples and it turns out neither one of them was there.

So I showed my samples to the guys at Archie, and they looked at them sympathetically with kind of a sad look around their eyes, an embarrassed look, and they said, “Well, why don’t we get Joe Simon on the phone for you?” And so they did. Now, it turns out they had shown Joe Simon the samples I had brought in previously. Joe said to me, “Neal… young man, your samples are good. I’d use you on stories, but I’m going to do you a really big favor. I’m gonna turn you down, kid, because this is not a business to be in. It’s gonna fall on its face any day now and everybody’s gonna be out looking for other work and you want to get a job doing something worthwhile, so it may not seem like I’m doing you a favor, but I’m turning you down, and it’s the biggest favor anybody could ever do for you.” “Gosh, thank you, Mr. Simon.”

BS: How very gregarious.

ADAMS: So, the guys at Archie said, “Well, Neal, do you want to do some samples of Archie? Maybe we can give you some work doing our joke pages or something.” So I came back with some samples, and in the end I did work the “Archie” joke pages for a couple of months, and that’s how I got my first work in comics— because Joe Simon turned me down.

The end of that story is: Years later, I made my way into comics and the world of comics had changed, the revolution was on, Neal had established himself as a gigantic pain in the ass, but a sufficiently talented pain in the ass that they put up with me, and I was fighting for the return of original art and royalties and all the rest of it, and I was helping various people… I don’t know if I helped Jerry [Siegel] and Joe [Shuster] at that time or whatever. Anyway, I was up at DC, for whatever reason, and I’m talking to editors and people that I know, and apparently Joe Simon was up there, and the word was that he was fighting a battle over Captain America and some other things, because he felt he owned certain properties and under certain circumstances, blah, blah, blah.

Apparently, he was looking for Neal Adams. He was down the hallway somewhere, so I sought him out and introduced myself and he said, “Listen. Can I talk to you? I really have to get your advice on something.” And I said, “Well, DC has a coffee room.” So, we had a cup of coffee and Joe explained to me something of his situation with Captain America and the various characters he felt he had a right to, and I said, “Well, first of all, I can give you these two lawyers and I can give you this person here who seems to be fighting for graphic arts and I can tell you that you should begin by sending bills in and making a paper trail and establishing yourself with the people that you work with and the people who are in charge of the people that you work with as requiring and demanding that you didn’t have contracts; you have rights to these things, you have to create paper, and then you can go and see these people, although most lawyers won’t think much of this… but there are a couple lawyers that you can talk to and also people who are associated with the National Cartoonists Society that you should talk to.”

So, I wrote down a list and we got up. He said, “Thank you. You have no idea how much I appreciate this.” I said, “I have a pretty good idea.” And so we shook hands and he was gonna leave, and as he was about to leave I said, “Excuse me, Mr. Simon.” He turned around, he said, “Yeah?” I said, “I’d like to introduce myself. My name is Neal Adams.” He said, “I know.” I said, “Well, let me tell you a story….” He had no idea, no idea that this was the same person that he had spoken to. Absolutely no idea.

A Fly In The Ointment

(Above:) In another interview, Neal said that, although Joe Simon wasn’t around to go over his super-hero samples for “The Fly” series in 1959, the Archie group editors who were there that day preferred the above panel of his to one drawn by another artist (unidentified in the Grand Comics Database) for The Fly #4 (Jan. 1960). So they pasted his version of Tommy Troy’s insectular transformation over the other guy’s—and it became Adams’ first art ever published in a comicbook. Thanks to the Reddit site.

(Right:) Neal’s humor work initially saw print in Archie’s Joke Book #45 (March ’60). [TM & © Archie Comic Publications, Inc.]

Joe Simon

in later years. Adams recounts two meetings with the legendary artist/writer/entrepreneur, perhaps a decade or more apart.

I said, “No, no, that sounds great. If I’m going to have to do two green guys, it doesn’t really matter where I’m going. Let’s get crazy.” So essentially all I gave was approval. Denny went off and started writing very, very socially conscious stories. He knew that I would carry them through. It’s sort of like a writer and director, you know if the director is going to do the job, then you can basically focus on the story. So that’s what Denny did, he really focused on these stories and we did some pretty darn good stories, in my opinion, until we got to the drug thing.

BS: Yeah, I imagine the Comics Code kind of tripped that one up a bit.

ADAMS: Not really. What happened was, we were going along and Denny did a number of good issues. We attacked President Nixon and Vice President Spiro Agnew and that got a letter from the Governor of Florida telling us that if we ever do such a thing again, he’s going to discontinue distribution of DC comics in Florida. Florida has managed to keep that reputation, even up to recent years. So, we managed to ruffle some feathers along the way, but essentially nobody actually knew what we were doing until we were about into our third issue and then everybody liked it.

My good buddy Carmine will tell you he knew what was going on, but he had no idea. That was the good thing about it: No one was paying any attention, so we actually got really into the meat of it before anybody kind of woke up, so we were into our third or fourth issue by the time everybody goes, “Whoa! What’s going on here? This is like cool, or awful,” or whatever the hell they

might have thought.

So, we got into a number of issues, but we were starting to get into overpopulation by that point, and I was getting a little antsy because I don’t consider overpopulation to be what you call your “issue.” It’s a phenomenon and people have to deal with it, but if you have Americans getting vasectomies while Indians are having as many as 10 to 12 children in a family, this is not the solution to the problem. Not a good direction. So, people who can afford it not having kids—it’s just stupid.

Anyway, so I was feeling, we’re coming to the end of this run here, but you know what we haven’t done? We haven’t done anything on drugs. And it was a big issue, and the state of New York came to DC Comics and they wanted to do a drug comicbook, and Denny was asked about it and I was asked about it, so Denny did an outline and I did an outline of what kind of book it could be and they didn’t like our outlines, [laughter] and we had taken a lot of time. Both Denny and I had gone to Phoenix houses and we had talked to the guys and you know the s**t that you hear isn’t exactly the s**t you hear from the guys who are really junkies. Very, very different. I was also the president of the local board of our drug addiction house in the Bronx.

BS: So, you saw it all.

ADAMS: I saw it all, had some experience, and I was taking guys down from 42nd Street with their noses running on their bellies and locking them away into our local, what was originally a nunnery, and getting people in who were banging on the doors, and it was just like… nuts. Anyway, I knew a lot about it.

Before People Was Even A Magazine…

So, because I had a lot of experience, I had an awful lot of knowledge, and things were not, you know, “Oh, just stop. Just tell people no.” That’s not the way it is when you have a kid coming home from school at night and he’s got a load of homework to do and a load of things to do and he wants to enjoy himself and hang out with his friends but he can’t because he’s loaded down with homework and his dad comes home, kicks his shoes off, smokes a cigar, gets some booze and sits in front of the television, and yet he’s treated like a king and this kid is treated like s**t. A kid can get annoyed at that and perhaps unhappy, and if he hasn’t got too much to go to, there’s a very good chance that he will go to drug addiction. I can’t imagine why…

BS: [laughter] Yeah, go figure.

ADAMS: So, the problem with society, both of us,

(Left:) Neal didn’t really identify with the “overpopulation” theme of GL/GA #81 (Dec. 1970), which was probably partly inspired by Paul & Ann Ehrlich’s 1968 book The Population Bomb, whose first two sentences predicted (quite inaccurately, as it turned out) that hundreds of millions of people would starve to death during the 1970s. (Right:) The cover (and interior) of issue #83 (April-May 1971) used a visual image of Vice President Spiro Agnew as the villain, and resulted in a threat from Florida’s governor to block distribution of DC’s comics if such a thing happened again. Courtesy of the GCD. [TM & © DC Comics.]

You Ain’t Nothing Like A Hound Dog!

(Above left:) The other best-selling X-Men issue in the Adams run was #65 (Feb. 1970)—but, although Neal both plotted and penciled the latter yarn, editor Stan Lee wound up having Marie Severin pencil that particular cover, to be inked by Tom Palmer. Whether Neal still intended, at that point, to do any further penciling for the series is unclear. Courtesy of the GCD.

(Above:) Surely, one reason for the Severin-penciled cover is the fact that Lee wanted a more humanoid alien monster than Neal had penciled on p. 12 of #65, so that he had previously instructed Mirthful Marie to totally redraw that creature in both panels. Script by Denny O’Neil; inks by Palmer. Thanks to Barry Pearl.

(Left:) Jon B. Cooke printed, in his and TwoMorrows’ Comic Book Artist #3 (1999), this unused set of panels Neal penciled for X-Men #65, p. 12, but which Stan rejected. When he scripted these pages, Denny O. must’ve agreed that the alien creature looked very canine, as per his dialogue in the biggest of the two panels. Those lines got left in the issue, even after the monster was redrawn to be far more humanoid. Thanks to Nick Caputo for finding this for us! [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

NEAL ADAMS Talks About “A View From Without.....”

A Story Of The Vietnam War Interview Conducted & Transcribed

by Richard J. Arndt

INTERVIEWER’S INTRODUCTION:

In 1971 Neal Adams produced and published one of the hardest-hitting Vietnam War stories to appear in the genre. Entitled “A View from Without…..,” it debuted in an independent black-&white magazine called Phase

This 2015 interview, which features Adams talking about that story, ended up considerably different from what I had initially imagined. I had prepared a list of questions dealing with his obvious attempt to use this tale as a showcase for various art approaches to telling a comic story—since nearly every panel featured a different artistic approach or technique: straight pen & ink; pencils only; shaded charcoal; even a panel on every page in fumetti style, starring Adams himself as an alien narrator. I particularly wanted to discuss a tribute panel to Joe Kubert that appeared in the story, featuring an African-American soldier standing over an American grave, with the slain soldier’s rifle and helmet as a grave marker—a very familiar Kubert image for those who read his DC war tales.

However, Adams was completely uninterested in discussing any of that. He wanted to talk about Vietnam, his feelings and perceptions about the war, and the way it was ultimately published—in an early independent/ground-level (and vastly overpriced for the day) magazine. It was the only war story in the magazine, which featured largely fantasy, science-fiction, and underground-type stories intended for adults. Adams’ desire to point the interview that way was, in my own opinion, entirely correct.

RICHARD ARNDT: You published “A View from Without…..” in 1971, but you’ve mentioned elsewhere that you wrote and drew it some years earlier than that.

NEAL ADAMS: Yes, I did.

RA: Was there a particular magazine or project you were doing it for?

wordless “Prologue” page of “A View from Without…..” Written & illustrated by Neal Adams. Thanks to Glenn McKay & Art Lortie. [© Estate of Neal Adams.]

ADAMS: I was contacted, in 1965 or so, by the brother of writer Jerry Caplin, who wrote the Ben Casey comic strip I was drawing at the time. Jerry was a brother of Al Capp, the creator of Li’l Abner. But this brother was Jerry’s other brother—Elliot Caplin

[INTERVIEWER’S NOTE: the original family name]—who was more of a professional writer and was doing something like four different comic strips at the time. Elliot had the opportunity to do the Tales of the Green Beret comic strip, which was based on the best-selling book by Robin Moore. In fact, Moore’s name was on the strip, but Caplin actually wrote it. [A/E EDITOR’S NOTE: Whichever Caplin brother Neal met with, comic strip expert Alberto Becattini informs us it was Jerry Caplin who actually scripted the early Green Beret strip.]

I really couldn’t do two strips at once, but Elliot arranged that I have lunch with Robin Moore and I did. I guess because I was “gung ho,” [laughs] he talked a lot about things that were happening in Vietnam. Some of them, the things he described as going on, were from my point of view quite disturbing. I was also in touch with certain newspaper folk because I was a syndicated strip artist, so I had access to certain things that I might not otherwise have access to. Things that many people at the time may not have been aware of.

As I said, the lunch was very disturbing, and I think that it went on for nearly three hours. I found Robin Moore to be thoroughly reprehensible. He seemed to glory in the horror that was going on in Vietnam. It was one thing to have a war. My dad was in the Army. He fought in World War II. When I was a kid I heard a lot of stories about war. There was the dark side to it, you know, and a noble side. The dark side was pretty rough.

It was the “dark side” that Robin Moore focused on. The idea of wearing a string of people’s ears around your neck was delightful to him. I also heard things throughout during that conversation with Moore that made me aware of some of the things that were going on in that war—even as early as 1965. Things like the use of napalm—and white phosphorus, which if you handled it

and it got in the palm of your hand it was best for you to let it eat through the hand and fall out the other side rather than try to get it off, because it would melt anything it touched.

It was pretty firm in my mind that I was not going to do this comic strip, so I recommended Joe Kubert as the artist for the strip. Still, there were things that I was learning about Vietnam, which was essentially a civil war. The Vietnamese civilian population was embroiled in a conflict between opposing Vietnamese soldiers. Whichever side the civilians were on, they were pretty much grist for the mill. So, having heard these stories, I decided to draw a story dealing with that kind of event. A little story, with one person. So I did, and I was thinking of sending it off for the possibility of publication. But this was some time before things like the My Lai massacre had been revealed to the American public. [INTERVIEWER’S NOTE: The My Lai massacre occurred in the Vietnamese village of My Lai on March 16, 1968, committed by American troops, who killed 504 civilians, including 182 women—17 of whom were pregnant—173 children, and 53 infants. The news of the massacre was covered up and didn’t become public knowledge in the States until November 1969.] Certain other atrocities that had been taking place were not common knowledge.

At that time, to put out that particular story without the general public having that knowledge, I thought, would perhaps be a danger, not only to myself, but to my family. My family was my biggest concern. I thought, “I’ve drawn it. It’s pretty good, but I don’t want to do this.” I didn’t want to get hit by it.

About a year or two later, some of that stuff started coming out, becoming general knowledge. Villagers were being killed. Some were castrated, etc. It was only after that that I had the balls to see about getting the story in print. It was because the truth of those things I was writing and drawing in that particular story were finally being reported for the general American public. I cursed myself for being the coward that I was for not putting out the story earlier. Maybe I might have saved some lives. You

Our Army At War—Vietnam Edition

One of the things interviewer Richard Arndt had wanted to discuss with Adams was this Joe Kubert homage panel from the fifth page of the story—but the artist (who had himself photographed in “alien” makeup to narrate the yarn) had other ideas. Thanks to Art Lortie. [© Estate of Neal Adams.]

Robin Moore

Author of the memoir/history Tales of the Green Beret, and generator (and official writer) of the comic strip inspired by the book.

Monster’s Comic Crypt!

Michael T . Gilbert’s 2023

Comic Art Portfolio! (Part 2)

Icreated Dr. Strongfort Stearn way back in 1983, and have been writing and drawing my monster-fighting hero ever since. In the course of doing so, I experimented with a variety of art and writing styles. Such is the case with the drawings in my Mr. Monster “portfolio.”

I’m hoping our “Crypt” fans will enjoy a sneak peek at some of my more recent Mr. Monster pin-ups and such (most of which have never previously seen print!). Let’s start with…

A Perplexing Mystery!

For some reason, Mr. Monster’s never tangled with one of H.P. Lovecraft’s murky eldritch monsters––most famously, the ancient god Cthulhu. I decided to rectify that oversight with the picture that graces this issue’s intro page. Hopefully, Mr. Monster will figure out the subtle clues concerning the gruesome demise of the bow-tied chap before it’s too late!

Mr . Monster: Sushi For Supper!

The 2020 Mr. Monster commission below was unusual in two respects. First, I had never drawn my hero fighting an underwater monster, nor had he encountered a sexy mermaid during his travels. I had fun with both. Gotta love that creepy Skull-topus, too!

Beyond that, I wanted to try my hand at a horizontal layout, something a bit unusual for me. I subsequently colored it in Photoshop, hoping to achieve an underwater feel.

Destructive Comics!

Many Alter Ego readers, like myself, started collecting comics in the late 1950s. And many of those kids (though they didn’t know it at the time!) were Shelly Moldoff fans. That’s because Bob Kane made sure his signature was the only one on all comics featuring Batman.

But if you were reading the silly sci-fi era Batman, or the great fantasy-oriented stories of the ’50s, chances are they were written by Bill Finger and drawn by either the great Dick Sprang or the more cartoony Shelly Moldoff.

That was the era when Batman would become a Zebra Batman, or a Giant Batman, or a Merman Batman, or even… a Mummy Batman!

If You Knew Sushi Like I Know Sushi… Michael T.’s “Sushi For Supper,” flanked by another spicy dish! [TM & © Michael T. Gilbert.]

FCA’s Farewell To NEAL ADAMS

Fans Of The Original Captain Marvel Pay Homage To The Artist’s SHAZAM! Art

FCA

EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION:

We celebrate artist Neal Adams with tributes from four past and present FCA contributors: Zorikh Lequidre, a graduate of the School of Visual Arts, who has worked for the Big Apple Comic Con since 2003 and is currently writing Captain Marvel Culture, a definitive history of all the characters with the Captain Marvel moniker… Mark Lewis, 20-year veteran animator for numerous Hollywood studios, as well as being FCA’s cover coordinator … Eric Jansen, a writer/artist who has produced Christian tracts distributed all over the world, including half a million copies of his Paraman mini-comic … and finally, Alex Ross, master comics painter who powerfully rendered Captain Marvel in DC Comics’ Kingdom Come, Justice, and Shazam: Power of Hope.

I myself was one of many who were enthralled with Neal’s superlative renditions of Captain Marvel for DC Comics products and licensees in the 1970s. His clear understanding of the character’s true essence shone forth in those illustrations that skillfully assimilated Cap back into the modern world.

If only Neal had been given the opportunity to draw a full Captain Marvel story! Alas, such an addition to his long list of awe-inspiring achievements can now exist only in our mind’s eye. —P.C.

Hamerlinck

ZORIKH LEQUIDRE:

I got to see Neal Adams regularly, and we became friendly acquaintances through my work with the Big Apple Comic Con over the years. I’ve been a fan of Neal’s since the 1978 release of Superman vs. Muhammad Ali [All-New Collectors’ Edition #C-56].

Can You Spell “Iconic”?

As you’ll see in this edition of FCA, fans—and pros—are still talking about this perfect image of Captain Marvel and Billy Batson that Neal Adams drew for the 1976 Super DC Calendar. Inks by Dick Giordano. [Billy Batson & Shazam hero TM & © DC Comics.]

In my research on the many Captain Marvels, I’ve sought out anyone who has done any work on any CM, and that included Neal. For Marvel Comics he drew “Kree-Skrull War” stories in The Avengers that featured Captain Mar-Vell …and he also did illustrations for DC that included the original Captain Marvel. He said that the “real” Captain Marvel was “the Big Red Cheese” and that he didn’t really count “the other guy.” And, just

as he fought for the rights of creators and artists to be adequately compensated and appropriately credited for their work, he had strong opinions about the whole business regarding Marvel’s hold on the Captain Marvel name.

At the Big Apple Comic Con in 2008, he gave me just over a minute of priceless video footage. His statement, for the record, in its entirety, was as fine a piece of direct talk as there ever could be:

“For anyone who is interested in my opinion, and I don’t feel it’s required that you be interested in my opinion, I think it would be very, very nice for Marvel Comics to encourage the idea within the company that Captain Marvel should be known as the character that is essentially owned by DC Comics now, should be called Captain Marvel on the cover of the comicbook. For the sake of copyright protection, for the sake of ego, for the sake of competition, Marvel Comics has, in effect, made it impossible to call Captain Marvel ‘Captain Marvel.’ We are a family business. We are a mom-and-pop business. That’s a stupid attitude to take. I don’t care whose