RKMBs Forums Thread Like Summary - Neal Adams, his art and his influence

I'd rank Adams as second only to Kirby in his level of influence on the comics field. I used to say Adams was my favorite comics artist, until I realized in the late 1980's he's pretty much everyone's favorite artist.

To a new generation of comics readers, that might not be as true, as he was doing his peak work in the 1967-1974 period, and very sporadic contributions to the field after that.
But for anyone who is a fan of John Byrne, Bob McLeod, early Frank Miller, Berni Wrightson, Mike Grell, Frank Brunner, Jim Aparo, Mike Nasser, Rich Buckler, Tom Grindberg, Bill Sienkiewicz, Adam Hughes, Bryan Hitch, Paul Neary, Brent Anderson, Pat Broderick, Jim Starlin, Will Simpson, Dave Sim, and pretty much any other artist who follows in the "realism" school of comics, whether readers realize it or not, that all flows from Neal Adams.


I actually thought recently that, while Adams has done a good amount of work in comics, at least up till around 1982, and more sporadically after that, Adams has had far more influence, in proportion to the relatively small amount of work he's done in comics.
But most of his work appeared in the 1967-1974 period, certainly his most influential work.
Then Adams came back in 1977-1978 and did a lot of really nice covers for DC, and the super-long DC Limited Collectors' Edition SUPERMAN VS. MUHAMMAD ALI.

Then he was out of comics again, and came back sporadically to do a story for EPIC ILLUSTRATED 7 in 1981 (that actually was a shelved Power Records book, that was finally revised and printed in EPIC), 20 pages of Conan movie storyboards in SAVAGE SWORD OF CONAN 61, and MS MYSTIC for Pacific Comics in 1982, and a few other scattered projects, until his Continuity Comics line began around 1984.

Although I liked the Continuity titles, my complaint with that line is it's very difficult to separate the Adams work from the Adams-clone work in those books. And the stories are rather vapid, reminiscent of the writing in mid-1960's DC books. But still, very nice art, and some beautiful design and covers. And great to see Adams design an entire line of books, rather than just being an employed freelance artist, as he was at Marvel DC, Warren, Harvey, Seaboard-Atlas and other publishers.

Then after Continuity folded in 1993-1994, nothing from Adams for a long time, until his fairly recent new BATMAN and DEADMAN stories, which definitely aren't a sample of Adams' best work.

But regardless, Adams' work represents some of the very best stuff ever done in comics, and it endures as the best, and has been very influential on several generations of comics artists ever since, for over 50 years now.

I saw recently that Adams (born June 15, 1941) just celebrated his 79th birthday.
Even the young new talents of that era are old men now...

.



BATMAN 221, May 1970, one of my favorite Adams BATMAN covers.
Frank Robbins story, Novick/Giordano interior art.

https://viewcomiconline.com/batman-v1-221/