I always use images from my favorite comicbook artist JOHN BYRNE and FRANK MILLER when I am discussing comics and their storytelling, but I have only hinted at the artist that gave birth to both of their styles. NEAL ADAMS was one of the great graphic storytellers that comics has ever known. He took the art to another level from the classic predecessors JACK KIRBY, JOE SIMON and STEVE DITKO. He was the pioneer that took comicbooks from being campy kids play into the aspect of adult entertainment.
I first found NEAL ADAMS work during my X-Men collecting heydays. He drew a series of books before the original title was put on hiatus. His details were so fucking killer. He would draw a close up of a character yelling and you could see the linework in the character’s teeth. NEAL ADAMS also broke through the traditional story board framework that comics employed by illustrating characters stretching and arching all over a page. His work suggested movement like no one else did on a flat two-dimensional plane.
The other thing that NEAL ADAMS did with his writing partner DENNIS O’NEILL was to bring current adult themes into their storylines. Batman became darker and more brooding. Green Arrow and Green Lantern weren’t just fighting super-powered bad guys either. They were battling drug dealers and racism. ADAMS brought his sense of politics and justice into his art way back in the 60’s. FRANK MILLER would do the same almost twenty years later.
NEAL ADAMS touched all the iconic heroes that DC Comics had under their banner. He drew tons of Green Lantern Green Arrow issues and even did some work on Superman. Though I am mostly fond of his Batman artwork which went against the campy, clownish Batman character that was popular during the 1960’s due to the televison program. NEAL ADAMS’ Batman was a dark, determined bruiser. The Joker character under ADAMS became more of a violent sociopath as well. This theme inspired future artists and storytellers to design these iconic characters as complex and conflicted individuals. No one surpasses MILLER’s treatment of Batman in the ‘Dark Knight Returns’ series, but you can see how he literally and figuratively used NEAL ADAMS’ pencil lines to trace the outline for his epoch epic.
