To read Part One click HERE. To read Part Two click HERE. To read Part Three click HERE. To read Part Four click HERE To read Part Five click HERE.  The Legend Begins: Part One (of Five)RIK OFFENBERGER: When I announced I had this interview with you, SBC staff writer Michael Deeley asked me to convey our feelings that you are the definitive Batman artist and that the character has yet to regain the heights achieved under your tenure. NEAL ADAMS: You mean the ancient Neal Adams is good, he did this great Batman too bad he died. Well, I have done some other things. I was just talking to Michael Gross yesterday - he was the ex-editor and art director of National Lampoon. We talked about the days when the National Lampoon was a really good magazine and it had some things like Son of God comics in it, and features like that, that were pretty ground breaking. All he gives a damn about is the stuff I did for National Lampoon and I reminded him I did Batman and he said, “Oh yeah, you did that.” It’s a frame of reference kind of thing. OFFENBERGER: Exactly. You went to the Manhattan School of Art & Design? ADAMS: It didn’t have the name Manhattan in it. It was The School of Industrial Arts. S.I.A we called it. OFFENBERGER: Did you study cartooning? ADAMS: They had a cartooning class called Cartooning. It dealt with “big foot cartooning.” In the Biz we have a thing called “big foot cartooning” and “little foot cartooning.” “Big foot cartoons” are gag cartoons and Walt Disney [characters], and all those things that have big feet. “Little foot cartoons” are like Superman and Batman - they have feet in proportion to their bodies. S.I.A. taught “big foot cartooning.” They didn’t focus on “little foot cartooning,” which is what I was interested in - comic books. I was told that I was wasting my time to even ask about that because not only did they not teach it, they thought that anyone interested in doing it was mentally deranged. Comic books were about to go out of business. America had turned it’s back on comics. Why was I even considering that I might find a future in doing it, because nobody is doing it? OFFENBERGER: That must have been encouraging. ADAMS: I said, nevertheless, that’s what I am interested in. I told them that is what I wanted to do, and they said, “There isn’t going to be any work for you. It’s gone.” As testimony to that, if you check everybody’s age in comic books there isn’t anyone within five years of my age who started in comic books. There are a couple of writers who did something else and then got into comics later who are close to my age. There is one artist, Jim Steranko, who was a magician that kind of slipped into comics, who is about my age. But he didn’t start as I did; aimed at getting into comics. If you were to check even closer you would probably find there was no one within seven years of my age. That means there was a 10 to 15 year dearth, an emptiness of people studying to do comic books. I find it interesting that I can’t find anyone near my age. OFFENBERGER: At the time there were only Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman, no other superheroes. There was Archie. ADAMS: There were no horror comics. The closest thing you got to horror or mystery was My Greatest Adventure, Mr. District Attorney, or Strange Adventures. DC Comics was the last bastion of comic books. Everyone else was either driven out of business or driven so far underground you didn’t even recognize them as comic books. Even the cartoon books, most of them were gone. Disney was in and out, but basically on their way out, and you had Harvey Comics and you had Archie Comics. It was a terrible time. I wanted to study comics and the school didn’t want to teach me comics, but there was me and a group of other people in my class who kind of insisted on learning about comics and comic books. I don’t know what happened at the school but a year after we got in and made it clear we wanted to study comic books, they changed the class from Cartooning to Cartooning and Comic Books. They allowed one teacher, Charles Allen to teach about comic books. By the third year they had enough students who were pushing for this that they hired another teacher to teach the cartooning guys. OFFENBERGER: Did any of your classmates go on to do comics? ADAMS: In a related sense. Comic books and cartooning has a much broader sense, although one might not think so from the outset. My friend Ken Stitzer went on to be a special effects titles guy. After he drew Mr. Magoo and some other comic books, he went to into filming special effects at R. Greenberger, one of the best special effects title companies in the world. Ed Maslow went on to Pratt and then became a high level creative director. Bob Versandi, who did some Archie Comics, went on to advertising and became an art director and creative director. Other didn’t quite do so well. This is because the teachers were right - there were no comics. There was no opportunity in comics; there was no place in comics. I found by bitter experience that even I (who had probably the best portfolio you could possibly have) couldn’t even get through the door to see the editors to do comics books. They were right, I was wrong. A common experience for me. OFFENBERGER: After you graduated you applied at DC, what was that like? ADAMS: A guy named Bill Perry met me in the lobby and he told me why he couldn’t bring my art in for anyone to see. He looked at it briefly and sadly and said, “Terrific, this is really good stuff. Fifteen years ago, 20 years ago, you would have gotten work right away, but I can’t take you in to even see anyone”. I asked if I could see an editor and he said, “Kid you’re wasting your time.” OFFENBERGER: Obviously they had no plans for a future. ADAMS: If you’re a wounded dog and you have been shot in both legs and your ass, and there’s a wolf at the front of the alley, you don’t think about your future. You are just trying to stay alive. I own my own company. The people who do the work don’t think about where the company is going. Just the guy who owns the company thinks about what we are going to be doing next year. OFFENBERGER: What made you decide to apply at Archie Comics? ADAMS: I didn’t go to Archie to work on Archie. I went to Archie to work for Joe Simon and Jack Kirby; to work on the Fly or the Shield. They had a series of superhero titles at Archie and I tried to see those guys and get work. They never came into the office. I ended up talking to Joe Simon on the phone, but I never even got to meet them. I went there weekly trying to get work and to drop my samples off. In the end I never got anything.  OFFENBERGER: Your first professional work was in the Adventures of the Fly? ADAMS: Not really true. I was told by the people at Archie that Mr. Joe Simon would be interested in samples of the Fly. I did three or four pages on the Fly. I brought them in and left them there for Mr. Simon and was told he wasn’t in. I came back the following Wednesday and Joe Simon wasn’t there again. I’m this 17-year-old kid who has done four pages of samples for Mr. Simon and he hasn’t even come in. They felt sorry for me, so they got him on the phone and he said, “Ah, young man, I looked at your samples. They are very nice, but I have decided to do you a big favor. You’re not going to think it’s a favor, but I think it is the best thing in the world for you. Your samples are good and we could probably use you, but the truth is you have a good career [ahead of you]. You know how to draw. There are other things you should be doing with your life, not comic books. It’s a waste of your time. So I am advising you to do something else and I am turning you down.” To which I said, “Thank you, Mr. Simon.” OFFENBERGER: It must have been hard to do that. ADAMS: Twenty years later Joe Simon sought me out to get advice on how he might handle his character’s rights. I sat and talked to him for a half hour in the DC coffee room, gave him names and such. He never realized or remembered I was the kid he talked to all those years ago. The guys at Archie felt sorry for me and they said, “Maybe you want to do some samples for Archie?” I thought, “Any port in a storm,” so I started to do samples for Archie and I left my Fly samples there. A couple weeks later when I came in to show my Archie samples, I noticed that the pages were still there, but the bottom panel was cut off of one of my pages. I said, “What happened.” They said, “One of the artists did this transition where Tommy Troy turns into the Fly and it’s not very good. You did this real nice piece so we’ll use that, if it’s ok.” I said, “That’s great. That’s terrific.” Meanwhile, I had managed to do enough samples to get Archie work, not a regular story, but the Archie Joke Book. In which you write, pencil, letter and ink your whole page or half page, according to what you sold, for $32.50 a page. OFFENBERGER: It sounds like a lot of work, but at least it was work. ADAMS: Well, those Archie guys saved my ass. I had work, because $32.50 was half of a decent paycheck and if I did two pages in a week I had a full paycheck. If I did four pages in a week I had a double paycheck. So I did as many as I could. [Adventures of the Fly #4] was my first work, and that panel was printed in a comic book. It probably is one of the greatest collector’s items you could get of mine. If you could get that Fly comic book that has that panel you could probably sell it for $800, or whatever the hell ridiculous price collectors charge. OFFENBERGER: After Archie you went to work for Warren Publishing and did some horror work for them? ADAMS: I wouldn’t call it horror work, but yes, whatever they called it. Even so, Warren was years later. I had a whole career between Archie and Warren. Almost two careers. OFFENBERGER: What was your first regular work? ADAMS: My first regular work was at Archie. My second regular work was doing backgrounds on a strip called Bat Masterson. Based on the Bat Masterson TV show for Howard Nostrand, who was an ex-comic book artist, and now became an advertising commercial artist. OFFENBERGER: You did Ben Casey too. ADAMS: That was (again) later. It’s easy to compress those things together in time, but from my point there was for me an eon between the two. I got out of school and did Archie pages and backgrounds for this guy who was doing this Bat Masterson strip. I got the opportunity to do my own comic strip based on the Ben Casey TV series a couple of years later, after I had been through a very long, dense and powerful learning curve. That was a miracle. It was, in fact, a whole career with many parts. Then, and only after that massive ‘career’ did I get the comic strip. OFFENBERGER: Even today it is hard to get newspaper comic strips. ADAMS: The truth is the good comic strips are gone. If you want to read comics strips you read comic books, you don’t read comic strips. What comic strips are now is what they used to call “a gag a day.” It’s a gag but it’s in three panels. Rarely do you have an ongoing comic strip that people might consider for movies or radio show. It used to be that comic strips were the ultimate comic achievement. You got lots of money, you got lots of recognition, and you could wear a tux and a bow tie and go to the cartoonist society and have dinners, and nifty stuff like that. [You got to] meet Hollywood stars and maybe have a movie made out of your stuff. That was a different [time]. When I got into comic strips, the business was hitting its last rung, its last high point. I got it on the downslide. I managed to do a syndicated strip; probably the youngest artist to ever do [one]. OFFENBERGER: That’s quite an accomplishment, how did you get that assignment? ADAMS: You know who Al Capp is? OFFENBERGER: Yes. ADAMS: The guy who did Li'l Abner. Well, he had two brothers, Jerry Capp and Elliot Caplin. Elliot Caplin was the only one in the family that kept the Jewish last name. Al and Jerry changed their name to Capp. Elliot was a writer - he wrote Juliet Jones, Big Ben Bolt, Mary Worth and some other strips. [He was] very prolific and very good at what he did. Jerry, his brother, did other things. Rarely did he write, but he fancied himself a writer. What happened was, Elliot -the more intellectual brother - got a chance to do a syndicated strip based on the Dr. Kildare television show. At that time there were two competing terrific television shows, Ben Casey and Dr. Kildare. They were probably the hottest things on TV. Elliot got a hold of Ken Bald who had previously done another strip. Together they turned out the Dr. Kildare strip. Jerry, the youngest brother, [who was] perhaps a little jealous of his brother, thought, “Why don’t I do the Ben Casey comic strip?” So he went and procured certain rights to do a Ben Casey comic strip and he searched out a possible comic book artist or cartoonist. A call came to a place I was working at, Johnstone & Cushing. Samples were sought and I went up to meet Jerry. He invited me to do samples for this comic strip, and we would become partners. I don’t think he expected to run into Neal Adams. But Neal Adams wasn’t Neal Adams then. He was just this 20-year-old guy who wasn’t old enough to sign a contract. So we sent samples, we sold it. Newspaper Enterprises bought it. We did the syndicated strip for three and a half years. My second career. OFFENBERGER: That’s a decent run. ADAMS: It would have run longer, if it wasn’t unhappy from the inside. I was invited to do it for as long as I wanted but it really wasn’t what I wanted to be doing. I didn’t really want to be doing comic strips or books. I really wanted to be an illustrator - a commercial illustrator - that was my goal. At the time I was doing the Ben Casey comic strip, I was doing storyboards and things for advertising agencies because the comic strip wasn’t paying very well. And the deal that was set up initially wasn’t a very good deal, so it rankled me quite a bit. The writing wasn’t good. OFFENBERGER: So, it was time to move on? ADAMS: I did move on. I made an illustration portfolio that took me six months to do. I took it to various advertising people. I left it at one place overnight and when I came back to get it the next morning it was gone. So six months worth of work down the drain and now I still needed to feed my family. So I went to Jim Warren’s company because I thought, “This is someone new doing comic books. Maybe I could get some work there.” I took my work there and met Archie Goodwin, probably the nicest person in comics. It wasn’t much of a conversation. Archie just gave me a script. I wasn’t expecting it to be so easy. I started the beginning of my comic book career. End of Part One. Look for Part Two tomorrow. To read Part One click HERE. To read Part Two click HERE. To read Part Three click HERE. To read Part Four click HERE To read Part Five click HERE. |
