Meeting Neal Adams

 [With the sad news today of Neal Adams’ passing at age 80, I thought I’d post this piece I’ve been holding back for a while.  baggsey (Ian)]

© Forbidden Planet. Neal Adams at Forbidden Planet 16th June 1979

My good chum Nigel Brown tells me that we first met Neal Adams in Forbidden Planet at their old premises in Denmark Street, London on June 16th 1979 at a signing that Neal Adams was doing to promote a Ms Mystic art portfolio. Nigel reminds me that we had to queue around the block to get in. My mate Geoff Cousins tells me the same thing ; that he has a note in his pocket diary from those days that we headed to London on June 16th 1979 and met the great man himself. Nigel relates how Neal signed one of his comics.

I have no strong memory of any of this. Well, perhaps an inkling of remembrance of the queue outside the shop. I have no idea why. Okay - at that time I was approaching twenty and my interest in comics had waned considerably, and I was getting into pulps and private detective fiction, but surely I would remember meeting Neal Adams?  Surely I got something signed by him? But I have only the vaguest memory of it, and even the photo that Forbidden Planet published in their 40th anniversary magazine (reproduced above)  does not trigger a strong memory.

So it was 30 years later, on the evening of Friday Oct 16th, 2009 that I came across an ad that the New York Comic Con was being held at the Jacob Javits Center in NYC over the next 2 days (I’d already missed opening day ), and on a whim I resolved to head to New York City the following Saturday morning on the off-chance that  I could meet my teenage idol Neal Adams. I’d heard that he was working on a new Batman comic in collaboration with Frank Miller (which would eventually be Batman Odyssey (sans Miller)), and thought that this might be my one chance to meet the guy. 

American Airlines had a promotion for return tickets from Chicago to New York for $69 return from O’Hare to La Guardia, so I took the plunge. I could get up early, drive to the airport, get a 6:30am flight, head to the con, have lunch, and be back home that evening. I mentioned my intentions to both sons (aged 17 and 15 at the time) and they voiced their desire to accompany their middle aged Dad (presumably to stop me getting lost).

So the following morning at quarter past 10am all three of us, having landed in New York, found ourselves  in a taxi traveling past Long Island City and by 11:25am, I was shaking hands with the great man himself.

It happened this way.

When we got to the con, the doors had already opened, and as we entered the complex we were confronted by crowds of people in cosplay milling around. There were multiple Rorschachs (remember this was the year of Zack Snyder’s Watchmen).

Almost immediately I was button-holed by a number of art dealers who pressed their business cards on me (presumably assuming I was in the business). Although the NYCC is probably still the largest comic con on the East Coast (and probably has the largest number of well-known dealers) it is increasingly dominated by individuals in costume who have trouble discerning the line between reality and fantasy. This makes for an uneasy mix of professional artists and writers, long-time dealers and hordes of people for whom the Marvel and DC films dominate their waking hours (but have little interest in the comics themselves).

Anyway, having spent a while looking at original art on display behind glass display cases, we headed further into the arena along celebrity row, where actors of cult TV shows had individual booths.

We passed David Hedison of “Voyage To the Bottom of the Sea” fame in his own booth standing next to a model of the Nautlius on display. I didn’t ask if he’d made it himself.

Jackson Bostwick (Captain Marvel from the 1977 “Shazam!” TV series) looked lonely and depressed in his booth, with no-one stopping by. It probably didn’t help that he was lounging back on an orange plastic chair with his feet propped on the low fence at the front of the booth.

Lou Ferrigno (The Incredible Hulk) was grinning, flexing his biceps, and posing with fans for photographs. Seemed a very approachable guy.

Silver haired, sharp-suited Jim Steranko was being interviewed in the main lobby by Mickey Dolenz of Monkees fame (wearing Pork-Pie hat) for a news segment.

Adam West, Julie Newmar and Adam West’s son were setting up their table getting ready for punters to pay $50 a time ("cash only please") for a photo with Mr West. [I cannot fault this approach, as both actors and comic artists rarely have Pension plans].

But we pushed further on into the hall, first past one of the many George Barris-designed  Batmobiles, then past a table where Joe Kubert had a number of fans clustering around , and then further back to the Neal Adams table, where there he was. Surrounded by his books and artwork, and no-one, NO ONE, else around. He seemed glad at the prospect of someone to talk to.

What a great conversationalist! Full of energy and ideas. He was interested in why a Brit was there on a Saturday morning? Had I flown from the UK? What did my lads think of their dear old Dad being there? We got talking. I told him what an impact the splash page of Batman #234 (Half an Evil) had had on me as a 12-year old, how it had cemented me as a Batman fan and set me off on a lifetime of comic collecting. He told me some of his future ideas for Batman Odyssey - bringing in Deadman, having Deadman inhibit the Joker’s body in the Batcave ; the attraction of straightening out long-time continuity issues in the Batman canon.

That’s when Mr Adams asked me if I’d like to get a view of the artwork he was working on for Batman Odyssey, and invited me to come behind the table and sit down further to continue our chat. He then produced his art portfolio from under the table - basically a folder comprised of two bits of hinged hardboard, sandwiched between which were all the pages he’d drawn so far for Batman Odyssey #1. Some were still pencils ; others were partially inked. He let me read them all and asked for my opinion.

You can see the smile on my face in the photo below. 

© Ian Baker. baggsey and Neal Adams, 2009

Mr Adams then mentioned that he had to head over to participate in a panel with Joe Kubert discussing their work during the Bronze Age, and would I like to sit in on it? 

So we traipsed over to a break-out conference room and my sons & I spent a couple of hours first sitting in an audience of about 40 people asking Neal and Joe questions about the genesis of many of the Green Lantern/Green Arrow and Sgt Rock comics, and then Joe Kubert conducted an impromptu art class, developing a comic page in real time with input from the audience. Andy Kubert teamed with his Dad in the art workshop. Considering the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of fans at the Center that day, I despaired that so few were motivated to attend these sessions by the masters of the Bronze Age.

After the panel and class wrapped, my sons and I grabbed a hamburger and then caught a taxi back to La Guardia and on to home.

As we left the Jacob Javits Center my last memory is of the long Adam West table with his son managing the queue of fans, holding a fistful of tens and twenties as he collected the funds before shepherding fans alongside the trestle table to meet his Dad and Julie Newmar.

I’d turned 50 that year and meeting Neal Adams in person was quite a transformative event for me. It re-ignited my enthusiasm not only for comics, but also for my day job - reminded me that anything was possible as long as I got on my hind legs and made it happen. I remembered how back in 1971 I’d pored over Brave & Bold #93 - the Batman….and the House of Mystery team-up issue “Red Water, Crimson Death” issue - and seen the drawing of one of my heroes in the ACBA ad -  Neal Adams - and could never have imagined that one day I would meet the man who had made Batman real to me fifty years ago.

H G Wells and War of the Worlds

[I started writing this before I’d read McScotty’s blog entry about Amazing Adventures #18 over at his blog  which is well worth a visit].

© Marvel

H.G. Wells - © Public Domain

My home town of Portsmouth and its seaside resort Southsea has many historical heroes with links to the Bronze Age of comics, of which famed SF & Fantasy writer and visionary Herbert George Wells is but one.

It is hard to imagine if HG Wells, while working in a Draper’s Bazaar in Elm Grove, could have foreseen that one day he would be teaming up posthumously with Stan Lee and Don McGregor on Amazing Adventures #22, wherein Killraven battles the Human Squid, but I’m sure that he would have found the Marvel adaptation “inspired” by his War of the Worlds in tune with many of the ideas of his vast portfolio of SF creations.

Wells’ connection to Southsea stems from the time between 1880 and 1883, when he had an unhappy apprenticeship as a draper at Hyde's Drapery Emporium in Southsea. His experiences at Hyde's, where he worked a thirteen-hour day and slept in a dormitory with other apprentices, later inspired his novels The Wheels of Chance, The History of Mr Polly, and most appositely Kipps, which portray the life of a draper's apprentice as well as providing a critique of society's distribution of wealth.

It was soon after leaving Southsea for Woking in Surrey that Wells enjoyed his most creatively fertile period, when  he planned and wrote The War of the Worlds and The Time Machine and completed The Island of Doctor Moreau, (all of which would inspire later Marvel comics adaptations).

Slightly more than a generation later, in the United States in April 1926, famed editor Hugo Gernsback would reprint much of Wells's work in the pulp magazine Amazing Stories, regarding Wells's work as "texts of central importance to the self-conscious new genre".

And so a further generation after the pulp Amazing Stories, it was fitting that Wells’ work was featured in Marvel’s own Amazing Adventures comic in the guise of Killraven - freedom fighter Jonathan Raven - depicted in several post-apocalyptic alternate futures. Created by co-plotters Roy Thomas and Neal Adams, under the auspices of scriptwriter Gerry Conway and initially penciller Adams himself, the character first appeared in Amazing Adventures vol. 2, #18 (Cover-dated May 1973) .

© Marvel

The cover was very clear on the basis of the source material “Amazing Adventures featuring “WAR OF THE WORLDS” based on concepts related in the prophetic novel by H G Wells!” .

Co-creator Neal Adams' early ideas for Killraven involved the character being the son of a Doc Savage archetype. (Ref: Comic Artist #3). This concept had been reworked by the first issue in which co-creator Adams penciled only the first 11 pages with Howard Chaykin completing the remaining nine. The second issue was fully written by the debut's scripter, Gerry Conway, followed in the third by Marv Wolfman.

On the alternate-future Earth designated Earth-691 by Marvel Comics, the Martians from H. G. Wells' The War of the Worlds return in 2001 for another attempt at conquering the planet. With humanity enslaved, the men forced to battle gladiator-style for the Martians' amusement, Jonathan Raven (dubbed Killraven as his gladiatorial nom de guerre), escapes to join the Freemen, a group of freedom fighters .

As the series progressed, the link to Wells’ original vision became more and more tenuous, as reflected in the constantly changing book’s title across 22 issues (Amazing Adventures #18-#39 inclusive).

#18 "Amazing Adventures featuring “WAR OF THE WORLDS” based on concepts related in the prophetic novel by H G Wells"

#19 (Note “Prophetic” was dropped) "Amazing Adventures featuring “WAR OF THE WORLDS” based on concepts related in the  novel by H G Wells"

#20-#27( New tagline “The Most Widely Acclaimed Science Fiction Series Ever!”) "Amazing Adventures featuring “WAR OF THE WORLDS” based on concepts related in the  novel by H G Wells"

#28 (All reference to H.G. Wells dropped from the cover) "Amazing Adventures featuring “WAR OF THE WORLDS” - featuring Killraven!"

#29-#34 (rebranded - and H.G. still gets the boot!) "Killraven…WARRIOR OF THE WORLDS”

#35-#39 "War of the Worlds"

While the series was running, Marvel UK had developed a headache over content for their Planet of the Apes weekly, as they were running out of US Planet of the Apes content to reprint.  They hit upon the idea of repurposing Killraven as “Apeslayer” for the UK Planet of the Apes fan base as an emergency measure. The US Killraven stories were partially redrawn and re-lettered to create a new story that would fit into the Marvel version of the Planet of the Apes continuity. (Fun Fact: technically Apeslayer is the first ever Marvel UK-originated character).

Apparently, the UK team felt that Apeslayer, by way of Killraven, was so far removed from the original source material that H G Wells did not require a credit in the UK P.O.T.A. weekly. In fact, the credits for “The Birth of Apeslayer” do not even mention Neal Adams himself as either co-creator or contributing artist despite integrating artwork by the great man himself

© Marvel - enbiggen this to read !! Comparison of Killraven and Apeslayer

As H.G. Wells’ books were still within UK copyright at the time, rebranding Killraven as Apeslayer in the UK, and removing any reference to H G Wells on the US comic covers, may have been a move to avoid any legal issues.

The UK Apeslayer adaptations appeared in just 8 issues of Planet of the Apes weekly (#23-#30) , running from March 29th 1975 to May 17th 1975.

What was strange is that Marvel did not choose to stop distribution of the US Amazing Adventures in the UK during this period, which would have been the May-September 1975 cover issues (#30-#32),  but they had previously stopped the distribution of US issues #23-#25 a year earlier in 1974, with those issues not being available in UK price-variant guise.

Amazing Adventures was eventually cancelled with issue #39. I don’t believe that I owned all of the issues. I certainly collected issues #18 and #19 in 1973 (bought from Simpsons in Osborne Rd), and was again buying later issues in April 1976 from See's newsagents in Copnor, but it was not a regular purchase by that time. The overlap with Planet of the Apes weekly had caused me to put the US Amazing Adventures comic far down the list of US Marvels to buy each month. 

Marvel tried some innovative pricing approaches with their UK price variants; issues #18-#22 were 8p each ; following the “non-distributed” hiatus of issues #23-#25, issue #26 was priced at 7p, before returning to 8p pricing with the next issue. In that time of rampant inflation, the price quickly rose from 9p to 10p, and became too rich for my blood. However, if HG Wells had miraculously survived into the 1970s, I suspect he would have sought out and enjoyed every issue.

Killraven would later resurface in his original incarnation in the UK Star Wars Weekly a few years later.When Marvel UK eventually began reprinting the original Killraven series in Star Wars Weekly, one reader complained that they had 're-drawn Apeslayer, with Martians'.

A week in Ventnor - July 1972

Sometimes comic memories stick in the mind because they’re linked to seminal events in your life.

In the summer of 1972 I had just turned 13, and so I was allowed to go on my first holiday on my own, to Ventnor on the south side of the Isle of Wight to stay with my Aunt and Uncle for a week.

I went with high hopes of getting more comics at Mr Keen’s antiquarian bookshop in Pier Street, Ventnor. Earlier that year  on a holiday with my Mum and Dad - at Easter -  I had hit the jackpot with scoring a pile of comics in Mr Keen’s antiquarian bookshop in Ventnor at 2p each, including a run of most of Detective 390-412- which included those classic Denny O’Neil/Neal Adams Man-Bat stories plus the Enemy Ace crossover. (For those you wishing to take a look at Google street view , the address is 19 Pier Street, Ventnor. Mr Keen is long gone, of course, owning the shop from 1972-1981.)

Each day that week  in July I would walk down from Upper Ventnor to the town centre in the hopes of finding new comics in John Menzies or at one of the seafront gift shops.

Even though it was Summer, I felt compelled to wear my over-sized army-surplus combat jacket which had come from Ben Grubbs, a store in Portsmouth. I felt it lent me an air of rugged individuality.

My Aunt and Uncle’s daughter, my cousin, who was four years older than me at seventeen, welcomed me to tag along with her, her boyfriend and their friends. Her boyfriend (“call me Zak”) was an amiable bearded long-haired groovy guy with a penchant for check jackets with wide lapels.  I felt honored to be allowed to hang out with them (no doubt at the behest of my aunt).

The Regal, Shanklin, 1972

The week kicked off on a Sunday night with a trip to Shanklin to see Diamonds are Forever at the Regal cinema in Shanklin. We went in a van driven by a friend of my cousin. I think there were five of us siting on a mattress on the floor in the back, as we rattled around inside the rear of the van. (I have an inkling that the driver - a curly-haired, more conventional, friendly guy inclined to a rosy complexion - had a crush on my cousin.)

What a film! This was my first exposure to Sean Connery as Bond (having previously seen OHMSS in 1969), and the early scene where he is trapped in a coffin inside a crematorium incinerator sticks in my mind. I also took notice of the film poster (by the great Robert McGinnis), realizing how the common motif of Bond with his arms folded had become connecting tissue across all the Bond film posters.

As I went to bed that night at my Aunt’s house (I was staying in the room vacated by my cousin’s older brother who was away) I became aware that a paperback book had fallen on the floor from where it had been tucked under the mattress. It was a bit of an eye-opener for. 13-year old.

That book was The Perfumed Garden (Panther Edition,1966), a translation of an ancient Indian sex manual by Sir Richard Burton, famed Arabist, polymath and explorer. I would a few years later re-encounter Sir Richard Burton as the fictional protagonist in Philip Jose Farmer’s book To Your Scattered Bodies Go. Well, those Indians knew a thing or two about human gymnastics that wouldn’t end up an an Olympic sport , and I reflected that learning a different language at school may have had applications I had not previously appreciated. 

The Silvermere Cafe gift shop where I found Detective #355

The next day I decided to walk down to the seafront, and on the spinner rack of a gift shop I found an excellent condition copy of Detective #355  (“Hate of the Hooded Hangman”).What a find! Six years after publication and not a crease! It felt almost as good as if I’d found Detective #27! I can remember the crispness of it now (presumably sun-baked over the previous 6 summers, even though there was no evidence of direct sunlight fading)

The Rex Cinema, Ventnor

As the week was coming to a close, hormones raging, I persuaded my Aunt to take me to see Up The Front at the Rex Cinema on Thursday. I was a great fan of the Carry On films at this time, and figured that this would probably be a bit risqué, with Frankie Howard ably supported by the ample charms of Madeline Smith. I was not disappointed, although I think that my Aunt had some misgivings that she was culpable in exposing her nephew to something so salacious (well it was “A” rated).

So at the end of the week I returned home with the experience of having moved in a maturer circles of friends, had some education that garden swings had more uses that previously envisaged, had seen an exciting Bond film with a fantastic poster by Robert McGinnis, had seen Madeline Smith in fine form on the silver screen, and had an immaculate copy of Detective #355 safely stored in my haversack.

Shanklin - the Isle of Wight ferry

As I crossed the Solent back to Portsmouth on the Isle of Wight ferry "Shanklin", waiting for me back in Pompey was the prospect of the new DCs hitting the spinner rack on the following Thursday.

What a summer! Golden Days indeed.