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| © DC Comics. Splash Page to 'Tec #416. |
Neal Adams is justly celebrated as pre-eminent comics penciller and inker of his generation, but his talent as a colourist is often overlooked. The power of a colourist to set and change the mood of a comic story is not generally recognised ; there are some great talents today (Jacob Philips’ exemplary work on That Texas Blood comes immediately to mind, as does Greg Smallwood’s current work on The Human Target mini-series) whose colouring skills raise the quality of the underlying pencils to new heights.
But back in the Bronze Age, the colourist was often not credited. And that was the case with Detective Comics #416, Man-Bat Madness, written and drawn by Frank Robbins, and coloured by Neal Adams.
Adams and Robbins had jointly created Man-Bat with editor Julie Schwartz , and until this point Adams had pencilled each story in Detective Comics featuring Batman’s misunderstood foe. When Frank Robbins wanted to pencil his new Man-Bat story, Adams volunteered to color the issue.
The was to be the last time that Neal Adams worked on Detective Comics in any capacity until 2014, and for my money, is the best, most evocative coloring job on a Batman story in the Bronze Age. As far as I’m aware, it is the only time Adams is credited as coloring another artist’s work in the Bronze Age. I absolutely love the color scheme - greens and yellows and grays with splashes of red - which really add to the eerie vibe of the story.
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| © DC Comics. |
I remember being shocked and dismayed to open Detective Comics #416 in 1971 and saw artwork that I then considered a mess, so far removed from the lithe athleticism of Adams’ own pencils. The subsequent letters page in Detective Comics #420 commenting on this issue pretty much split 50/50 for and against Frank Robbins’ artwork, and the editorial response to one letter pointed out that Adams had colored the issue. At the time, I sided with those deploring Robbins’s style, but now I see it as so revolutionary, Robbins’ pencils and inks so full of life and dynamism, and understand how the colour choices added so much to the mood of the comic image.
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| © DC Comics |
I think the page above is my favourite image. This page of Batman pursuing Man-Bat on the Gotham subway is a prime example. Batman highlighted in the yellow glow of the subway car is particularly striking.
Robbins went on to draw four more issues of Detective Comics in the Bronze Age, plus one more unpublished Batman story - a drugs issue - but the coloring never again reached the heights of Detective #416.
© Ian Baker
