My Encounters With Neal Adams

Neal Adams is one of the all-time greats of comic book history.  Since his passing a few days ago (April 28, 2022, to be exact), tributes and reminiscences have been pouring in.  My own encounters with him were brief and probably not too remarkable or much different than those of his many fans.  But having grown up enjoying and being amazed by his groundbreaking work on Deadman, The Spectre, The Brave and the Bold, X-Men, Green Lantern/Green Arrow, and of course, Batman, I feel the need to share some of those experiences here.

I first encountered Mr. Adams at WonderCon in Oakland, California, probably somewhere around the year 2000.  After waiting in line for an autograph, I was met by a jovial fellow with a disarming smile, who asked my name and shook my hand.  He seemed open to conversation, so I ventured a question, wondering what he was thinking when he drew the cover on the copy of The Spectre #2 I had handed him to sign.  He said he didn’t know but that he probably worked on it at night.  Whenever a drawing had a lot of detail in it, he saved it for nighttime when he knew he wouldn’t be interrupted by phone calls.

At the Big Wow Comic Fest in San Jose in 2015, I purchased a Conan poster from Mr. Adams, and paid to have my picture taken with him.  It was his usual convention pose of clasping hands with the fan, seated side-by-side at the table.  You’ve undoubtedly seen many of these on Facebook.

But perhaps my most interesting encounter was a couple of years later (2017).  At the time, I worked in the Market Research department at a sorta big corporation.  I’m sure you’ve heard of some of their products.  One of my responsibilities was to oversee the department’s repository of market research documents and other content.  One day, I came across some storyboards that I was pretty sure were drawn by Neal Adams.  (The company used storyboards to test consumers’ reactions to TV commercial ideas to avoid spending large amounts of money on producing a commercial that tanked with its audience.)  Fortunately for me, Neal was a special guest at the upcoming San Francisco Comic Con.  So I marched up to his table, showed him the storyboards, and he confirmed that he had drawn them.  He also said something like, “It’s funny how you can recognize your own work.”  I replied that he had a very recognizable style.  Then he did a very curious thing.  He started philosophizing about style as if it were a bad thing.  I didn’t get what he was saying at the time, and he seemed a bit impatient with me for not understanding.  On further reflection a bit later, I concluded that perhaps he meant that there are certain tricks an artist learns that are easy to fall back on, rather than forging ahead with something new, and that it’s the artist's job to resist the temptation to take the easy path.  And maybe that’s the difference between a great master like Neal Adams and a highly competent journeyman (or woman).  In any case, he certainly gave me something to think about, and for that I’m grateful.