The right writer. The right artist. The right time. Green Lantern/Green Arrow was that odd mix of fire and water, liberal and conservative, reality and fantasy, that proved that sometimes opposites do attract.
Writer Denny O’Neil and artist Neal Adams had arrived at DC Comics independently of one another in the latter half of the 1960s shortly after the company’s merger with the Kinney National Services. The gregarious Adams brought a realistic advertising-industry slickness to his comics work—mostly covers at first— and quickly began knocking down the barriers previously applied to page layouts and color palettes. A journalist by trade, O’Neil was comparatively neutral in making his own mark on comics, going so far as to employ the pseudonym Sergius O’Shaughnessy when penning a more personal social commentary piece like “Children of Doom” for Charlton Comics.
by John Wells
At DC, O’Neil passed on an offer from editor Julius Schwartz to work on Batman. The character “was still in the throes—or in the death throes, perhaps—of the camp phase, and that didn’t have very much appeal for me,” O’Neil told Mike W. Barr in Amazing Heroes #50 (July 1, 1984). “I chose to do Green Lantern for him instead because that was a character that I had remembered enjoying as a kid.” O’Neil’s Lantern, secretly radio broadcaster Alan Scott, was mostly out of the limelight by this point, having been succeeded by test pilot-turnedinsurance salesman Hal Jordan in 1959. What both had in common was an emerald power ring that enabled them to create energy constructs, deflect projectiles, fly, and generally occupy the higher end of the superhero scale.
Portentously, O’Neil’s debut story in 1968’s GL #63 (left) sported a cover by Neal Adams, the artist’s first and only contribution to the title prior to issue #76. Writer and artist continued to hover in the same orbit without actually coming into direct contact. Adams, for instance, created an entirely new look for all-but-dormant DC bowman Green Arrow in a Bob Haney-scripted story in The Brave and the Bold #85 (Aug.–Sept. 1969) while O’Neil had the hero’s alter ego Oliver Queen lose his fortune in Justice League of America #75 (Nov. 1969), imbuing him with the start of a new empathy for the common man (and romantic feelings for widowed teammate Black Canary). When O’Neil and Adams finally collaborated on the landmark Batman story “Secret of the Waiting Graves” (Detective Comics #395, Jan. 1970), the result was electrifying.
Opposites Attract?
Detail from the cover of Green Lantern/ Green Arrow #1 (the Oct. 1983 reprint edition), and (opposite page) Neal’s cover art for Back Issue #18.
Neal Adams
Early Adams Super-Covers
The first two Adams-drawn Superman covers to see print were (left) Superman’s Girl Friend Lois Lane #79 and (right) Action Comics #358 (both Nov. 1967). While both covers employed standard Silver Age Super-tropes, Neal’s photorealistic art, from Superman’s relaxed posture on the Lois Lane cover to the raw energy of the Son of the Annihilator’s super-punch on the Action cover, added pizzazz often missing from similar covers from the Weisinger era.
Anyway, I then had to face reality. I had no strip to do—I had some advertising clients, which was fine—and so I went to look for work doing comic books, which I felt was odd because I had a whole career. I had gone on above it and I really had no interest in doing comic books. They were now below me. It was comic strips and then illustration, that’s where my head was at.
I realized [chuckles] that I was stuck for work. So instead of going to DC Comics, I went to Warren Publications and I did work for them. They were nice enough to give me work. I did work, but I discovered that it was very self-indulgent work in that I was looking to impress, by doing different styles and different concepts and different techniques and different things, and it was taking too long to do the work. I realized I could get a 12-pager, or a 24-page comic-book story over at DC Comics and take it home and crank it out. Here at Warren, I was getting six-page stories. I would put my heart and soul into them and be paid just as poorly as I would be paid at DC Comics.
So I thought, “Well, I’ll try, one more time, to break into DC Comics,” and I made an appointment with the war comics editor who had lost Joe Kubert to the comic strip [Tales of] The Green Beret. And he saw me, and I knew that Joe was missing from that position because I had helped Joe get that work [ chuckles ] to do Green Beret—it was offered to me first. So I went to speak to Bob Kanigher and I started doing war stories. And then I guess they just discovered there was a new creature in the zoo.
EURY: You spent a lot of time actually there at the DC offices, didn’t you?
ADAMS: Well, a lot of it was because they wanted me to do covers. And yeah, I kind of liked the idea of being out of the house. I had worked in my house for three-and-a-half, four years, and I was used to going out, doing commercial work, and I kind of liked the idea of finding out about the company, and what’s going on, and hanging out there during the day. So yeah, I did spend quite a bit of time at DC Comics. I took a desk in their staff room, in their production room. They seemed to be happy to have me there until I really started to make trouble. [laughter]
EURY: And we’ll get into some of the trouble in a minute. As far as Superman’s concerned, most people regard you as a Batman artist at DC, but you actually drew Superman covers before you did Batman covers.
ADAMS: In fact, nobody in “them thar” days thought of me as anything. What really happened was that Carmine Infantino realized that here he had some new blood, maybe he could become an art director and art direct covers. And I would be the artist that would do the covers, as well as other people.
But essentially, I got along pretty easy with Carmine, so in many ways that kind of pushed Carmine, who had been doing a lot of covers, into becoming an art director at DC Comics, which was a very fortuitous circumstance for him. He pushed a lot of covers my way because he could easily recognize that the tendency, the sense, was, “This guy’s probably going to do a lot of good covers.” And that got to be something that happened a lot.
EURY: Was Carmine heavily involved in the design of your covers, or were you flying solo?
ADAMS: He was, on and off. Sometimes he was too busy, sometimes he had an idea for a cover and we would sit and either argue it out, or I would propose something different, or I would accept his concept.
I really didn’t have too much trouble with Carmine’s ideas because he is a good designer. My covers are all design. I would rather do situations and storytelling situations, and sometimes, good design actually works against that. And design does tend to get repetitive after a while. You can only do just so many covers with the guy standing in the middle with his legs akimbo and holding a body in his arms, or standing on the side of the page and having panels go down the other side of it. There’s a limit to that. You really do get bored with that. I got to change styles from mystery covers to superhero covers and like that, so I got to play quite a bit.
EURY: What was your first Superman cover?
ADAMS: Well, I don’t know. You probably know.
EURY: Well, I did some research. I’ve got it in front of me. I just want to make sure, because you can’t always trust cover dates. But the two earliest ones that I found both had a Nov. 1967 cover date. One was Lois Lane #79, which was, if this rings a bell, “The Bride of Titan Man”; and another one was Action #356, “The Son of the Annihilator,” which has this James Dean–type delinquent on the cover. I don’t know if you recall if those were the first two you drew. ADAMS: I really don’t know. But I can tell you the circumstance behind the first cover I did for Mort Weisinger.
EURY: Please do.
ADAMS: Carmine had decided that, for whatever reason, I was worth something to the company and worth something to him. It seemed as though people were beginning to recognize my work and it made a difference in the sales. Not in the books that I drew, but in the covers that I did. The books that I drew, pretty much, the sales stayed the same. But any time I did a cover, the sales seemed to go up ten percent. So Carmine was very, very interested in having me do covers for Superman to see what would happen. Mort was not. [laughter] In fact, it’s possible that you know there are people in the world whose emotions and feelings you can read on their faces, better than Mort Weisinger, but I don’t know anyone like that. You pretty much know what’s going on in Mort’s head because he’s got the look on his face… or he had the look on his face.
So it was very clear that Mort did not want me to do covers. After all, he had Curt Swan, to which I would agree. Hey, hey, he’s got Curt Swan, that’s cool. I mean, I was a fan of Curt Swan’s since I was a young teenager. Anyway, Carmine seemed to be adamant that Mort would let me into his vault and allow me to do a cover. Mort, at the same time, was grumbling and bumping into doors and snarling. Anyway, knowing that this tension was there and that it was not good, [chuckles] I thought, “Well, we’ll deal with this problem.”
So I went in to see Mort and introduced myself, and apparently, I had said hello to him briefly before that, and he more or less ignored me. I introduced myself and I said, “I’d just like to talk to you for a few minutes.” And he said, “All right.” So we sat down and I said, “Look, Carmine wants me to do covers for you. I don’t care. I have a lot of covers to do and to be perfectly honest, they get in the way of the books I’m working on. But you and he seem to be having a problem. I have a solution, if you want to try it: I’ll do one cover for you. If you like it, maybe you’ll have me do more covers. If you don’t like it, tell Carmine you don’t like it and that’s the last cover I do for you.” He said, “Good, that’s a deal.” And you could tell the way he said it, it was one cover and that’s it.
Well, I don’t know which cover [it was]… I have no idea. I handed it in and a couple of weeks later, Carmine came over to me and said, “Mort wants you to do all his covers.”
EURY: So Carmine actually broke the information to you, not Mort. ADAMS: Mort did not. But the next time I saw Mort, he had a big grin on his face and he was very happy. Now, that was a very weird beginning to actually what I considered to be a good relationship, because my relationship with Mort after that was very comfortable. I’ve never really had too much problem with the editors up at DC Comics. We all got along. Each one, within their own personality, pretty much, was okay with me.
EURY: Tell me something good about Mort Weisinger. People relate all these horror stories, but that can’t be the whole picture.
ADAMS: I’ll tell you a story that will make you understand every horror story you’ve ever heard about Mort Weisinger and make you realize what was going on.
I went into Mort’s office one day because I was perturbed by sh*t that people said about [him]. I could see that he was a grumpy fellow in general, but he treated me evenly and I was fine. But it bothered me so we were talking about it. We went over a cover and whatever. We finished that conversation and I said, “Mort, I’d just like to ask you why you are so grumpy at people? You know, everybody thinks you hate them and you just seem grumpy.” And I could see his face change in front of me, and he said, “I’ll tell you… I don’t tell people this. Try to imagine that you get up in the morning and you go into the bathroom to shave, and you look into the mirror, and you see this face.”
Now, for everybody out there who thinks he was grumpy, I say to you, the man had a soft side, dealing with his reality as best he could. Underneath he was a good, sensitive man.
The Swan-Adams Team
Upon occasion, Adams inked DC’s main Superman artist, Curt Swan, on covers. Here’s an example: Superman #314 (Aug. 1977), guest-starring the Flash and Green Lantern. This original art, courtesy of Heritage Comics Auctions (www.ha.com), is signed by both artists.
EURY: Was he chummy or friendly with anybody at all, to your knowledge?
ADAMS: He loved Cary Bates. Cary Bates, the sun rose out of Cary Bates’ ass. Because Cary had ideas that were his kind of ideas. I believe that there was a cover that I did—I hope I don’t say that it was Cary’s and it was really somebody else’s, it might be Mike Friedrich’s—but [Mort] was deliriously happy about this cover. I don’t recall if it was for Adventure or World’s Finest, maybe World’s Finest, and what it had was two heads of two superheroes on the left and two heads of two superheroes on the right, I think. And in the middle, was a guy sitting in a chair with some kind of a gun or something and he was in silhouette, and on him was this question mark, “Who is it?” Do you remember that cover?
EURY: I do.
ADAMS: In his mind, that was the greatest cover because it asked a question and made you buy the book. A very intelligent editorial approach. And you know, it was a boring cover to draw. I hated it.
Every so often, mankind is blessed with an individual who excels in numerous arenas. Legend has it Leonardo DaVinci could simultaneously write with one hand and draw with the other. Thomas Jefferson, besides being one of America’s founding fathers, was an accomplished inventor and architect.
In comics, there are a great many creators who write, pencil, ink, and color their own work. But few are known to have moved into other disciplines, such as science or film. It should come as no surprise that comics legend Neal Adams is just such an individual.
A graduate of the School of Industrial Arts (now known as the Manhattan School of Art & Design), Adams began his career at Archie Comics, doing occasional pages and backgrounds. At age 20, he was probably one of the youngest artists to capture what was then considered the brass ring for comic artists: a daily newspaper strip. He drew Ben Casey for about three years before moving on to Warren Publications. In the late 1960s, Adams managed to squeeze in the door at DC, starting out drawing war comics, and then working his way into more and more titles, such as The Spectre and Deadman [in Strange Adventures].
“When I came into comic books, one of the things that I discovered,” he says, “was that it wasn’t necessary to design a panel and a panel and a panel and a panel, you could design a page. It wasn’t necessary to use the colors that were available to you. You could use other colors and you could find ways to bring in other colors.”
At the time, the [Caucasian] skin tone in comics published by DC was more pink than flesh, because unlike Marvel Comics, DC’s color spectrum did not include a toned yellow. Their four-color printing process used combinations of cyan, magenta, and black in tones of 100%, 50%, and 25%, but only 100% yellow.
“That’s the math part of science,” explains Adams. “If you add two more colors and you multiply those colors with all the other colors you have instead of 32 colors, you’ll have 64 colors. To me, science is like anything else. It’s like design, it’s like art. Science is dependable; like math, it works. If you got it right, it makes sense.”
He regards this period of comics as something of a dark age. Most readers weren’t very discriminating, and the few remaining publishers felt they were on borrowed time, believing that the demand for comics would eventually dwindle into non-existence. Improving printing techniques wasn’t high on anyone’s agenda. Nevertheless, DC was losing half their available color range.
by Philip Schweier
Double Vision
Scan of the original art to an unused version of Neal Adams’ cover to Green Lantern/Green Arrow #77 (June 1970). See page 8 for Neal’s pencil rough. All original art in this article is courtesy of Neal and Jason Adams, unless otherwise noted.
“So the question was, ‘How do I change it?’, because I’m one of the ***holes. I change it through being clever, by getting the word to the publisher [DC’s Jack Liebowitz], who will be damned if [Marvel publisher] Martin Goodman gets 64 colors and he gets 32 colors and he’s paying the same price to the same separator. He gets mad, goes to Production. I get it to him without him knowing I gave it to him. He goes to the head of Production [Sol Harrison] and says, ‘How come Martin Goodman is getting 64 colors and we’re getting 32 colors?’ ‘Well, because it’s cheaper, boss.’ ‘You’re telling me that that guy, Martin Goodman, is paying more for his color than I am? Are you out of your mind? Call the separator.’ He calls the separator and says, ‘Well, how much more will it cost us to get toned yellow?’ ‘Oh, you want toned yellow? Well, you can have it.’” Adams snaps his fingers: “Less than 14 seconds. ‘Okay, we’ll take it. They’re going to give us 64-colors. Fine.’
“When I said these things, everybody thought I was crazy. And instead of just railing, I went out and proved it,” he says. “I would go off by myself and do the things that I would say because it really became a waste of time to say them, to minds that were closed. Clearly, I was right, but that didn’t matter. It doesn’t matter if you’re right. It only matters if you prove it. And so I did, and so things changed, and so the business is different than it was, and I’m happy.”
Adams has had a fascination for science since he was a 13-year-old. “I loved science,” he says. “I used to read science books like you would read a mystery book. I’d stop off at my local library and they would have books that would have these experiments and then set up the experiment, tell you what chemicals and other things to use, and then they would say, ‘And then you do this, and then you’d pour this into this. What’s going to happen?’ Aw, man, I couldn’t wait to get to that next page. ‘Is it going to boil over? Is it going to turn blue? What’s going to happen?’ They’d tell you and then they’d give you the conclusion. They’d tell you why. It’s like a magic trick, you know? I love science for its discovery.”
As much as Adams enjoys the scientific approach, he avoids the technical end. “I don’t touch computers hardly at all, but I know what computers can do. So I’m always constantly telling people, ‘No, that’ll work on that program.’ And they say, ‘No, it won’t work.’ And I say, ‘Yes, it will work.’ They say, ‘No, it’s not going to. Neal, I’m telling you, you don’t know computers. You don’t know what the program will do or doesn’t—you’re not listening to me. You’re not listening to me.’ I say, ‘Look, if it can do this, and it can do this, because it can do this and it can do this, it has to be able to do this. Not because I say so, but because it has to be able to do this or else it couldn’t do this, not because I know. I’m trying to tell you I’m simply saying the
Neal Adams
This self-portrait appeared in DC house ads in late 1970.
logic is, you can’t do this without being able to do this. It just can’t be.’
“My daughter says, ‘I hate that about my dad. He’s always right. Makes me crazy.’”
Adams’ passion has taken him through many disciplines, from paleontology to cosmology. “I don’t study it deeply because you haven’t got time in your life to do that. I’d just go in like a bird and I’d dive, and I’d get what I need, and I’d go. And if I realized I left something behind and I’d go back and I’d read it. What’s amazing is that all of the information you really need to get is available to anybody.
“Unfortunately, it’s not translated into English, which is a real problem because sometimes you have to go to four or five sources to actually know what the heck they’re talking about, because most of the time, it’s in Latin, or six-syllable words, or mathematical formula that only they understand.”
Which presents Adams—and most lay people— with a substantial bone to pick with the scientific community. “If I could have a campaign in the world, it would be to make everybody speak English or whatever language it happens to be in, but not to speak that tech talk. I would make doctors, lawyers, and scientists speak regular English. You’re not an otolaryngologist—you’re an ear, nose, and throat man. Get off your high horse.
“You can be talking to somebody, not even about technical stuff, but you lose them within a word.
because now he’s not sneezing. It’s a simple story, nothing big about it. At a certain point when the kid is in bed, he lies back because he’s a little bit more relaxed. Not a lot, but a little. He lies back and you have a nice big closeup on the little boy.
“Now if you track computer animated humans, and you saw The Polar Express—not that I wish to pick on Polar Express—but there’s a part of you that says, ‘Why didn’t they use real people because the people look kind of cold? You know, if you’ve got Tom Hanks, why don’t you use Tom Hanks? Disney can work animated.’ And as you look at the real people, you know they’re not real, but they’re computer-animated people, you kind of go, ‘They’re really not very warm,’ like the little boy in Toy Story. Ohh, he’s not a very pretty human being. You don’t see many people in computer animation and when you see them, you kind of do that little head turn and pull your head back and go, ‘Uhhww, uhhww. That’s not very pretty. That’s not warming the cockles of my heart.’”
When the [Nasonex®] campaign was first presented to him, Adams doubted the project would be suitable for his company. “So for two months, I turned it down. And then I thought about it, and I thought about it, and I thought, ‘Well, wait a second. Why are these people that they do in all these other projects so turn-offish?’ And I realized, well, part of it had to do with whoever designed them. It really doesn’t have to do with their animation so much. The animation’s pretty good, it’s their design, the way they look. You know, the flesh isn’t warm. They’re not cute. I don’t love them. Let me see, how many people do I know who can draw things where you kind of love them? I can think of about maybe ten people like that. I’m one of them. I thought, “Well, let me do some tests,” and I did some tests. If I depend on me, and the abilities of everybody around me, I could do a warm-looking kid and a warm-looking mom. And for 30 seconds, I could get them really warm and really cuddly. And when you see the little kid go back and put his head back, you go, ‘Aww.’ If he can do that, that’s my job.”
But it’s a job that Adams does not handle alone. “I don’t draw the whole thing. I don’t have to draw it frame by frame. I don’t even have to touch the computers. What I do is I do a storyboard that delineates it carefully. Then I do drawings of the characters and I do them in perspective, and I do the front and sides, and I figure out all the problems that are going to happen with the character during the animation; do the expressions on the faces and the other things.”
From there, the process is turned over to Adams’ talented staff. And even though the task at hand may be simply a 30-second TV commercial, the requirements are no less demanding than those of a $60 million movie. “I make the decision as to how detailed the flowers are going to be, because it seems to me that if all it is is a bee and some flowers, those flowers ought to be fantastic. They ought to be as good as Disney could do or Dreamworks can do. So I sit and I do my little Dreamworks job and I require of my people that the same thing that Dreamworks or Disney would require. If they’re working for me, they ought to do a great job. So when you see those commercials, you kind of go, ‘Wow, those are really pretty flowers. I don’t know who did it. Somebody good did it, clearly.’ And it’s because I expect them to do a good job, they don’t want to disappoint me, so they do a great job. But I’ve only done a series of drawings, they do all the work. They do all the animation, they build the models on computer. I just say, you know, ‘That’s not good’ or ‘It is good’ or whatever. So I’m only doing a small portion of the work, but it’s key work. So I could be drawing a Batman comic book while we’re doing these, or I could be doing some other commercials, or I could be shooting a film. I just need to be there for key moments to make sure that it turns into this. Well, that’s pretty nifty for me.”
Adams equates his position to that of being a director on a film, depending on the abilities of other people to come through. “The best movies are the ones with the best effects,” he says, “And the best acting, and the most dramatic costuming, where all these people are putting all their abilities together. And the director gets to sit back and go, ‘Wow. Cool.’”
Being a director is something for which Adams has aspirations, and is a skill he is in the process of learning. “It’s actually weirdly
easier to learn it doing commercials than it is doing film; but, of course, I want to do film. So what do I have to do it with? Well, I have the business acumen to be a producer so I know how to produce and I have no problem with that. I have properties that are worthwhile properties and can turn into film, so I have that as a bargaining chip, so I’m not stepping off sideways, laterally from comic books into film.”
At this writing, Adams is working on a documentary on Irwin Hasen, the creator of Dondi. “But I really do like shooting and directing, so what I’m doing is presenting myself as a director to my advertising clients. The Nasonex® commercials are sort of part of that. On my website (www.nealadams.com), you’ll see that other stuff that I’ve done.”
He also hopes to license many of his original characters to film and television. “I have these properties and if you actually start counting up my properties, they’re quite a mass and they all seem to be aimed at doing films. So there’s a library of stuff to do and I don’t know exactly how it’s going to happen. But I have an associate who’s a film producer and an associate who’s a TV producer. So we’re presenting projects and we’re going to move projects forward.”
Among those projects are Bucky O’Hare as a computer-animated feature, and also a project entitled Blood as a finished film. “Those two are definite,” he continues. “Then I’m talking to people who will help me put together other projects, whether they’re as investors, actors, or even directors. I’m not interested in directing everything that I have. I’m interested in cherry-picking my stuff to direct because in all honesty, I think anybody could direct a Crazyman that was good. Samuree could be directed by anybody good. Armor maybe, you know, as a series.”
Despite a successful foray into computer animation, and ambitions of developing material for film and TV, Adams isn’t prepared to abandon comics any time soon. By his own estimate, he has done more comic books in the last year than in the previous two or three years, understanding that is how he is perceived, both by himself and others. “I’m a skilled artisan, but I’m a storyteller. People say, ‘Why do they reprint Neal’s stuff over and over again while there are other artists who worked in very similar styles, but somehow, their stuff is not collected and turned into $50 books? What’s the difference?’ The difference is, I’m a storyteller, that all of the things that I do are children of the story, not because I like to draw. I like to tell a story, that’s what I do.
“So in any medium, whether I do a storyboard for a commercial, whether the Nasonex® commercial, or I do an animatic, or I design rides for amusement parks; even when I do that, I have to tell a story. Film, if I shoot film, I have to tell a story. When I do comic books, I have to tell a story. I mean, I do pinups sometimes at conventions and other times, hardly ever am I happy doing those. Hardly ever, unless I can enter a story into the drawing, unless I can see something happening with part of the story, then I don’t mind doing the drawings. To just do a glamour picture, boring as hell. I hate it. I like to tell a story. That’s what I do.
“I think of myself as a comic-book creator, artist, writer, even publisher; and I think of this as my business. This is what I do, but there are times, whole segments of times, that I don’t do much of it. I mean, I’m talking to DC very seriously, for example, about doing a series of Batman, six books. If I do it, I’m going to be doing a bunch of comic-book stuff. If not, I’ll be doing less comic-book stuff, but I’m also doing comic book-related stuff. And everything I do—I call the company ‘Continuity,’ because to me, it was the best word for it, because to me, what I do is I tell stories.”
My Father the Squid
Neal’s original cover sketch for 1977’s House of Mystery #254, courtesy of Heritage Comics; in the inset is the published version.
This is Neal Adams’ office, where he conducts general business such as meetings. The globe in the lower right was used as he explained his expanding Earth theory for this interview.
No, this isn’t the bridge of the Enterprise it’s Neal’s computer work station. The window to the left allows him to observe the outer office area.
This is the wall behind Neal’s desk, featuring original artwork by the man himself (as if he’d hang anything else).
A sound-editing work station inside the sound/ photography studio.
SHAUN CLANCY: Was Ms. Mystic a character you were trying to do with any publisher prior to Pacific, or did Pacific approach you?
NEAL ADAMS: No, the idea was that I was doing a portfolio of characters for Sal Quartuccio and I was sort of creating characters as I went along. Once a month, Sal would come over to my studio, and one day I basically told him, “I can sit down and create a character a month and he would have a history, he would have a background, he would be a full-blown-up character.” He said, “Would you do that, and we’ll do a portfolio?” I said, “I can’t dedicate six days in a row to creating a portfolio for you.” So he said, “What if I come by, like, once a month?” And I said, “Sure! Let’s do that.” Now, maybe it wasn’t once a month. Maybe it was every couple of weeks. My memory isn’t that great. But it was something like that.
So each time he came, I sat for a few minutes and I created a history, created a concept, created it in my head, and then I started to delineate it on paper so that each time I created a character, I created her background, I created what she or he was and what they were all about. Because that was the idea. The idea was not just to create a character but to give them a history, you know?
Ms. Mystic, as it turned out, was a Gaia-type character, a protector of the Earth, and she could be a god… or she could be an alien, from another planet. And I was kind of messing with her history there. Was she Mother Nature? No. There was another Mother Nature that was more part of the Earth. She was more a type of guide, a kind of a god-like creature that perhaps came from another planet and actually, maybe, intended to do wrong by Earth.
So there was some ambivalence there. So I thought, “Well… that’s kinda good. I like that. But what about a costume?” And I thought, “Hmmm… You know, nobody’s ever used Zip-A-Tone as a costume… or gray as a costume.” So I thought, “That’s what we’ll do! We’ll just make her a graded gray like with Zip-A-Tone.” But I was doing it in pencil so I graded her in pencil. And she was sort of protector of the Earth.
Pacific was approaching me to do a comic book and I said, [laughs] basically, “Look, I really haven’t got time to do this. Maybe I’ll give it a shot.” But in the studio, there was a guy named Mike Netzer who kind of drew like me. Well, he drew exactly like me, or as much as he could. I said, “Look, y’know, I can have a guy in my studio work on this and maybe he can do it and I’ll do layouts, blocking out and all the rest of it.” I was trying to really support Pacific Comics, because I sort of had convinced Jack Kirby to work for them. [laughs] And also Sergio Aragonés to work for them. I had told them that they not only would pay them but they would let them keep the rights to their character.
Shaun Clancy conducted in July 2015 and transcribed by Steven
Thompson
They could hardly believe that. At that time that was actually a phenomenon.
So, partially the reason I turned the thing into a character was I wanted to promote a company that would do the right thing by the creators. Although that may not have been the first time it was being done, it certainly was the first where you had three well-known, official people out there—myself, Jack Kirby [on Silver Star and Captain Victory], and Sergio Aragonés [on Groo the Wanderer]—doing characters for more than normal rates and also that they owned their characters. I was kind of killing about 80 birds with one stone there.
CLANCY: Who was your contact at Pacific? David Scroggy or who?
ADAMS: The brothers. The Schanes. [Editor’s note: Bill and Steve Schanes grew Pacific Comics, the publisher, out of their San Diego-based comic shop in the early 1980s.]
CLANCY: How did Ms. Mystic’s name came about? Was it a working title that you just went with?
ADAMS: When you’re creating a character, it seems like if you don’t have a good name, you really haven’t got a good character.
Cross-Gen. They made one of, I guess, the biggest blunders that you could ever make in comic books. They used verbs as nouns. [both laugh] “Sojourn”? I’m sorry? Sojourn? Really? As a title? Sounds like a journey to me. Doesn’t sound like a character. All their books had verbs. If you run down the list, you kinda go, “Who’s the hero? I don’t know.” They even took “Mystic” as one of their titles. Now, I call my character “Ms. Mystic,” because it was a character. They called it “Mystic,” which was a thing.
Now, I guess I had a subliminal memory, because Will Eisner reminded me ten years into it that he had done a character called Mr. Mystic. I had no idea. I had really not been—actually, in all honesty—a fan of Will Eisner in the past. I became a fan of Will Eisner, the person, and his achievements, but I was never really a fan of what he did, The Spirit and all the rest of it. It just seemed a little cartoony to me. But as a person and as a professional… as a person who ran a business and the other things that he did, I really got to appreciate Will Eisner. I guess I must have seen Mr. Mystic somewhere along the line. It just never occurred to me that somebody else had used the name. And his was Mister Mystic and mine is Ms. Mystic.
CLANCY: And the Ms. Mystic supporting cast?
ADAMS: The other thing—since I was there—I was dealing with these… but they weren’t Thor and Hercules and all the rest of that, but they were more earth gods I thought, earth, air, fire, and water were great, and it turns out if you look ’em up, there are symbols… different cultures have different symbols for earth, air, fire, and water. I took the most common and put it on their chest and essentially personified earth, air, fire, and water into these four characters.
Defender of the Earth
(top) Neal Adams holding the Ms. Mystic art that appeared as BI #94’s cover.
Photo by the art’s owner, Shaun Clancy, taken at the Emerald City Comic-Con in Seattle in April 2016. (Neal’s other Pacific Comics title, 1983’s Skateman, was covered in BI #105.)
The Brave and the Bold Special thanks to BACK ISSUE’s dynamic designer, Rich Fowlks, for assembling this mock DC cover saluting the men who returned Batman to his gothic roots, writer Denny O’Neil and artist Neal Adams (working under the direction of editor Julie Schwartz). The art was produced by Adams for a MOCCA Benefit Auction and later auctioned in 2005 by Heritage Comics Auctions (www. ha.com).
Mark DiFruscio (audio recorded on July 24, 2010 and edited for publication)
Batmen Forever
(top) Our Pro2Pro fantastic four. Photo courtesy of Mark DiFruscio. (bottom left) Adams’ first cover for the title Batman was on issue #200 (Mar. 1968). (bottom right) An Adams Batman sketch from 1982, courtesy of Heritage Comics Auctions (www.ha.com).
Fairly or unfairly, the publication of both Watchmen and Batman: The Dark Knight Returns in 1986 has become synonymous with the dawn of the so-called “Dark Age” of comics: a period typified by “grim and gritty” stories and increasingly violent characters, inhabiting a darker, more psychologically complex world. Yet a deeper examination of comic-book history suggests that these works should be viewed less as a fixed point of origin for the “Dark Age” than the apotheosis of a broader evolution within the medium— an evolution that locates its true origins not with creators Alan Moore and Frank Miller in the 1980s, but with writer Denny O’Neil and artist Neal Adams in the 1970s, when the duo revolutionized the character of Batman, as well as the comics industry, during their highly acclaimed collaboration. In July of 2010, this legendary creative team took center stage at the San Diego Comic-Con for a spirited and candid conversation about their classic work, headlining the panel “Taking Back the Knight: Batman in the 1970s and Beyond,” alongside former DC president Paul Levitz and moderator Mark Evanier – Mark DiFruscio
MARK EVANIER: Let me ask each of you, as a kickoff question: What was your first exposure to Batman that made you feel strongly about the character? Which era of Batman, which body of Batman material, was the one that made you like the character or care about the character the most? Was there some period of Batman, some era, some way he was drawn, some way he was written, that meant a lot to you?
Paul?
PAUL LEVITZ: I came into Batman through the comics that were in an older kid’s box, down the block. And it was probably the last awful moments of Jack Schiff’s editorial run. But through whatever accident… they were the real interesting moments of that. It was “Robin Dies at Dawn” [Batman #156, June 1963] which was one of the most powerful stories from that period. And Dr. No-Face [“The Fantastic Dr. No-Face,” Detective Comics #319, Sept. 1963]. False Face [“The Menace of False Face,” Batman #113, Feb. 1958]. Maybe I just remember them fondly because I was six years old, but a lot of my interest was due to Dick Sprang. [Sprang] was one of the truly great artists working on Batman in the early years. And that was the imprinting.
