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Sunday, May 29, 2022

NEAL ADAMS...The Best There Ever Was...The Best There Will Ever Be.


From Archie to the Avengers, from Ben Casey to “The Brave & The Bold. ”He was to say; The Natural. The Best there ever was…The Best there will ever be.”

Neal Adams  1941 - 2022



He was a creative force of tireless energy. That along with his mastery of drawing and artistic innovation would cement his place in the history of the American Comic Book as a true genius. The dialogue of what the form described and known by various names including comic book / graphic novelization / sequential story-telling is (while in fact dating back to the dawn of humankind and civilization) has been altered from Adam's time forward into the future by his countless contributions and collaborations (chiefly with writer Denny O’Neil.) 




Neal Adams was actually much more than a prominent  voice of the social and racial injustices, changes  and turmoil of the Nineteen 60’s and 70’s within his chosen field; in his eminent way he was too a real life advocated for contemporary creator’s rights, a lobbyist and a bare knuckles fighter of sorts for the community of human kind. This was evident in along with a number of his creations and his reaching out along with Harland Ellison, Gary Trudeau and others over his lifetime to congress and world organizations and institutions. He fought for the teenagers that birthed “Superman,” Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, for the compensation and recognition they had been denied yet so richly deserved for decades.
 He won. 




Holocaust survivor, Dina Babbitt would become the beneficiary of Adam’s fight for the return of her artwork that she used in bartering for the life and survival of her mother and herself during the Nazi reign of terror. The Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum in Poland has recently returned said works to Ms. Babbitt. These are only a small portion of the Adam’s body of resolutions and the righting of selected cultural and historic failings.


                                           More on Neal Adams @ Why Not: A Blog                                          

            
                                 







Sadly; Neal Adams passed on April 28th from complications of Sepsis, a type of blood poisoning. Adams was a man as legendary as the characters he created, developed and voiced within his visual stories. He was one with no legitimate rivals while possessing legions of admirers, supporters and friends.  



Vintage News Footage
Neal, Denny O'Neil & Julie Schwartz 
  


"How to be Great as an Artist"
Neal Adams
     

Adams Sketches 
Deadman
from
"STRANGE ADVENTURES"
        

Adams 1987 Interview
Harlan Ellison Intro.