“Neal was the loud voice of justice,” Mr. Levitz, the former DC president, said.
Neal Adams was born on June 15, 1941, on Governors Island in New York City, where his mother, Lillian, ran a boardinghouse. His father, Frank, who was largely absent, was a writer for the military.
Mr. Adams graduated from the School of Industrial Art in Manhattan in 1959. He did some work for Archie Comic Publications but found more continual employment in the advertising industry. In 1962, he landed an assignment drawing “Ben Casey,” a newspaper strip based on the television medical drama of the same name.
He began working for DC Comics as a freelancer in 1967, when he drew a short story for the long-running comic books series Our Army at War. He ended the ’60s and started the next decade with some memorable freelance work drawing the X-Men and the Avengers for Marvel.
In 1971, he and Dick Giordano founded Continuity Studios, a graphics arts concern that worked in advertising and film. It also had a publishing arm, Continuity Comics, an early attempt to allow creators to reap more profits from their characters. One of the company’s successes was Bucky O’Hare, a comic book about a green rabbit who has adventures in space; the character inspired toys, cartoons and video games.
Mr. Adams enjoyed nurturing talent.
“He was the teacher who encouraged more than a handful of people who became the leading lights of the next generation of the field, including Frank Miller, Bill Sienkiewicz and Denys Cowan,” Mr. Levitz said. But it was a tough-love encouragement.
“Kids would bring them his portfolio, and he would rip it to shreds,” Mr. Levitz said. However, after two or three times, if they improved, Mr. Adams would call DC or Marvel on their behalf.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nytimes.com
