Arguably the greatest Batman artist of all time, Neal Adams, along with the equally great Denny ONeill, revamped Batman for a new audience in the 1970s. More than any other creators (Frank Miller included), Batman fans have ONeill & Adams seminal 70s run to thank for displacing the paternal, jovial Batman and returning the character to his dark, violent and psychologically complex roots. Adams take on superheroes is simple enough. Anatomically speaking, he reasons that, if a Human being can do it, then so can a superhero. If not, he simply doesnt draw it. In this way, Adams style is a mixture of picture-perfect anatomy and exquisitely rendered action. In a very real fashion, Neal Adams illustrated Batman comics are far more grounded in reality than the live action movies or TV series, at least visually (and they are usually far more convincing, too). Neal Adams Batman was more of a freewheeling, globetrotting James Bond type. He didnt have much time to brood, what with all the sexy women, glamorous location-shoots and exotic villains he was facing, villains he almost always battled using his newfound martial arts mastery. In his 70s heyday, Adams was the artist that first introduced us to characters like Man-Bat, The Reaper and, of course, the sinister Ras Al Ghul (not to mention his daughter, Talia). His bare-chested Batman, aggressively duelling Ras under the desert sun has been re-drawn more times than can be mentioned here (in fact, it was referenced by Jim Lee in Hush, alluded to throughout Grant Morrisons Batman & Son and Batman, Incorporated AND again by Andy Kubert in this months Robin Rises 1-Shot). In short, Neal Adams defined the Dark Knight for his generation and for every generation since.
I am a professional author and lifelong comic books/pro wrestling fan. I also work as a journalist as well as writing comic books (I also draw), screenplays, stage plays, songs and prose fiction.
I don't generally read or reply to comments here on What Culture (too many trolls!), but if you follow my Twitter (@heyquicksilver), I'll talk to you all day long!
If you are interested in reading more of my stuff, you can find it on http://quicksilverstories.weebly.com/ (my personal site, which has other wrestling/comics/pop culture stuff on it).
I also write for FLiCK http://www.flickonline.co.uk/flicktion, which is the best place to read my fiction work.
Oh yeah - I'm about to become a Dad for the first time, so if my stuff seems more sentimental than usual - blame it on that!
Finally, I sincerely appreciate every single read I get. So if you're reading this, thank you, you've made me feel like Shakespeare for a day! (see what I mean?)
Latcho Drom,
- CQ
