Neal Adams is one of my preferred comic book artists. provided the costs on his renowned cover work, obviously I’m not alone in believing his art is of high quality. In fact, I would rank Adams in the top ten of all-time excellent comic book illustrators, both as regards his influence as well as for his contributions to altering the look of contemporary comics.

In my opinion, Adams picture work, at its best, can much more than hold its own when put side-by-side with the work of excellent artists like: Frank Frazetta, Steve Ditko, Joe Kubert, Gil Kane as well as Wally Wood.

Okay, sufficient praise of Adams’ ability. What is it about Adams illustrations that makes so numerous collectors seek out his work?

If we location his picture work in historical context, we can see that a line can be attracted contemporary comic book art. On one side of the line we discover what can be called ‘the pre-Adams’ period and, on the other, ‘the post-Adams era’ in contemporary comics.

Pre-Adams, there was some extremely great (even great) however likewise extremely idiosyncratic art created for comics. This enabled for some individually fantastic visionary skill to be actualized on paper. believe of the work of Jack Kirby or will Eisner as well as Gil Kane.

Unfortunately for each Eisner, Kane as well as Kirby there were clones who were being required to embrace a workshop mentality leading to a extremely stylized however dull output imitating the rigid as well as lifeless style of less outstanding illustrators.

In the situation of mainstream super-hero comics this was visible in the DC titles of the early 1960s. The Superman books had good art, as well as Al Pastino, for example, was no slouch, however the mentality of the time led to Joe Shuster knock off art in those books as well as artists like Wayne tiring as well as Kurt Schaffenberger only seldom accomplished the expressive brilliance of the golden Age Shuster art.

Adams altered that. coming from a industrial art as well as marketing background when he started work in comics in the early 1960s, during that time it was unusual to see a naturalistic as well as reasonable style used to stories. however Adams refused to create a ‘paint-by-numbers’ as well as constrained style. instead his art made Batman frightening once again (moving him into the shadows instead of providing us the campy daylight scenes), he made eco-friendly lantern edgy as well as relevant. Adams brought a new realism into the medium as well as made the entire Bronze Age style of comics that much much better for it.
Stand Out Work

Adams hit his innovative top from the mid-sixties, I would state starting around 1966, up up until the early-to-mid 1970s. So great was the work that Adams created at this time around that his covers from this period, e.g. eco-friendly lantern #76 (see photo above):

Batman #237 ,

and

Detective Comics #412, continue to boost in cost as well as desirability year after year without any indications of slowing down.

Without Adams, we would not have had the excellent seventies outputs of a expense Sienkiewicz, a Val Mayerik, or a Mike Ploog. since there is so much great art, particularly from his innovative peak, choosing only one book to exemplify his finest work is not easy.

Therefore, I’ll end by discussing two books that I believe catch the essence of Adams style:

Avengers #93 (November 1971) – double Sized Issue

Featuring the traditional Kree/Skrull war story arc, this is Adams at his innovative peak. With Adams’ art bringing the Avengers to life, an already strong story ended up being so much better. If you haven’t checked out it, you should. While a 9.8 in licensed type will expense you $6,750.00, you can still get this in 9.2 or lower for a fairly economical price. currently in 9.6 it has a FMV of $1,550.00, in 9.4 = $825.00, as well as a 9.2 can be had for $350.00. finest returns over the last four years have been on, 6.5 with a positive + 25.1% return on investment after 6 sales.

Batman #251 (September 1973) – traditional Joker Cover

There’s a Joker film coming out as well as the early publicity stills look like they were going for the Adams’ handle the character. That would, in fact, be a excellent concept – because this is the period when the Joker ended up being the villainous character all of us like to hate. Whether because of the Joker film or not, returns on this book are strong in anything above a 5.0. currently expect to pay $4,900.00 for a licensed 9.8 near mint copy, with finest returns of positive +75.6% on 9.4 licensed copies after 59 sales because 2009.

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Neal Adams: A fan Asks “If Only…”Like many, I poured over short article after article, publish after post, as well as comment after comment to discover out what people were stating aboutnull