Wow, congrats. How'd you pull that one off?

Amazing, working with Neal Adams - Incredible!

Sounds awesome.

My Day with Neal Adams



So, first of all, this day absolutely confirmed for me that Wizard World sucks. There were exactly five comic dealers there, and three of them were charging outrageous prices for junk because the idiots walking by were paying it, not knowing any better. Wizard World is not for comic lovers.

BUT...working with Neal Adams was amazing. He's an incredibly funny guy, and, as long as you understand where he's coming from, he's really nice too. Neal is not a fan of comics and absolutely doesn't understand people who are devoted to them. I figured out pretty quickly that thickly laying on what a fan I was of his was going to be a conversation stopper. Instead, Neal is a businessman and a thinker. He likes to make money, and he likes to prove his intelligence. Help him make money, or appreciate his intelligence, and suddenly he's the friendliest guy in the world. As it happens, I apparently did a dynamite job bringing folks over to his table today. He complimented me repeatedly, and his wife even gave me a hug. At the end of the day, he complimented me again, and I talked him in to doing a sketch for me in lieu of payment (something he never does; as amazing as he is, he does not like to draw. He explained to us at one point that he makes more from commissioned art, but he doesn't like to do all that work, so he'd rather we pushed signed prints). So my getting a sketch from him was a pretty big deal, and he usually charges $200 or more for them, so I was pretty psyched.

At the end of the day, I brought him a ton of business, got to spend A LOT of time talking with him about his current work with DC, his bartering for royalties and the return of original artwork back in the day, his involvement in the Shuster and Siegel agreement, Continuity Comics, his opinions toward Julie Schwartz and Mort Weisinger, his relationship with Joe Orlando and how he ended up doing the House of Mystery covers, and we even ventured into my picking his brain about the expanding Earth theory (which was quite interesting).

I also got all of this for six hours of work:

Sketch of The Spectre:




Sketch of The Spectre along with three signed prints (X-Men for me, Harley Quinn for my wife, Wonder Woman for my daughters):




And a photo op with Neal, my buddy, and I:





They made sure to take my contact info down TWICE and assured me they'd be using me again next year, at which point they will still need more help, so if anyone wants to plan now to work the table with me NEXT February, let me know. They could use three people per day




Oh, I also met Michael Golden. Since Wizard World isn't for comic book people, few people knew who Neal Adams was without me explaining, and even less knew Michael Golden, so his table was sadly empty for most of the day. When I went over to him on my break, he was charging $5 for autographs and actually sincerely thanked ME for being excited to meet HIM. It was actually kind of sad, but I'm glad I met him, and I got this:





Truly an amazing day. Who's going to come out and join me next year?

I am glad you had such a nice time working with Neal Adams and got such a coveted stash, Shaxper! That is really cool that you get to work with him again next year.

Next thing you know, comics creators all over the world are going to be begging you to assist them at conventions...

Shax, You will treasure this moment for the rest of your life and having that gorgeous rendering of Spectre will reinforce your memories working with him that Saturday. Thanks for sharing those moments working with Neal Adams that day.

I don't know that he would have been terribly unpleasant; just unresponsive most likely.





Adams got into comics just before the second generation of comic book creators; the ones who grew up on comics and were in it for the love. Nearly everyone who was part of the first generation was there to make money, and then only because they couldn't get into advertising. Neal doesn't try to hide this. His company shifted away from comics and into advertising decades ago; he does comics because, these days, he gets more money there, but I don't think he loves it any more than a bus driver loves buses. It's just what you do to make a living.

How he got so good at something that doesn't interest him much remains a mystery to me, of course. Maybe he did care at one point and burned out on it. But really, if you look back on his career, he stopped doing interior art pretty much as soon as he had enough clout to say "covers only." And, once he launched Continuity Comics, he never once did a comic for that imprint himself.

Yes, it's disappointing that he doesn't care about the medium in the way that we do, and, worse yet, doesn't understand our passion, but I don't exactly fault him for that.