It's been done before.

-M

I'm still not seeing 'mostly' negative, myself.
'Neal Adams used weird, hard-to-follow, layouts that everybody copied'?

Where to begin....

While some have gone on and on about the Silver Age emergence of certain artists (many already working during the Golden Age), and how they advanced the language of the medium, it did not take long for certain patterns to repeat themselves, eventually stagnating to the point where almost every superhero title spoke the same predictable "ITS ACTION!!" or "Well...they're wearing tights! Good enough!" language, and rarely walked the reality side of the street. Neal Adams--like Raymond, Williamson, Wood (to a point), Frazetta, and others--as a matter of nature understood that fantasy subjects communicate in a more powerful manner when reality is embraced. Reality not just in execution, but in capturing the reader's own eye movement (personalizing the audience experience), characters' movement, and how emotions are genuinely felt. In addition to Adams' well known photographer's eye, his work played like that of a film director, knowing exactly when and how to focus on a character to capture him/her at their most dramatic, whether in action, or in a personal moment. There's no genre Adams failed to master.

His was an uncommon talent and insight into speaking the language of realism in the unrealistic world of superheroes, monsters and the otherworldly, so its no wonder he's received over a half-century of praise for work that--without question--elevated the medium from the infantile "funny books" as accurately charged by critics. He changed the very perception of what comic books could be in a way only matched by a handful in comic strip/book history.

On that note, its too bad that few in the superhero genre ever lived up to his magnificent, barrier-breaking innovations in the decades since, with the one-man revolution named Alex Ross at the top of that all too short list. Regarding Ross, its no surprise he counted Adams among his influences, and the connection does not end there; in an issue of Jack Kirby Collector (#27 - February, 2000), there's a line that says it all:



Bold statement. That's the bookend of Adams' generally unparalleled brilliance--a legacy that skipped over several generations of artists--including the anatomy-challenged, pin-up hacks from the original Image "talent pool" (and those who were Image clones) who were sold as some kind of great leap forward for the industry. Yeah, sure.

I love Kirby, but I'm not sure that he wasn't.  I really think the direct superhero glut is a problem. 

I figured someone would bring up Steranko.  Streranko is... different though.  I never felt he ignored panel-to-panel storytelling, no matter how staggeringly weird his page designs were.  And I don't think Steranko was an influence on bad artists.  

Steranko certainly had his weaknesses - he  wasn't that good at the actual "drawing" part of being a comic book artist, seriously, if you look at his figure drawing especially in isolation from the amazing stuff around it it's weak - but his wholly successful layout experiment % is quite a bit higher than Adams.  
  
I did not expect anyone - actually three of you! - to bring up Colan.  Here is my position on Gene Colan:  I love his work and I will not say anything bad about it out of loyalty.   

I gave examples of artist I think Adams influenced positively. I could add Aparo, AllanWeiss, Cockrum, Rodgers and more. Is there anyone before the Image artists that you think he made worse?

I think where Adams story-telling was not easy to follow it was as much a case of the reader not having encountered that kind of page design before (although it goes back to Captain Easy by Roy Crane and Krazy Kat by George Herriman in the Sunday newspaper color sections) as anything inherently wrong with Adams. It also depended a lot on balloon placement which I'm not sure Adams always had full input on (sometimes writers, especially at Marvel, would write things not discussed with the artist after the art was done).

I see Adams as much as a product of the newspaper strips as advertising. He worked on Ben Casey and lot of his style is in-keeping with drama strips of the time such as Mary Perkins On Stage by Leonard Starr, and The Heart Of Juliette Jones by Stan Drake.

Here is an Adams Sunday Ben Casey...


Leonard Starr's On Stage...


Stan Drake's Juliette Jones...


Here's a couple of earlier daily Buz Sawyers by Roy Crane...

I am not saying that Adams was a bad artist at depicting emotion and the reason I am not saying that is because that would be obviously insane.

But....

Actually scratch that. Rhetorical question: So is it okay to be a one trick pony if the one trick is a really, really good trick?

Actually scratch that, too. Let's talk about Kirby.



Since I'm showing panels that aren't Adams' best work, I think it's only fair that I show some panels from another guy that are not his best work. They're functional but certainly not chock full of jaw-dropping epic-ness. And that mountain of frickin' text that Stan Lee plastered on top of them certainly does no aesthetic favors.

But here's what Kirby is doing - He's using the negative space in panel 1 and panel 3 to reinforce the Sub-Mariner's mental state. You can barely SEE poor l'il Subby but you can figure out exactly what he's feeling (loneliness and isolation) without reading the 70,000,000 words that Stan gives us. He looks small and alone, and he feels small and alone.

If Neal Adams had to communicate the same sense of sadness and solitude, what would he do? What approach would he take? He would draw a dude and make him look sad through facial expressions and body language.

I know this because Neal Adams has only communicates emotion in his stories one way.

If Adams wanted to communicate joy in his art what would he do? He would draw a dude and make them look happy through facial expressions and body language.

If Adams wanted to communicate anger, he would draw an angry dude. This dude would yell and point a lot. If we're super lucky the angry dude might do something angry, like blow up a plane.

While many of the artist of his generation used more advanced filmic/literary/art-world techniques like montage, the subtle interplay of shadows, mirrored reflections

Pause so that everyone clicks on the above link, oh my God Joe Kubert is amazing...

or Rhythmic Repetition of Images and shapes,..

Adams was having none of that. As I said last post he was really creative and forward-thinking in terms of design, but quite limited in the creative techniques he used to tell stories, at least compared to Toth, Kubert, Ditko, Kirby



He drew dudes. And they did do a lot of pointing.

Ok, I haven't talked about this yet but it needs to be said. Adams was always really, really good at the "drawing" part of being a comic artist. And that includes backgrounds. Adams placed his characters within settings that had a sense of tactile realism, even when they were riding ants named after rock musicians through an android's unconscious body. And, especially during action sequences, Adams did an amazing job of defining the setting and the physical space (not quite the same thing) that his characters occupied as they chased each other in three dimensions, up towers and tightropes or down to the bottom of the ocean. And he could communicate mood quite effectively, or at least he would hang a big 'ol full moon in the sky and make it look awesome. Close enough.

But he never quite made that next step to where the setting works as a character, and never made the physical world the characters inhabit reflects their emotional tone. The above Kirby trick with negative space = loneliness? Adams could never pull that off. He could draw prettier pictures, but I don't think he could wring emotional nuance out of a scene where the character was barely on screen. (Although he could with characters completely cloaked in shadow.) He needs dudes to draw. And I've never seen Adams effectively use symbolism of any kind, although that was true of 95% of artists in Adams era and a higher percentage today, so he gets a pass on that.

But to say the figure drawing was absolutely the most important part of Adams' aesthetic is underselling it. For all the dizzying angles, perspective tricks, crazy page designs and foreshortening he would use to make his figure drawing interesting - this all TOTALLY WORKED, by the by, even when his experiments fail Adams was and is an interesting artist - the way he communicated emotional nuance was less varied, less creative than his top-level peers.

Now I'm not sure how this section contributes to my Adams influence = bad thesis. (Although it leads into the next chapter, which will.) There probably are artists post-Adams who used figure drawing, body language, and facial expressions (and only those) to communicate the emotions of their story... but I can't actually think of anyone right now. The worst of the Adams copycats don't seem to have much truck with these fancy high-falutin' "emotions" at all, unless you count punching as an emotion.

I think my problem here is more with the fans. Or at least the breed of fan who only pays attention to the figure drawing and maaaaybe the panel composition, thinks comic art's quality is directly proportional to the amount/degree of rendering, and ignores everything else. I blame the existence of THAT kind of fan on Neal, and my Tothian soul cries out with rage.


But let's circle back - I don't think being a one trick pony is that bad if it's a really good trick, and Adams yelling, gesticulating, constantly in motion and shown from the angle that best wrings every last drop of drama from a scene characters were a damn! good! trick!

But he wasn't incredibly creative in his storytelling choices when depicting emotions.

And he wasn't subtle. And THAT is one of my two biggest problems with Adams as an artist. So. TBC.