Opinions on Bernie Wrightson’s rare inks on Neal Adams pencils range from “dream team” to “dueling styles.”
Personally, I enjoy the combo, But Neal himself is said to have told Bernie he was better off going his own way. And that, I think, we can all agree upon.
As for this great Green Lantern page from Adams legendary run? The top panel feels more Adams dominant to me, and in the cool final panel I see more of Bernie’s efforts.
Your mileage may vary.
(Pictured below the published Green Lantern comic are a few more examples of the Adams/ Wrightson combo: A terrific Batman cover and the splash page to an El Diablo story from Weird Western #12.)
Bob Brown’s Superboy stories were the Superboy stories I read as a kid.
Wally Wood inks? A very happy bonus.
Even though the stories rarely matched the intensity of the typically featured Neal Adams covers, I’d likely buy a collection of this material on the spot if it ever becomes available. Nostalgia is a powerful thing. (It’s shocking how much DC silver age superhero material remains to be printed. But that’s a story for another day.)
We can’t let 2023 fade into the memory books without at least some tribute to the 60th Anniversary of the X-Men.
Neal Adams drew nine issues of the X-Men. John Byrne drew four times as many. I love John Byrne art, but the prices of his pages are — how do we say? — a bit out of whack when compared to the scarcity of Adams.
Oh, and this is a great one from his run, with superb inks by the legendary Tom Palmer. (Despite the disappointing quality of the scan.)
Neal Adams delivers a terrific Spectre action page from his third issue on the series, and the second he wrote, penciled and inked himself. I love the looks of terror and fear on the faces, especially in that last large panel.
(DC jammed quite a few creative changes through those brief 10 issues of the silver age Spectre, so it was apparently a good place to give Neal a shot at writing a “superhero” title.)
Of course, it’s nearly Halloween, so it’s time we take our annual visit with the ghouls, monsters and apparitions of the comic book art pages.
Thanks to artist Ken Landgraf, I finally get to see the original prelims and pencils — and partial (Neal Adams) inks — to this great Conan page from Savage Tales #4. And as a bonus, we solve one mystery and create a new one. (Ken owns photocopies of Gil’s pencils from this story and others.)
Gil Kane pencilled the story (pretty loosely in some places), and Neal Adams inked some of it as well, supported at a minimum by Vince Colletta, Frank McLaughlin, and Pablo Marcos. (Credits supplied by Roy Thomas in Savage Sword of Conan #2). Marcos also provided the wash tones on the story, necessary to add depth to a black and white, and also provide some consistency to the art style.
Neal, of course, was a pro at collaborative art creation. His “Crusty Bunkers” a group of (ever-changing) artists at his Continuity Studios, filled in many times during deadline crunches for Marvel, DC, Charlton and others during the 70s.
(The specific inking credits here are listed as Diverse Hands, and this appears to reference the fact that some others outside Continuity also worked on the project.)
And now the mystery; when the story is reprinted for the first time in color in a Marvel Treasury Edition, two faces that weren’t in panel three in the Savage Tales version now appear. Turns out they were originally pencilled by Gil — but inked over in the final art, probably to give it more depth for B&W.
Which means — Either Roy, Gil or someone else had to remember that change and go back and pull it from inked copies for the color version.
Man-Thing (Seriously, what kind of drugs to you take to come up with a name like that?) makes his first color comic book appearance in this terrific Ka-Zar story illustrated primarily by John Buscema.
Part of the story was slated to appear in the B&W Savage Tales #2 which did not see the light of day, so it was cleverly re-worked here. Because of the re-mixing, credits on this issue read like an all-star line-up, and include Buscema, Neal Adams, John Romita and Dan Adkins.
Writer Roy Thomas somehow made sense of it all, creating the framing story around Len Wein’s original tale.
Bonus: Man -Thing’s first overall appearance in Savage Tales #1 includes this glorious splash (below) by Gray Morrow.
Neal Adams pencilling and Bernie Wrightson inking? Seems like an impossible combination. First thought, one would overpower the other, or, even worse, combine into some sort of Frankenstein’s monster (pun intended) of comic book art.
Well, not only is it possible, its terrific — at least in this one specific issue of Green Lantern. (Bernie himself said he was extra careful not to dominate Neal’s pencils here.)
And on this great page, you can clearly see the result — both styles complement each other. (The coloring in the printed issue unfortunately diminishes the impact of that last great panel. But heck, it is dark out.)
I’m delighted to own a page from this classic issue — and classic series.
Action Comics #422, March 1973(Human Target back-up feature)
Here’s a terrific Dick Giordano action page from the origin story of the Human Target, published shortly after the character’s introduction in a back-up feature in Action Comics 50 years ago.
And although uncredited, I’m pretty sure I see some light ghosting from Dick’s pal, Neal Adams, in a few places along the way.
Regardless, it is yet another example of a DC Bronze-age series that remained uncollected for decades. After three (!) TV iterations of the character, you would think our friend Christopher Chance deserved a TPB. But, finally in 2019, the complete early stories appeared in a best of Len Wein collection. (Len wrote all the original stories.)
Welcome to Day Six of the 12 DC Days of DeCember.
In case you were curious about copies printed and copies sold back in the day…The early Human Target stories are finally assembledin this 2019 collection, although you wouldn’t know from the (great ) Jim Starlin cover.
Neal Adams covers were much more thrilling that than Bob Brown’s interiors on Superboy. Those Adams covers drew me in — pun intended — nearly every single time.
Of course, that could be said about pretty much any Adams DC cover vs. interior artist at the time — but we digress.
Still, Brown was a better storyteller than fans give him credit for, and his action pages, like this one, almost always delivered a fair level of drama and interest.
And despite the fact that the villain, “Mr. Cipher” didn’t quite deliver the terrifying promise of the cover’s drama in the interior, it’s yet another example of an issue I remember 50-plus years later, so it’s fun to own a page from it.
Welcome to Day five of the 12 DC Days of DeCember.
I’m still processing the loss of the legendary Neal Adams, who truly was a one-of-kind artist and person. Dozens of stories and anecdotes come to mind, and at some point in the near future, I will post one or two of my favorites.
Which leads me to one of the most quoted lines of dialogue in film history, from the classic John Ford western, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance:
“When the legend becomes fact, print the legend”
In Neal’s case, the legend and the fact are pretty much the same thing. Any story you’ve heard — you can safely believe it.
Or, to quote from another film: (Harrison Ford/Han Solo in The Force Awakens)
