Neal Adams Dead at 80
Neal Adams, the famed comic book artist who drew Batman, Green Lantern, Green Arrow, the X-Men, the Avengers, and numerous more superheroes, according to his daughter. has died. He was 80 years old.
In 1998, Adams was inducted into the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame, one of the industry’s top accolades. He was inducted into the Jack Kirby Hall of Fame of the Harvey Awards a year later, and the Joe Sinnott Hall of Fame of the Inkwell Awards in 2019.
He was born in New York City on June 15, 1941, and got his start in the comic book world drawing for Archie Comics in 1959 after being rejected by DC Comics. After working on several comic strips and horror magazines, he got his start at DC in 1967 on the series “Our Army at War.” His first superhero gig came with the covers of “Action Comics,” DC’s flagship Superman series, and “Superman’s Girl Friend, Lois Lane.”
It was during this Silver Age of Comics, where the medium was pushing artistic boundaries and finding financial success, that Adams’ career began to take off. He drew Batman and the supernatural hero the Spectre, two of the most iconic characters featured in his long career, in early 1968. He also took overdrawing the hero Deadman, a ghostly character who could possess people and who became a hit with readers.
In 1969, Adams began freelancing for both DC and Marvel, where he drew the X-Men and the popular Kree-Skrull War storyline of the Avengers series.
