The one Biden quote was a gaffe. The other one is just taken out of context. Biden was against bussing as a tool to desegregate but favored housing to battle segregation. Biden wasn’t pro segregation in the seventies. I’m sure you have read about Trump’s history in the 70’s dealing with racial issues and being sued by the DOJ. I have. Sad how much of maga land depends on disinformation.
Rep. Tony Gonzales decried some of his Republican colleagues in the House of Representatives as 'scumbags' with 'white hoods' as he directly targeted Rep. Matt Gaetz in an interview with CNN on Sunday.
"White hoods" sounds like an erroneous Ku Klux Klan reference. I think he means "white hats", like black and white pieces on a chess board, meaning the white hats are supposed to be the good guys, and black hats are supposed to be the bad guys. And implied hypocrisy of some posing as good guys when they are not.
Rep. Derek Gaetz (who represents a very conservative district in the northernmost part of Florida, west ot Tallahassee) was under public scrutiny for about a year by FBI and House investigators, and seems to have vindicated himself from false charges, and at considerable legal cost. That Gonzalez said this on CNN of all places (anti-Republican Central) also doesn't lend this credibility. On CNN they just let him talk with minimal pushback, whereas on Fox or Newsmax or OAN, there would have been some factual pushback and challenge to these allegations. And on any network, that's how it should be. Some cross-examination, to determine and test what is alleged, and what the true facts are.
The allegations against Gaetz seem to nhave been a coincidental crippling of him, right while he led a push to remove Republican then-speaker Kevin McCarthy. Likewise with Democrat Senator Robert Menendez, and Democrat mayor of New York City Eric Adams, these Democrats likewise went against their party's immigration narrative, and were immediately punished with FBI investigations.
I think this goes back to "Filegate" in the Bill Clinton administration, where the Clinton administration was keeping FBI files of Republican Senate and House members, surveiling them for alcoholism or drug abuse, extramarital sexual affairs, questionable corruption, any possible criminal actions, so as to blackmail them into supporting or not opposing Democrat legislation.
I think --as was obviously proven to have been occurring during the Trump administration, even though inittially denied, then unquestionably proven--- an even more fanatically Democrat-Bolshevik FBI, CIA, DOJ, ATF and other agencies, are doing the same now, and they keep these files, so that at any time, if a Donald Trump or a Derek Gaetz, or a Robert Menendez, or a Michael Flynn, or a Senator Ted Stevens, or a Scooter Libby becomes a threat to their plans, that person can have FBI / DOJ's hammer dropped on them at any time, smear them with enough scandal to prevent their re-election, drive them from office, if not put them in jail. All in the service of the Deep State uni-party cause.
1) UKRAINE. The issue with Republicans is NOT providing aid to Ukraine, it's just finding the righ way to administer that aid: (A) Democrats (and some RINO Republicans) are writing enormous blank checks to Ukraine for "military aid" but Ukraine has for decades been a very corrupt country, near the bottom of the list of corrupt nations. And with no financial oversight, officials there are pocketing enormous amounts of U S cash, rather than using it to fight the war. Tucker Carlson, while still on Fox, aired a segment about Ukrainians driving in Switzerland pulling up in Lambourghinis, to buy castle-like estates, that before U S aid began, was typical only opurchased by corrupt Russian officials there. For Ukraine, yes, but there has to be oversight, and also a clear plan to win the war, not laid out yet.
(B) Another problem with Ukraine is the Biden administration's slow-walking aid to Ukraine, even when Republicans have signed off on new increments of aid. That U S military aid is often arriving too late to do Ukraine much good.
(C) The weird trend among Democrats (and some RINO Republicans) that they display more solidaritty and patriotism for Ukraine than the United Sates, even displaying Ukrainian flags, where they would never display such patriotism for the United States. And they always want to write blank checks for hundreds of billions to Ukraine, but never want to lay out the 5 billion or less it would take to secure our own Southern border. When Democrats talk about "border funding", it's to kick open the floodgates EVEN WIDER, and propose bills to "facilitate" (i.e., fund) EVEN MORE illegals coming into the U.S., when the overwhelming numbers coming in now are not even vetted to guarantee they are not criminals, gangs, drug cartels, human traffickers, or terrorists. So ACTUAL Republicans are not "dangerous", or "traitors", or "stooges of Putin" as Democrats and the liberal media try to spin it, they just insist that securing our own border against foreign threats is an equal if not greater priority.
(D) While it is their own backyard, other European nations are offering far less aid to Ukraine than the U.S. has already. So there has to be pressure to force other nations to do their part.
(E) Despite enormous U.S. aid already, the Ukranians are losing badly. Part of that has to do with the Biden administration (perhaps deliberately, or by incompetence) slow-walking the already enormous military aid earmarked for Ukraine. But it mainly has to do wih Russia having 3 times as many men to draft new reserves of soldiers from. At its peak, Ukraine had about 40 million people, while Russia had about 145 million people. With a lot of people dead now on both sides. From what I can observe, while there are some dissenters on the Russian side (many of whom have disappeared or received severe jail sentences) the Russian propaganda machine seems to have most Russians supporting Putin and the war, and a Russia that was floundering militarily in 2022, has completely rebuilt and modernized their military forces over the last 2 years. China, Iran, and North Korea are buying their oil (and the Biden administration does nothing to stop it) and both weapons and economic trade and drones are going back and forth between these nations. While Ukraine is struggling to keep the flow of both foreign military aid, and is struggling to keep a reserve of military fighting men, after enormous losses. Russia has suffered enormous losses too, but it still has a larger population to pull more reserves from. Both sides are so immersed in propaganda, it's hard to determine the full losses on either side. Bu in most of the 2 years so far, Russians have taken heavier military losses up till now, while further inflicting heavy civilian atrocities on the Ukranians. And not discussed in the news, I don't think surrender is an option for Ukraine either, because Russia will just inflict more genocide on Ukraine if Russia wins, liquidating all remaining dissent, if they conquer Ukraine. So I see a negotiated cease-fire as the only good outcome for Ukraine. That would allow Ukraine after the cease-fire to build a deterrent to further Russian invasion. And I see that only as a possibility if Trump wins the election, because the incompetents in the Biden administration, either by accident or design, will just sit on their hands and let Ukraine die. And then blame the Republicans for their own failure !
Yeah, I miss the days when the media (who have polled as at least 80% liberal for 60 years) at least PRETENDED to be neutral and objective, and would actually call Biden and other Democrats, as well as Republicans, on their egregious lies. But in the current media, since about 2008, the media has become a shameless cheerleading section for the Democrats, and just bury any negative stories that might hurt the Democrats politically
When Governor Hochul took over from resigned governor Cuomo, she had an opportunity to do everything right, and succeed where Cuomo failed. But instread she doubled down on stupid. As if the human cattle that vote Democrat are capable of thinking for hemselves, past the nightly liberal media talking points and selecive omission of inconvenient facs like this Hochul comment.
But Gov. Hochul is in the company of like minded Democrats :
"Poor kids, just as bright and just as capable as white kids..." --Joe Biden, 2020
Opposing bussing and desegregation, “I don’t want my children to grow up in a jungle, a racial jungle.” -- Joe Biden, 1977
Plus 60 years of similar remarks, and allying with several known Klansmen mentors in the Senate, for decades. (as did Hillary Clinton as well, and Bill Clinton too. Boh Clintons until well into the Obama years also stood for preserving "our Southern heritage, the Confederate flag, and Confederate monuments, and then suddenly flipped in a second to condemning these things, back around 2012, when it became politically expedient to do so, and not before, during roughly 30 years he Clintons were in the national spotlight. )
Or...
"A few years ago, he would have been bringing us coffee." -- Bill Clinton in 2008, about Barack Obama, said to Senator Ted Kennedy, pressing Kennedy to join a DNC backroom convention delegate push to select Hillary Clinton over Barack Obama as their party's presidential nominee. Ted Kennedy was in fact disgusted by the remark, and sided with Obama as he nominee. As quoted by Mark Halperin, in the book Game Change about the 2008 election
Or similar comments about blacks, Jews, and increasingly, incendiary remarks about whites by Democrat leaders. Democrats, the party of hate.
Black New York City mayor Eric Adams made a similar comment the same day as Hochul's remark, about how immigrants who swam across the Rio Grande and entered Texas illegally, who have made their way to his city, are proven "good swimmers", and so can fill open jobs for lifeguards in New York city. These illegals mostly actually walk into Texas at multiple entry points, and don't actually swim. Biden just lets them walk in, by the tens of thousands daily. So, another stupid uninformed stereotyping remark by Adams. Oh ! And mayor Adams' comments to a black crowd at anoher speaking event 2 years or so ago, about his interaction with white political leaders in the police and city government: "I used to kick those crackas' asses, every day... !" Just the tip of the iceberg, when it comes to quotable Democrat racism.
But hey, you'd have to be a Republican to be called on a remark like that. If a Republican were as stupid as a Democrat, and were dumb enough to actually say it.
And BLOOD HUNT DIARIES, that is a guide to all the frigging crossover tie-ins.
DRACULA: BLOOD HUNT MIDNIGHT SONS: BLOOD HUNT UNION JACK THE RIPPER: BLOOD HUNT WOLVERINE: BLOOD HUNT X-MEN BLOOD HUNT JUBILEE X-MEN BLOOD HUNT MAJIK X-MEN BLOOD HUNT on the rocks, with a twist of lime !
TOMB OF DRACULA, Blade, Morbius the Living Vampire... Vampires were quite the rage at Marvel in the 1970's era. And had quite a few new appearances and miniseries into the 1980's and 1990's.
I wish them luck with this latest twist on the vampire schtick. I haven't read it yet, but my first impression is it's a twist on MARVEL ZOMBIES, only instead of zombies, all the Marvel characters get turned into vampires.
WrestleMania 41 is heading to Las Vegas, Nevada, after weeks of speculation regarding its location following WrestleMania 40. The event will be held later in April than usual, but will remain spread out over two days, taking over Allegiant Stadium on April 19 and 20. The announcement was made during the NBC broadcast of the Kentucky Derby pre-show on Saturday. Former World Heavyweight Champion Seth Rollins and Women's World Champion Becky Lynch were seen at the event before the broadcast showed a video announcement narrated by WWE CCO Paul "Triple H" Levesque.
It's Marvel's turn for a vampire uprising! In the first issue Sone popular characters were bit and stabbed. Who knows how permanent any of this will be. Still it was a good read with good artwork.
Well... it's nice to see Dick Van Dyke again, after many years.
But even at a minute and 12 seconds, he barely even implied a lucid thought about the gag order on Trump, over Trump's most recent trial by Judge Juan Merchan.
He said the mainstream news media pushed a recurrent narrative about the U.S. Supreme Court being "corrupt" because the Court had delayed a ruling about Judge Merchan's gag order on Trump (whether the U S Supreme Court either rules in support the gag order, or U S S C rules in favor of Trump's --and every U.S. citizen's-- free speech rights).
And then the media went silent on the Supreme Court issue, and instead has focused entirely on a new news media narrative, the need for the public to sympathize for Palestinians in Gaza, and Van Dyke says how he "feels manipulated" by the sudden shift in narrative by the media. (and even that summary might have given some undue clarity on my part to Van Dyke's murky comments.) Van Dyke APPEARS to be supportive of Trump, and critical of the news media narrative, but I really can't be sure what Van Dyke is trying to say.
But even that much is probably courageous for a Hollywood celebrity to say on the subject. Whatever acting roles Van Dyke might have recently lined up have probably just been rescinded, because he gave the slightest whiff of supporting Trump.
I just again ran across another good Sub-Mariner story, that ran in MARVEL FANFARE 43, April 1989, by Bill Manlo, with beautiful art and colors by Mike Mignola and Craig Russell.
Mignola's art made huge strides forward in quality during the 5 years between these 2 stories. It marks the point where Mignola made the transition from trying to exclusively be an inker, and left inking to become a penciller. Mignola in a COMIC BOOK ARTIST interview quotes Al Milgrom's "Editori-Al" here, where Milgrom said of Mignola, "As an inker, you make a great penciller", that in rhe inerview he says was Milgrom's way of telling him You're a really shitty inker. And once he switched to pencilling instead, Mignola's popularity really took off.
Some other early stuff by Mignola that really got my attention were some covers for the fanzine THE COMIC READER (issues 196, 203 and 212, circa 1981-1983)
And the 4-issue ROCKET RACCOON series in 1985, after which Mignola said he never had to struggle to get freelance assignments after again. And in 1988, Mignola's covers on BATMAN 426-429 for Starlin's "The Death of Robin" issues.
Soon after which, Mignola ventured ino his first HELLBOY miniseries in March 1994. For which ongoing series over tha last 30 years, Mignola has achieved god status in the comics world for the massive universe of tiles expanding from that first miniseries. Not to mention 3 successful Hellboy movies.
Continuing on the work Adams did for Pacific Comics, beyond SKATEMAN, And ECHO OF FUTUREPAST, Adams also did a few issues that got a lot of attention at the time in 1981-1982. It was big news that Adams was coming back and doing work again in comics for Pacific, on the character MS MYSTIC.
And then a seeming eternity later, a full issue of MS MYSTIC 1 finally came out at the end of the year in 1982. And then after another eternity about 2 years later, in 1984, the second issue finally came out . And before issue 3 had a prayer of being published, Pacific Comics was out of business, by August 1984. There were a lot of jokes in fandom at the time about how sporadic and late these two issues were, and Adams' inability to meet deadlines. It was the very lack of deadlines and contracts with creators that caused Pacific comics to fold. Their books were beautiful, but consistently late, and that cost them readers and sales, because their announced publication dates were unreliable, and readers lost interest waiting. And as was said in "The Rise and Fall of Pacific Comics" article by Jay Allen Sanford, when Neal Adams visited he Pacific warehouse, he'd disappear out back with a bunch of guys and smoke a lot of marijuana, and as Sanford said, did a lot to explain why Adams seemed unable to make deadlines.
Ms Mystic was running later and later; Neal Adams always promised "more soon," but a year passed and only a handful of finished pages had arrived. Adams did manage to turn in a one-shot comic in 1983 called Skateman, a tale of a roller-skating superhero that made Marvel's Dazzler seem like Proust by comparison. Several pallet-loads of unsold Skateman comics gathered dust, and no amount of salesmanship could unload them on accounts who were by now too savvy to believe that a "marquee name" on a comic cover guaranteed sales.
... "The reason Pacific Comics failed can be summed up very simply," Steve Schanes informs me. "We had two lines of activity: publishing and distribution. Most of our comic books still made money hand over fist, but there was a big problem in distribution. We extended too much credit to retailers who didn't pay us on a timely basis, and we were already working on a minuscule profit margin, maybe 5 percent to 8 percent. We didn't push hard enough to get the money from receivables, who owed us hundreds of thousands of dollars. If you had to boil down the single biggest reason we blew it, that would be our poor cash management on the distribution side."
Meanwhile, newer indie publishers, inspired by Pacific's success, competed with it for readers, as did resurgent underground publishers Kitchen Sink, Last Gasp, and Rip Off Press, whose titles were distributed through Pacific's warehouses. And surely other publishers -- Capital City (whose Nexus comic outsold several Pacific titles), Comico, Aardvark-Vanaheim, Educomics, Quality, Eagle, Eclipse, First, Vortex, New Media, Fantagraphics, Mirage -- feared that having Pacific, a rival publisher, as their distributor could result in their being cut off from comic shops.
Seeing and exploiting this, dozens of smaller distributors were springing up all over the country, even in San Diego. Nearly a quarter of Pacific's 800 or so comic-shop accounts defected to alternate distributors in 1984, skipping out on paying Pacific for upwards of three months' worth of comic books. Compounding matters, often those distributors were getting their comics through Pacific, and they too would stiff us on the bill, using their unpaid booty to lure away wholesale customers already in debt to Pacific.
MS MYSTIC (1982, first series, from Pacific) 1 Oct 1982 2 Feb 1984
The first issue of MS MYSTIC was published with standard comics paper and printing. Wih the second issue, Pacific had begun upgrading to offset printing and better paper.
And then both issues were reprinted in a better format as the first two issues of a new MS MYSTIC series by Continuity:
MS MYSTIC (1987 second series, by Continuity) 1 (r 1, first series) Oct 1987 2 (r 2, first series) June 1988 3 Story by Neal Adams. Pencils by Brian Murray and Neal Adams. Inks by Ian Akin, Jan 1989 4 Story by Neal Adams and Peter Stone. Art by Terry Shoemaker, Ian Akin and Brian Garvey, May 1989 5 Story by Neal Adams and Peter Stone. Art by Dwayne Turner, Mark Beachum and Brian Garvey, Aug 1990 6 Story by Neal Adams and Peter Stone. Art by Dwayne Turner, Ian Akin, Stan Drake and Brian Garvey, Nov 1990 7 Story by Peter Stone. Art by Andre Coates and Ian Akin. Aug 1991 8 Story by Peter Stone. Art by S. Clarke Hawbaker and Stan Drake. Mar 1992 9 Story by Peter Stone. Art by Dan Barry and Brian Garvey, May 1992
Followed by: MS MYSTIC(1993 3rd Series, 3 issues, May 1993-Aug 1993) 1 Story by Neal Adams and Peter Stone. Art by Dwayne Turner, Ernesto Infante and Alberto Saichan., May 1993 2 Story by Neal Adams and Peter Stone. Art by Brian Apthorp, Ernesto Infante and Alberto Saichan., June 1993 3 Story by Neal Adams and Peter Stone. Art by Louis Small Jr., Rudy Nebres and Joel Adams.Aug 1993
and MS MYSTIC(4th series, 4 issues, Oct 1993-Jan 1994) 1 Rise of Magic. Story by Neal Adams and Peter Stone. Art by Dwayne Turner and Neal Adams. Oct 1993 2 Shaman's Woe. Story by Neal Adams and Peter Stone. Art by Luke Ross, Rudy Nebres and Nelson Luty. Nov 1993 3 Story by Neal Adams and Peter Stone. Art by Luke Ross and Crusty Bunkers (possibly Neal Adams). Dec 1993 4 Story by Neal Adams and Peter Stone. Art by Steve Carr, David Dace and Matt Brundage. Jan 1994
That all look great, but have increasingly less Neal Adams, and more Continuity Associates staffers who draw just like Neal Adams. I didn't find the story content that enthralling, but I still am knocked out by the art, and pull out my Continuity collection every few years and enjoy looking at them. Similarly with the other Adams Continuity titles. But despite the number of hands involved, they look very consistent across the entire run.
Damn these are hard to separate from each other ! The only way I could separate the last 2 series from each other and get the right order was by the cover-dates on the first page indicia in each issue. The person who scanned the online stories reversed volumes 3 and 4 (That they counted as series 2 and 3, apparently ignoring the first series from Pacific, since they were reprinted in the 1987 series. )
A tribute and overview of Neal Adams' career, done shortly after his death.
I was bugged by a few minor innaccuracies (like implying that Adams did long runs on OUR ARMY AT WAR in 1967 (Adams actually did sporadic backups in 3 issues in 1967, in 182, 183, and 186, and one way later in 240 in 1972) And an implied long run in WORLDS FINEST (Adams only did 2 issues, 175 and 176) And X-MEN (in the video he said Adams did 56-63, but Adams also did issue 65, and he said Beast was shown falling down an elevator shaft, when you can clearly see Beast is shown falling off a tall building, with the city skyline clearly visible behind Beast as he falls.
And likewise Adams did 4 issues each of BOB HOPE (106-108, Sep 1967-Mar 1968) and JERRY LEWIS(101-104, Aug 1967-Feb 1968), that I already linked. And two issues of STAR SPANGLED WAR (World War II G.I.'s and dinosaurs, a "The War That Time Forgot" story) in 134 in Sept 1967. And a a much later Enemy Ace story (Adams' pencils, almost unrecognizable under Kubert inks) in issue 144 in May 1969.
But beyond that, the above video still provided a lot of good information about Adams, some of which I didn't previously know.
Neal Adams is one of the most highly acclaimed artists in the history of comics, inspiring nearly as many imitators as Jack Kirby. Since starting at DC as an artist for Robert Kanigher's war books, Adams immediately rose to the top and became an instant fan favorite, drawing such classic series as The Spectre, Deadman, and the lauded Green Lantern/Green Arrow. His graphic redefinition of the campy Caped Crusader into The Batman, dark avenger of the night, remains the quintessential version that exists today. Between 1967 and '72, Adams was the house cover artist, working on - among virtually every other title published by the company - Kirby's Superman's Pal, Jimmy Olsen and the occasional Fourth World title. This interview was conducted by phone on September 2 and 3, 1997. Special thanks to Arlen Schumer for facilitating the conversation. These are just a few excerpts. The complete interview is in TJKC #17.
THE JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR: Did you grow up reading Jack's work?
NEAL ADAMS: I guess everyone who read comic books more or less read Jack's work. I must admit that I wasn't a Jack Kirby fan as a kid. People seem to think there were the same number of Kirby fans in the '50s before Marvel as after Marvel, but in general, Jack Kirby worked for the secondary companies. I mean, he did Fighting American and worked for DC at various times, but essentially Jack was put into the same category as guys like Bob Powell - not necessarily the mainstream of comic book guys like Alex Toth, Kubert, and the DC guys. He was sort of a "B" brand. When I grew up, as much as I bought comic books and recognized Kirby's stuff once in awhile, I really wasn't a fan.
I got to be a fan later on - boy, a big fan when I realized what was under all that! In Jack's early stuff - and even later on - Jack had a style that was just a little bit crude. He always had people with big teeth, screaming and yelling; drawings that you weren't used to seeing in the other comic books which were much more sedate, much more heroic and much more pretty-boy. Jack's stuff came off as a little bit odd.
TJKC: Would you say you were a big comics fan?
NEAL: I don't think so. In those days there were Fan Addicts for EC, but I was just a reader of comic books, a reader of comic strips, and went to the movies. My mother didn't keep me from comic books, so I guess I was something of a collector, but not a big one. I certainly did read comics. Because of my early interest in art, I tended to keep some comics that were well drawn. I wasn't looking for the artist necessarily, but I also had favorite comic books. I was a big fan of Supersnipe. And Captain Marvel, Superman, Batman. There's hardly a comic book you can bring up that I don't remember reading, because when we were kids we traded comic books. That's how I got to read all the comic books. Powerhouse Pepper and all these oddball comics were traded back and forth. Even if it wasn't the greatest comic, we read it. That's pretty much the way things happened until I was ten or twelve years old. That's when the sh*t hit the fan in the comic book business, and I went off to Germany as the son of a sergeant in the army.
I didn't know what was going on back in the states with Congress attacking comics and so forth. I just got incidental comics from the Army PX. By that time I had become a Joe Kubert fan. I was a big fan of Tor: 1,000,000 B.C., and 3-D comics. Then they died. When I came back to America I just started in again, and this time I realized that a lot of the guys had disappeared, just gone away. Somehow there weren't that many comic books out. It started to dawn on me that this was a different time. It was as if only DC comics were available. So with Jack Kirby, what I did - along with all the other kids in America - I would notice that every once in a while Harvey Comics or Archie would come out with a series of super-hero characters that were spearheaded by Jack Kirby and Joe Simon. So I started to realize that this is a guy out there who was trying to make something happen, and I began to recognize this guy from before. I started to follow what Jack was doing - not so much as a fan, I must admit, but more as a person I recognized who was trying to crack the business back open again, though I didn't quite know why it was closed down. Here was Simon & Kirby going to Harvey comics doing "Space Commandos" or whatever the heck it was called, and then going to this company doing a series of books for them, and then this company, disappearing and reappearing somewhere else. It was fun! Suddenly there would be Jack Kirby, Al Williamson, George Evans - all the old guys being pulled together and trying to make something happen.
When I was a later teenager, Joe and Jack did The Fly and the Shield for Archie Comics, which lasted for a certain period of time and then went down the tubes. They were down in the trenches. It would seem that Jack would go to Timely and do work, and later blast out to work with Joe again. At Marvel, Jack would work on the standard Stan Lee five plots: "Mogaam," "Fin Fang Foom,"... (laughter)
One really high point in the '50s was when Jack went to DC and started to do Challengers of the Unknown. That was probably when Jack Kirby's artwork really hit me right in the face, big, big, big time. Not so much in the first couple of issues inked by that guy...
TJKC: Marvin Stein.
NEAL: ...but suddenly his pages would hit me. Now I was a big Wally Wood fan, and Jack inked by Wally just blew everything away. Jack's perspective, Jack's attitude towards composition, Jack's storytelling with Wally Wood's delicate inking with the blacks just knocked me out, blew me away. I guess they just did three or four issues of Challengers, and then they did a comic strip called Sky Masters. It was in a New Jersey newspaper, and I would go down to an out-of-town newsstand and buy it every Sunday just to get that page.
TJKC: At this time you were starting to get professional aspirations?
NEAL: I was in the School of Industrial Art, now called the School of Art and Design, and I was certainly interested in drawing comic books. But in those days, people who drew comic books really were interested in drawing comic strips. In the '50s you didn't draw comics unless you wanted to draw comic strips. That included Jack, Joe Kubert, everybody. The idea was to get a comic strip. So you did comic books in the meantime. From 1953 on, comic books were considered toilet paper, and anyone who was producing them was considered less than human. It was not a good thing to do. This aspect was piled on you when you spoke to people in the business. The best example I can give you is the fact that there is no one in this business that is five years my junior or five years my senior. So really, what I heard was, "Oh, what a terrible place to be," and people were getting crushed all around. And yet in the middle of it, there was Jack trying new experiments here and there, and then, by golly, he did land a syndicate strip - and thank goodness for the rest of us in comic books that it fell apart!
TJKC: You actually drew a sample Sky Masters strip.
NEAL: I did when I was in high school. I did a Sunday page. I became a fan of the Kirby/Wood combination so that even when I did it, I was doing Wally Wood lines and I was trying to do Kirby drawings. I realize now that I was failing at the Jack Kirby drawings more than the Wally Wood lines. There you go. It's hard to see past that now. Yeah, I was a big fan of that strip. I don't know what happened to my collection, but I had every Sunday page until I got out of school.
TJKC: You worked for a syndicate on Bat Masterson and Ben Casey.
NEAL: I did backgrounds for a guy named Howard Nostrand on Bat Masterson. Later on, after I had done a whole bunch of stuff - it seemed like an eternity - I landed a comic strip with Jerry Capp, an adaptation of a TV series called Ben Casey, when I was 21. A lot of things happened in-between. I worked over at a place called Johnson & Cushing, a studio that did comics for advertising. Illustrations, comic booklets, all kinds of stuff. I worked 24 hours a day.
TJKC: When I was a kid, one of my favorite magazines was Boy's Life, and I remember a bunch of your half-pages.
NEAL: There was a guy named Tom Schauer (who is now Tom Sawyer, head writer for Murder, She Wrote) and he did Chip Martin, College Reporter for Bell Telephone. In the middle of it, he decided to quit, and they looked around for someone else; and of course I was there, big grin on my face, saying, "I can do it! I can do anything!" I continued to do the pages for a couple of years. Very, very difficult work. It really allowed me to arc my abilities. Very demanding with lots of reference. It required lots of discipline.
TJKC: So what got you into DC?
NEAL: Well, I had the syndicated strip for three and a half years. Instead of going into comic books, I decided to be an illustrator. I spent six months painting samples and I took them to various places to try to get some illustration work. One place I dropped them off and when I came back, they were gone. So I realized that although I may have had a syndicated strip, reality says you're not going to pick up a lot of spot illustrations; people aren't going to do you a lot of big favors, so maybe I should look for some comic book work. So I went over to Creepy, Eerie, and Vampirella. Archie Goodwin was the Editor over there when they started to do the Warren horror books, so I did work there in a number of styles.
The best other comic books out there were the war stories over at DC Comics, so I went over to try to get some work. Coincidentally, I had helped Joe Kubert get a comic strip, Tales of the Green Berets, so maybe they were looking for kind of a Kubert thing. So I went over and met Bob Kanigher and nearly got into a fistfight. I never would ever hit anybody, but if I ever did, it would have been Bob. So he gave me work!
It was a big shock to me (to get work at DC) because when I had just gotten out of school I had samples to show, and they were pretty good. I would have to say that out of desperation perhaps, they were professional. And when I took them to DC to show them, they wouldn't let me past the lobby. They just sent out some guy to tell me to go away. It was a very, very bad time. So at this point, Marvel had started to give DC Comics a little bit of a run for their money. I didn't even know that they were called Marvel yet, but I could see that Jack Kirby was kicking a little butt. I don't think Kanigher cared one way or the other. I think he just probably missed Kubert, and thought that I could turn out some decent war stories.
TJKC: You actually got an opportunity with Kubert's war books because you got Joe the syndicate job?
NEAL: Isn't that weird? (laughter) It never ended up that way because I went to see Kanigher; having heard some horror stories about him - hearing that he gave Johnny Severin a hard time, which I can't imagine anyone giving Johnny a hard time. I thought that he would have some work for me because Joe was not there; it was very clear to me when I picked up the books that he had people drawing them. So it wasn't like he needed me, but I don't know; I made the appointment like a professional, went up to see him and he gave me a script. Then he started to art direct me. So, ho-ho, that was it.
TJKC: So you did about three war stories?
NEAL: Y'know, I didn't count the stories but I think it was more than three. Maybe five. There are people who keep track of that stuff who can probably tell you.
TJKC: Actually those are about the only stuff of yours I'm missing. I just bought your run of Jerry Lewis.
NEAL: Yeah, hard to get.
TJKC: (laughter) There's only a little of you in them.
NEAL: Jerry Lewis was the best money I ever made in comics. I penciled ten pages a day! You can't do that with the realistic stuff. It was tough to give them up. People ask me, "Why did you do those?" Boy, golly, ten pages a day! You can't beat that. You're talking about $35 a page, but at ten pages a day, that's decent pay. If you do it the regular style, you're doing two pages a day.
TJKC: You just went back and started doing work for Murray Boltinoff?
NEAL: Well, it kind of jumped around. I thought I was going to get myself canned out of there because I confronted Kanigher for art directing my stuff - I basically told him, "I don't tell you how to write, so don't tell me how to draw." But he was cool. I think that Julie Schwartz might have thought that I had spunk because he hadn't quite seen anybody stand up to Kanigher before. He offered me an Elongated Man story, and I think I did more work for Julie after that, The Spectre. It is kind of a jumble. Bob Oskner was going off to draw Dondi or he was having some trouble with his eye, and he couldn't draw the Bob Hope stuff. So I was there, and I said, "I can do Bob Hope." So Murray, who was always unsure of everything, called Sol Harrison in, and said, "Sol, do you think this young man can draw Bob Hope?" So Harrison said, "He can draw, so what's your problem?" Murray said, "Okay, okay." So he gave me those books. It kind of spread. It seemed as though anything they gave me wouldn't stop me, so basically I started getting split up and shared with people. But it wasn't bad.
TJKC: At the time, Carmine Infantino, Arnold Drake and Jack Miller invented Deadman in Strange Adventures. You came on the second issue and in a very short period of time you started kicking butt.
NEAL: I thought I was kicking butt on The Spectre.
TJKC: Yeah, I remember some great double-page spreads. Were the production problems on some of those spreads frustrating to you?
NEAL: My problem, to a certain extent, was that I had done a lot of work in the advertising business. When I was 18, I started doing brochures for advertising agencies and studios, and I had learned a lot of reproduction techniques. I was one of those guys that when you ran the film from school on printing techniques, I paid attention. I was one of those people - a geek. I knew about this stuff, and when I could, I'd do dropouts and all kinds of stuff. I understood the techniques of what you could do. When I came into comic books, it dawned on me very quickly that what was worse than the comic strip business was the comic book business. It was as though they were in the dark ages. They didn't know anything, yet you had very smart, clever people like Jack Adler and Sol Harrison. In the production room at DC, I couldn't believe that these bright guys didn't keep up with the techniques that were available. It seems as though that not only was it a closed shop as far as writers and artists were concerned, it was a closed shop as far as time was concerned. They were locked into a very strange era. It was 1952 and they just kept on moving forward and DC stayed 1952. Even though they were moving into the '60s, even though Marvel was biting at their butt, DC was still staying the same.
So I would say, yes, I was frustrated. For example, the obvious thing of putting Zip-a-tone on comic books to create more colors didn't start with me doing it at DC Comics. It started at EC Comics! Anything that I ever did at DC was done at EC long before me. To me it's a joke to hear people talk about all the "innovations" that I brought in because it's not true. I just did what they used to do, and I brought it back. I was pumped enough to say, "No, I'm going to do it, leave me alone, I'll make the mechanical for you; I will provide it in a negative acetate form if you need it, but please, let's do this." So people started to pay attention, and Carmine started to act like I was brought in by Carmine. (laughter) So I got to be Carmine's guy to some extent.
TJKC: How did things change with Carmine in a management position?
NEAL: Carmine had nearly nothing to do with the changes that took place. This is not a criticism of Carmine, but he was interested in being publisher and advancing himself. From an art director point of view, he felt he had something to contribute. But when it came to creator's rights, he lived through the worst of times and he was quite happy with the status quo. He liked the idea of having new people coming in for him to take credit for, and that was great. But essentially, Carmine did what he was told. I'd like to say that Carmine was a total ally in all the rights battles, but it really wasn't quite that way.
TJKC: There was an influx of new books that suddenly appeared. Dick Giordano came over from Charlton.
NEAL: That's the thing that Carmine did that I thought was so good. Basically everybody at DC was saying that we have to have new blood. Once I got there, everyone realized that gee, maybe things can change. But they still kept the doors closed! In fact, I had a room there and I was constantly hiding people in there, finally introducing them to editors. It was a rather rowdy time, but it was Carmine's feeling that to bring new people in was a good idea and Neal was the proof. So he hired Dick who brought all the people over from Charlton, starting as a new Editor who turned out new stuff. Then Joe Orlando, who had a heart attack, I believe, was put on as an Editor to let him sit down and relax a little bit from the more frustrating times of his life. Carmine did indeed hire some people and start things up. Some of them worked out but others of them didn't. Giordano was potentially somebody who could do Carmine's job, I think, better than Carmine. After a while, there got to be a little bit of a realization of that, and I guess you'd have to say that Dick's days were numbered. I would say that Carmine brought Dick in and Dick brought everyone else in.
TJKC: Carmine tended to cancel books at the drop of a hat.
NEAL: I probably know too much about that! (laughter) Sometimes people rule from their head, sometimes from their gut, sometimes they rule from their passion. I think that Carmine tended to rule from his passion.
TJKC: Carmine not only brought Dick over but he also brought Jack Kirby over to DC.
NEAL: Jack brought Jack over. I think Jack was ticked off. He wasn't thrilled at the way things were going and he wanted to prove that he could do everything all by himself.
TJKC: What was the atmosphere like when the announcement was made that Jack's coming over?
NEAL: It was great! Everybody thought, "Boy, the millennium's here!" (laughter) Indeed, it was! It seemed as though DC was going to kick out. I don't know if DC quite knew what to do with Jack, and therein lies the story. If Jack had continued and gotten the support that he needed over at DC Comics, I think he really, really would have done something. But I think that there was a waning of support. They didn't pull out the stops for him.
TJKC: Do you remember your experience inking Kirby on those Fourth World covers? What was that like? His anatomy's a lot different than yours.
NEAL: I wouldn't call what Jack does anatomy. He does an impressionistic thing and he does it because he pencils very fast and he's a storyteller. You don't sit Jack down and say "Here's an anatomical study, Jack. Do this." What you get is the impressionistic quality that is in many ways superior to someone who draws realistically the way I do. I would tend to fall short, because I don't have that freedom in the work. I would have to put aside a _certain discipline to jump into what Jack does. What I thought my contribution was on Jack's stuff - if you can call it a contribution, and it's hard to say that with Jack - was that there were certain people who inked Kirby that harken back to the Wally Wood thing, that made Jack look different than he did on something else. I thought, "Well, if I just inked the lines, I wouldn't be adding much and you could just give them to anybody else. If they asked me to do it, what they're saying is, 'try it with a little something else.'" I tended to make the muscles a little bit more real, a little bit more three-dimensional, trying very, very hard not to take away the Jack Kirbyness of the drawing. They were obviously looking to me to add a little sales potential, because they gave me covers to do. They thought, "Well, we don't want to drive away all the Jimmy Olsen readers, so let's keep a little edge on it and maybe we can wean them away from the standard Curt Swan stuff." The thing that I was upset about in certain cases was they got Al Plastino to redo Superman figures in place of Jack's. No, please, not that! No offense, Al, but those were putty guys! Not right! They looked so out of place. What I was striving to do was not make my style intrude so much that you would not get any impact of the Jack Kirby drawing, even though you might miss some of the Jack Kirbyness of it - that you get the power, the impact. I tried to keep that as much as I could. But those Plastino paste-ups...!
Carmine had a lot to do with some things I didn't necessarily agree with. I didn't think that I should be working on the Jimmy Olsen covers. I thought that Jack should do them. It may have been the Editor combined with Carmine who insisted that I do them, but I put up a big fight to get off of them. I didn't feel right about it.
Jack Kirby did good comic books for DC. But he was sabotaged along the way. Jack was getting too much attention. I know that people criticized the writing and all the rest of it but, y'know, the stuff he did at Marvel somehow got better with time, but the stuff he did at DC got worse with time because he wasn't supported. The team around him didn't bolster him up. There were some people there who were Kirby fans, but basically he was let down. It came from the top. The New Gods could have been one of the best things that DC ever had, but it would mean that maybe Jack Kirby would become the Publisher eventually. And that wasn't going to happen.
TJKC: Was it routine for Carmine to ask for a lot of cover changes? Jack had a lot of rejected Jimmy Olsen covers.
NEAL: Yeah. The excuse that I got was, after all, Jimmy Olsen was one of the Superman titles and you can't take the Superman audience and immediately turn it into a Jack Kirby audience. You had to wean them away. So they decided to wean readers away with the covers - and I guess some of the insides by having Plastino work on stuff. I didn't think this was a good idea. But on the other hand, I felt that by accepting the commissions to do the covers, at least I would try to keep enough of the Kirbyness with it that perhaps I could protect his rear if I could. Otherwise it would have been Al Plastino or Curt Swan or whoever.
TJKC: Did you respect Carmine as a cover editor?
NEAL: I respected Carmine more when I was younger, when I really liked his work that he inked himself. Then he got other people to ink it and that kind of sketchy line that suited his style so well disappeared. We lost Carmine and had his layouts left. They had a certain vastness about them, empty spaces going off into nowhere. But the style wasn't there. Carmine had a limited number of layouts that he did and a certain way of handling things: The dead body splayed out, one way or another. I accepted his covers to a certain extent because there was a certain workability to them. His layouts were simplistic in nature.
TJKC: There seemed to be a change for the better at DC after Carmine left, and you seemed to be a part of that. The Siegel & Shuster settlement was getting good publicity, Jenette Kahn came in, and almost overnight the image of the company changed. There seemed to be a chemistry going on between you and Jenette.
NEAL: Jenette Kahn and I lived together for a year.
TJKC: Well, there you go! (laughter)
NEAL: There was a chemistry going on! (laughter)
TJKC: I liked the Muhammad Ali book a lot. I thought that it was the best thing you did.
NEAL: It's very tough when people ask me what the best comic book I ever did was and I reluctantly say Superman vs. Muhammad Ali. Part of the reason is that there was an awful lot of things that I liked in it. Also it harkens back to an awful lot of things that I believe in and feel strongly about. It didn't do well in the United States, strangely enough, but it did very, very well around the world.
TJKC: Did you ever have the desire to ink a full Kirby book?
NEAL: Sure. Wouldn't that have been great? I would have loved it. It's one of the experiences that I missed in those days, never having a shot. The opportunity was never there. They were always busting me to do something else at DC and I always had my own books to do. But, boy, it would have been nice to take a job aside. In all honesty, I would not have done it unless I was sure that it was okay with Jack, and the communication didn't exist.
TJKC: Were you aware Jack was using Deadman in the Forever People?
NEAL: Yeah. It was all right with me. I had a proprietary interest in the character but I didn't feel that it was exclusive. It was a DC Comics character.
TJKC: Was Deadman a favorite character of Carmine's, too?
NEAL: No. He didn't give a sh*t about it.
TJKC: He allegedly ordered Jack to put the character in Forever People, and it just doesn't work.
NEAL: Well, there you go. I can't tell you why. Maybe it was a power thing. Once I started doing Deadman, as far as I know, Carmine didn't want anything to do with it. He did the first issue but I don't think that Carmine thought it was much of a comic book.
TJKC: You helped Siegel & Shuster get a credit line and a pension from DC Comics in the late '70s. Any advice on how to get a similar co-creator credit line at Marvel Comics for Jack?
NEAL: Ask them. I would ask them whenever possible, as much as possible. I would ask people to ask.
TJKC: Did you ever socialize with Jack and Roz?
NEAL: Just at conventions. I liked Jack and Roz. I think that Roz is the stuff that held Jack together. There's less said of Roz but I think that she is indeed the other half of Jack Kirby. I'd say it's the "Roz & Jack Kirby Show," not the "Stan Lee & Jack Kirby Show."
TJKC: What's the most important thing you learned from Jack Kirby?
NEAL: That there are other ways of doing things; not just my way, or the way of people whose stuff I appreciate. I learned that from Will Eisner, too. There's a lot of wonderful things out there, and my favorite thing is enjoying the work of other people who don't do what I do. My favorite thing about Jack Kirby is that he didn't do what I did, and yet he did what I did. He gave a new look to it, a new feeling about it, and made me realize - as with all great creators - that there are always new worlds to conquer.
If you think about what Jack did: Jack created Marvel Comics. Jack could have recreated a good 50-80% of DC Comics if they let him. He is 50% of the creative stuff in comic books today. What do you say about somebody like that? Me, I just did some characters; I may have picked the right ones. The truth of the matter is that I brought a quality to comic books; Jack made comic books. There's just no comparison. I'm just one of those guys out there who tries to do his own thing. Jack is a giant. Jack created worlds. Universes. Now we think of them as part of what we do and we go out and try to build on top of them and fail miserably. He really held them together - and all in his head. It's incredible.
TJKC: Did you have any opinions at the time in the fight to get his art back?
NEAL: I wasn't even aware of it. I'd been spoken to about it. I learned later on, before Jack died, that there was indeed some effort being made to get his artwork back, but I was unaware of what Marvel's response to it was. There was a time when I was volunteering to help, but I was rebuffed. It seemed to be in the hands of people who were pursuing it legally. I really am not in favor of pursuing things legally. I'm in favor of pursuing things morally and ethically, and I believe that's the stand that should be taken. I don't like much about the law or much about lawyers who seem to able to use law to their own advantage. Morality and ethics are a much stronger argument, I believe, and they're very hard to argue with. You can see the greys more clearly with morality and ethics. You can't see the greys very clearly with the law. I believe that it would have been better pursued in perhaps a less legal, more straightforward level. At a certain point, I made an effort to volunteer my help. I even called Stan on a personal basis and asked him to step in, and he basically told me that it was out of his hands. I could've worked it out between me and Stan, I think, because there was nothing wrong with it from Stan's point of view. So we were thwarted by the legal putzes in the world and stopped from doing what we should have done. We should have put our heads together and figured out a way how to get this stuff returned.
Interesting in a number of ways. Detailing Adams' early perception of comics while growing up. His earliest attempts to get into comics in 1959, at a time the industry was basically still in a depression since the 1955 industry collapse, after Frederick Wertham's Seduction of the Innocent and forming of the Comics Code. And Adams' early experience interning with comic strip artists (circa 1961-1966), his work in the advertising field, And tthen the Ben Casey syndicaed newspaper strip, before making a second attempt to get into comics again in 1966-1967, first at Warren magazines CREEPY and EERIE, and then moving to DC. And Adams coming into a closed shop at DC where no one new was hired for about 20 years, and once hired, Adams' cracking the door open at DC for other talent coming there, like Len Wein, Marv Wolfman, Rich Buckler, Howard Chaykin and many others.
Most interesting for me was Adams' inking over Jack Kirby, and his perspective as an insider at the time, of how Kirby was treated by DC from 1970-1975
I didn't know that Adams had such a reluctance to ink Kirby, that he saw doing so as intrusion on Kirby's own creative vision. But that Adams felt at least his more conscienscious inking of Kirby's work at least was more respectful of Kirby's creative vision than others, that Adams felt his inking Kirby was a better alternative than others like Al Plastino and Murphy Anderson, who would dominate and blunt Kirby's artistic vision far more, if Adams were to refuse the assignment to ink Kirby. I enjoyed the collaboration of Kirby with all these artists, if only for a few issues, to see the contrast of them, and I still felt Kirby shined through regardless, each interesting in their own way. Plastino was only inking Superman and Jimmy Olsen figures in JIMMY OLSEN 133 and 134, and FOREVER PEOPLE 1. Anderson inked Superman and Jimmy Olsen heads in 135-139, 141-145, and 148, with Colletta inking the rest of those issues. And Mike Royer inking the entire contents in 146-147.
Even the Al Plastino work showed just how bad Kirby's work would have been, if DC's editorial restraints were allowed to fully dominate and control Kirby. Even within the 3 issues Plastino partially inked, it's laughable the contrast of that, as compared to the work over Kirby within the same issues by Adams, Anderson, and even Colletta doing far better, within the same issues. DC finally relented with using Plastino, but Kirby was only able to fully escape DC's editorial interference by leaving the JIMMY OLSEN series entirely, after issue 148.
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