From the Breaking News Department
by T. Hodler
Thursday, October 7, 2010
From Sean Howe’s research files, an historical curiosity. First, a semi-famous page from X-Men.
From X-Men #57 (June 1969)
Specifying this very image, Les Daniels has written that “Neal Adams shattered comic book layout conventions with pages like this one.”
Now look at this Comet page drawn by Jack Cole for Pep, nearly three decades earlier:
From Pep Comics #3 (1940)
More likely a matter of coincidence than crime—and Sean has asked that I not present this as The emperor has no clothes! This finally puts the lie to the idea that Neal Adams is anything but a fanboy figurehead. It’s all been downhill since Caniff! Jack Kirby is a genius and Stan Lee is a huckster! Wally Wood was robbed! So I won’t.
Interestingly enough, though, when he was later interviewed about this layout for Comic Book Artist #3, Adams had second thoughts about his panel placement:
[This is] an experiment. I looked to see what is the greatest dimension on a comic book page that I could make somebody fall from. I realized it wasn’t from the top to the bottom of the page, it was diagonally on the comic book page. I also realized that because of the way I set up the previous page, I couldn’t just have the fall take place immediately on the first page. So it actually gave me the excuse to use the diagonal to make another panel precede it, where the Beast gets knocked off the window and then we use the full page to have the drop taking place, and sock your eye back up to the top of the page. If I were doing it today, I possibly would reverse the page, so I would have this last panel down in the lower right-hand corner.
Which is how Cole did it. Of course, locating every innovative page-layout idea that could be traced back to Cole would be a full-time job. Anyone hiring?
Labels: Jack Cole, layouts, Neal Adams, Sean Howe
Cole’s “reads” better IMO. Left corner to right corner. Very elegant. Imagine one of those Art Spiegelman demonstrative red lines superimposed on the page. Now imagine that red line on the falling Beast sequence. The precise order of events isn’t quite as clear from the panel sequence. But I do like how Neal Adams breaks up the “falling in perspective” into panels with a common background like a series of animation key frames. Indeed, this was/is one of Adams’ signature layout tricks.
I still love Neal Adams though. As a lad sometime in the seventies, some friends of my folks actually knew him slightly and while I never met him, they once got him to draw up a quickie little felt-tip pen sketch of the JLA on my behalf. I still have it. So I can never hate him! But what’s up with those weird fish-scale things he used to draw underneath people’s rib cages? And those teeth? Weird.
I will never tire of the Comet shooting cops’ heads off.
You and me both, Joe. You and me both.
Certainly Jack Cole’s page is very clever, but there are a lot of things happening on Neal Adams’ page apart from the diagonal large panel cutting from “north” to “south.”
First off, Adams’ dominant diagonal mirrors the actual perspective line of the view of The Beast falling. It’s a parallel (no pun intended) of the actual perspective that a man-on-the-ground would have of this falling figure.
Then, there’s the aspect of the single motion stretched over a continuous background while being “cut” by panel border separations.
Thirdly, Adams’ page is essentially impossible to read “in order.” It is conceived to indicate the confused mindstate of a man falling from a great height. All of the important information is present on the page, but it’s jumbled. Reading-wise, we notice the sharp angle and optical perspective of The Beast’s fall before we see him knocked out of the window or notice the close up of his fearful eye. Similar to how when something scary happens to you, the events may be so quick that your mind gets confused by both the happening and the exact order of the immediately-preceding events. When something hits you unexpectedly, for example, your mind usually “rewinds” a bit as you try to regain balance and composure and this mental confusion leads to both lots of auto-accident disputes as well as the exhilarating success of Adams’ page.
Not to take anything away from Jack Cole but the Neal Adams page on display is much more complex than the similar, earlier Cole page.
Speaking as a person who has written the EXACT PHRASE “the emperor has no clothes” as regards Neal Adams
I think he actually stands up pretty well here. The Cole page is easier to read for sure, and I really dig the way he makes his figure actually twist into the unconventional layout, like those flippy contortions are the only way anybody in an action comic could fit into panels shaped like that. But even though Adams’ panel sequencing is obtuse as hell, it’s perfectly easy to take a step back, register the composition as a whole, and apprehend what’s happening. I also love his subdivision of the long middle panel as it tapers outward; the disconnect between 3-D rendered images falling through perspective’d, 3-D space, and the solidly 2-D, flat boxes pressed over them is mad disorienting, totally sells the moment’s vertigo. As pure storytelling Cole’s is vastly superior, but as a designed piece of visual art I gotta go with the Adams. (Who colored that, by the way? It’s sublimely done.)
Regarding the Adams quote about the large amount of space available on a diagonal axis, there’s a really interesting page of covers in the Krigstein biography where every one of them has an overpoweringly strong diagonal orientation, both right-to-left and left-to-right. It’s kinda interesting Adams was bringing this all to bear while playing around with another Krigstein device, subdivision.
The page by Adams really doesn’t work very well.
The first panel with the man being pushed out of the high window is at the very bottom of the page. The last panel where the man is at the bottom of his long fall is at the very top of the page.
It may be Adams (a prodigious talent) was always a follower looking to please.
He aped Stan Drake.
Adams: “I realized as I compared [his linework] with everybody’s else lines, that Stan Drake seemed to have created new lines . . . Those lines meant Stan had a variety no one else had. So I jumped on the Stan Drake bandwagon.”
Adams’ apparent jealousy of the attention fellow newcomer Jim Steranko was getting had a toxic effect on Adams approach to storytelling. Adams exposed this when he inserted a panel with smoke fumes spelling out the words “Look a Jim Steranko effect.”
This showed two things.
First, Adams didn’t at all understand what Steranko was so masterfully doing in terms of comic book storytelling technique.
Adams was apparently thinking Steranko’s graphic storytelling was all flash and no substance.
Second, although Adams apparently wasn’t impressed by what Steranko had to offer, Adams began to fill his own stories with “effects” which really were nothing more than distracting flash.
I can only assume he did this to pander to what he saw as the tastes of comic book fans who were agog over Steranko.
Sadly a pattern of pandering to what Adams sees as “hot” continues.
Adams seems determined to show the old man can play tackle football with the teenagers.
Adams’ modern drawing style has evolved in a grotesque direction which can best be described as the artist equivalent of Saturn eating his children.
The best thing about watching Adams over the years is how as he has deteriorated (gotten older) his work looks more and more like his assistants or people who did his style at Continuity. The new Batman book he did looks like Tom Grindberg who was a Continuity guy – like his followers just couldn’t get Neal right but as Neal’s gotten older and less sharp he ends up looking like the hacks that imitated him. Especially the hands and arm positions – those make me laff every time.
Frank: “he ends up looking like the hacks that imitated him”
Like I was saying:
http://theotherright.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/goya-saturn-devouring-his-children-11.jpg
“When I did the Steranko effect panel in Deadman, I was tipping my hat to him. I never felt in any way competitive. What Steranko did at the time had almost no relationship to what I did. We weren’t trying to do the same thing. I felt we were a community. Like Steranko, I was somebody with a reasonable knowledge of things that were common outside of comic books suddenly stepping into the field and Bam! slapping everybody in the face.
“He was definitely a graphic illustrator. His goal was to create new and impactful images graphically. Steranko was looking to punch you in the face! That came from Kirby.
“I was coming form a more traditional background and direction. I tended to do a better drawing. He decried realism except where it related to graphics. Graphics were not my only focus. They weren’t his only focus either. But they were certainly overpowering.
“I was doing many other things, level after level. I was thrilled with the page, with the opportunity to experiment, as was Steranko. He was, in some ways, much more aggressive. He was also very aware of the modern world. His work says, in effect, “Wake up everybody! Don’t you know we’re here?”
—Neal Adams
“Neal Adams is doing work that is probably unsurpassable. I’m a great admirer of all of his proceedings. I think Neal’s the most talented of the newcomers in the business. Neal did the Ben Casey strip for years and years, so he’s got three times as much more drawing time in than I do., but as a comic book artist, he’s very exciting, doing a lot of imaginative things.”
—Jim Steranko
I think my first exposure to Neal Adams as a kid was the Baxter Paper edition of those Adams X-Men stories (unless it was the Muhammad Ali book?)
I know Frank isn’t a Baxter fan, but I remember quite enjoying those books.
However, even I remember being confused by this page because of that final panel in the upper right corner.
What? I am totally a Baxter fan. Just cuz it took years to figure out the coloring process doesn’t mean those early “nuclear explosion” colors look good. To me.
Wait. I meant they do look good to me. Freudian slip. Sorry. It’s early.
Neal is an interesting guy just because of his effect on the industry. The weird thing though, IMO, is how his work doesn’t hold up at all. The Spectre stuff is the only stuff I can stomach and keep. I sold all my Adams stuff. I think i still have some ManBat reprints if anyone’s looking, ha
That’s very interesting to note, Frank. About 3 or so years ago, I also got rid of all my Neal Adams books including the hard-to-find Green Lantern/Green Arrow slipcased collection.
I recently went through the same purge of my Frank Miller books except for a small handful.
I think you reach a point where those creators, despite their obvious talents, just don’t speak to that perpetual13 year old inside you anymore. Or to the point, they don’t surprise you either with something new or outside their comfort zones. You see Neal Adams name on a book, you pretty much know exactly what you are going. And what you get is not always good.
Oh weird, for some reason, I thought I remember reading a piece you wrote where you were very critical of that baxter paper. No worries.
Anyway, yeah, for guy known for realism, Adams work today to me seems to be super cartoony and ridiculous. A lot of open mouth screaming. Not in a Liefeld way, but, you know…
However, 15 years ago, I scoured all of London’s comic book stores for all of his Deadman books in Strange Adventures and a couple of other books. I loved that stuff.
Always wished that Deadman was finite. Don’t think I’ve liked anything anyone’s really done with him since that Adams stuff.
[…] Two great pages: Tim Hodler discusses the similarity of two layouts by Jack Cole and Neal Adams. […]
When Adams broke into comic books many young fans may have been swayed by his Johnstone and Cushing (Stan Drake) ink lines.
His work looked like the ads in “respectable” magazines, and newspaper strips mom and dad read, except it was being applied to super heroes.
It’s possible many super hero fans (especially in their teens and later) are somewhat embarrased by their hobby, and yearn for a patina of respectability. That might explain why many of todays super hero fans are enamored with big money (big money = respectable) super hero movies.
The thing I can’t take is the scenery chewing actors who populate Adams’ stories, bunch of hams.
When I was a kid I liked the overacting part of Adams the best. Even though Ditko’s the Randian, Superman vs. Muhammad Ali convinced me that the only person that could do an Atlas Shrugged adaptation would be Adams. That Wallace Shawn-style John Galt speech as interpreted by Adams would be the greatest 165 pages in American comics.
When I was a kid I liked orange marshmallow circus peanuts.
To me, Neal Adams is the Beatles of comic artists. Kinda overrated, not all that much better than their contemporaries, and inspired a new lowest common denominator for a popular art form. Maybe I’m just a hater though.
Oh boy.
I guess that makes BEN CASEY Adams’ “skiffle phase.”