The Man, The Legend...An Arthur Adams Retrospective
A legend is someone who leaves behind an unforgettable impression on others. They touch lives, they're remembered, they're cherished. There are all sorts of legends in this world – famous or not. Becoming one means finding your particular role, your calling, following it, and touching others around you.
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*All quotes are from Arthur Adams interviews
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The 'Longshot' guy
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"I sent in Xeroxes of my stuff once and everyone was very polite, but it was a no go. The next time I sent in Xeroxes, fortunately for me, Ann had been shopping LONGSHOT around for about a year, and she needed someone to draw it, and I guess (laughs) she checked with everyone else and they said no. So I just got lucky and that's what I did."
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The 'X-Men' guy
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"Louise had been editor on The X-Men, and then Nocenti became editor on The X-Men, so Claremont was in the office all the time when I was having pages coming in, so Chris was notorious at the time for stealing artists! (laughs) So every time I saw Chris at a convention, we talked about doing some X-Men thing, talking about doing the regular series, and what the sales would be, this and that... and I was, "Okay, whatever. I don't know!" (laughs)"
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The 'Gumby' guy
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"The only thing I knew about Gumby was the Eddie Murphy skits on SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE. And then I got Bob's plot and Gumby is just a swell little character. He's just an innocent little kid. He and Pokey run around going, "Let's have fun," and then they run across the weirdest people. It's great."
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The 'Wolverine' guy
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"I seem to have been attached to Wolverine. I like him all right, but he's not a huge favorite of mine. Most of the characters I like a lot I have a deep emotional connection to and are things more from my childhood. Wolverine was from later in my life. So I don't have the same emotional connection to him as, I would have to say, Spider-Man or Batman or the Hulk or Fantastic Four. But I like him all right. He's fun to draw, and certainly he's one of my most requested subjects to draw."
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The 'Superman & Batman' guy
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"I've never been comfortable drawing Superman - at that time I wasn't even really comfortable drawing Batman - but I think that I was working on that right after Frank's Dark Knight came out, so that was probably a big influence on what I was doing. And, gee, I was drawing Superman's chin really big; I would get calls from Carlin saying, "Could you please not make his chin so big?" And me, being a jackass, I would make the chin bigger. (laughs)
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The 'New Fantastic Four' guy
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"That was a fun series... See, I have a reputation for being slow, so I remember the few times that I'm not! (laughter) I think the first issue I ended up taking five weeks, a week longer than it should've been, but I did my best. (laughter) I think the second issue-of course, it was getting later-took about four weeks, and then the third issue, I think it was so desperately late, I think Ralph Macchio was calling me several times a day, saying, "Please send out pages today!" I think I ended up doing that one in three weeks! That's unbelievable! For me, anyway."
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The 'Dinosaur' guy
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"I loved monsters early on, but mostly I loved dinosaurs, and I'd just sit around and draw dinosaurs all the time. I thought that when I grew up, I'd become a paleontologist, because that's what I thought paleontologists did; they sat around and drew dinosaurs. (laughs) When I found out that paleontologists generally go out into the desert, where it's freezing at night and burning hot during the day, it just didn't sound very appealing to me. So, the next best thing I could do where I could draw dinosaurs and monsters seemed to be comics, so I became more interested in that."
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The 'Creature From the Black Lagoon' guy
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"It was one of my favorite movies and Dark Horse was planning to get the rights to the Universal Monsters, so I talked to them about my doing an original Creature story, like a sequel of my own, and they were interested, but they had to do the movie adaptations first. So, they said that if I did the adaptation, I could definitely do a sequel down the road. Unfortunately, they wound up canceling the line after only four books."
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The 'Monkeyman & O'Brien' guy
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"You know, it never occurred to me until the early '90s, when Erik Larsen called and asked if I ever considered making up anything of my own, and that now was the time to do that with Image. It never occurred to me to make up my own thing! So I talked to him, and said, "Oh, I don't know what the hell I'd want to do," but I thought about it for a few minutes, and said, "Well, I like King Kong. I know: 'Monkeyman and O'Brien.' I can do that!" So I had the giant scientist ape, and this smart woman, realizing that, oh my God, I just made up Angel and the Ape! (laughter)"
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The 'Godzilla' guy
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"I just liked the movies when I was a kid! I honestly don't know what I liked about them. The original 1954 one, especially the Japanese version, is just great. As a kid I only saw the Raymond Burr version, which is still okay. Most of the ones I saw then, like Godzilla vs. the Sea Monster and King Kong vs. Godzilla were pretty bad! (laughs) But there's still something about 'em I just loved."
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The 'Jonni Future' guy
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"Right now, I'm still doing "Jonni Future" for Wildstorm, which I have every intention of continuing. Actually, I could be happy drawing her for the rest of my career. (Well, I say that now!) It's been a lot of fun, though I just wish they were a little bit longer stories."
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The 'Sketchbook' guy
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The 'Cover' guy
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"My job is to make the characters look as good as I can in the context of what they’re asking for. So I always just try to represent the characters to the best of my ability and sell the book. And I’ve been told, occasionally, that a cover of mine has helped sell a book... so thats good."
