Neal Adams Batman was the best

[paurru]

Neal Adams Batman was the best Batman I was raised on in the 1980s when I was a little kid.


That and I was raised on watching the Superfriends cartoon too

[phantom1592]

Neal Adams Batman was the best Batman I was raised on in the 1980s when I was a little kid.


That and I was raised on watching the Superfriends cartoon too

/High Five!

Yeah, I'm with ya on both those counts. Adams hit all the right notes without falling into the bitter and grimfest that his copiers have.

[BruceWayneJr.]

That's still the definitive version, as far as I'm concerned (other than BTAS). That Batman was much more well-rounded and human than he has been in a couple decades.

[Steven Ely]

Neal Adams wasn't drawing Batman comics anymore in the '80s. That was the '70s when I was a little kid. The '80s was Don Newton, Gene Colan, Jim Aparo, etc. DC did reprint some Neal Adams Batman comics in the '80s (DC Blue Ribbon Digest, Saga of Ra's, Best of the Brave and the Bold, Greatest Batman Stories Ever Told, Greatest Joker Stories).

[zep81]

I really want to read Batman #244 but the individual comic goes for a fortune so I'd like to get Volume 3 of the Illustrated books, even though I've read complaints about the re-coloring.

[Jim Kelly]

Neal Adams wasn't drawing Batman comics anymore in the '80s. That was the '70s when I was a little kid. The '80s was Don Newton, Gene Colan, Jim Aparo, etc. DC did reprint some Neal Adams Batman comics in the '80s (DC Blue Ribbon Digest, Saga of Ra's, Best of the Brave and the Bold, Greatest Batman Stories Ever Told, Greatest Joker Stories).

An artist doesn't have to be actively drawing new stories for a person to be captured by their interpretation of the character. That was a lot of Neal Adams Batman that was out there in the '80s.

By the time I started buying Batman comics in the '60s, Dick Sprang was retired yet I still got hooked on his Batman, just from all the Giant reprints of his work.

[Pohzee]

I picked up Batman by Neil Adams and I was pretty disappointed, but that was mostly his earlier work on the Brave and the Bold.

[Jim Kelly]

I picked up Batman by Neil Adams and I was pretty disappointed, but that was mostly his earlier work on the Brave and the Bold.

I'm given to thinking that it's impossible for anyone to understand exactly what Neal Adams did for Batman if they weren't actually buying comics around that time. But if you're not impressed by his early B&B work then maybe there's hope.

Of course, you're not supposed to be that impressed by early Neal Adams. That's part of the story. Mind, with the ILLUSTRATED BY NEAL ADAMS books it's made that much harder because Adams revamped a lot of his pages, so it's virtually impossible to see the progression of his work in publishing history using those books (or a lot of the books that reprinted Adams in the last twenty years).

The fact is that Adams, while a very good artist in 1967, wasn't trying to change Batman from what you saw Carmine Infantino, Gil Kane, Sheldon Moldoff or Curt Swan doing. He began to make changes in THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD, but these were gradual. And really the dark creature of the night Batman, with the longer ears and evocative cape action, doesn't fully take form until 1971. So that's a lot of steps along the way to appreciate.

Plus, you have to have some immersive understanding and appreciation for the newsprint, letter press comics and all the challenges those presented for artists. As well as the amount of work involved for pencillers back then. You'd probably have to buy a few hundered comic books from around the period between 1967 and 1975 to get the feel for those comics and how Adams' work figures into that history. Which would cost a fair pennyworth.

[Pohzee]

I appreciate the B&B stories in their own, dated way, but it wasn't the revolutionary book I was expecting. The preface to the volume talks about how the stories evolved over time, but I expected more of that in the first volume.

So it wouldn't be worth just buying the 2nd and 3rd volumes.

[Martin Sinescu]

I really want to read Batman #244 but the individual comic goes for a fortune so I'd like to get Volume 3 of the Illustrated books, even though I've read complaints about the re-coloring.

It's kind of weird the way the price has blown up on 244 fairly recently. Great cover, sure, but its really been jumping up with nothing really significant backing it. Just get the Tales of the Demon trade. 244 isn't a stand-alone, so if you haven't read the rest of the Ra's al Ghul storyline that was building up over a few years, it won't really be that great as an individual read. Put together in the one trade, it's one of my favorite Batman stories.

[Steven Ely]

I really want to read Batman #244 but the individual comic goes for a fortune so I'd like to get Volume 3 of the Illustrated books, even though I've read complaints about the re-coloring.

There are also cheaper reprints of that issue. Here is a list of every reprint: http://www.comics.org/issue/25406/

[Steven Ely]

An artist doesn't have to be actively drawing new stories for a person to be captured by their interpretation of the character. That was a lot of Neal Adams Batman that was out there in the '80s.

I did point out reprints of Neal Adams Batman comics in the '80s here:

DC did reprint some Neal Adams Batman comics in the '80s (DC Blue Ribbon Digest, Saga of Ra's, Best of the Brave and the Bold, Greatest Batman Stories Ever Told, Greatest Joker Stories).

[Jim Kelly]

I did point out reprints of Neal Adams Batman comics in the '80s here:

You did and that's what "That" refers to in my sentence--otherwise the construction wouldn't make a lot of sense.

[Steven Ely]

Oh, I see.

By the time I started buying Batman comics in the '60s, Dick Sprang was retired yet I still got hooked on his Batman, just from all the Giant reprints of his work.

Which is your top favorite between Neal Adams and Dick Sprang? Just curious.

[paurru]

Excuse me Stephen Ely, but Neal Adams Batman was still being used back then in the 1980s. That was the best Batman ever.