Archives - The Life of Arthur Adams

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Introduction to Arthur Adams

2:07Hello, your friend in the neighborhood host, J.T. Wheatley, back again for another episode of the History of Comics podcast, this time with the life of Arthur Adams. During the 1980s, Marvel had grown stagnant over the decades of innovating the comic book medium. After setting new standards of art and storytelling with creators like Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, and Steve Ditko, the company had fallen on the very thing that hurt DC, resting on their laurels and believing that they were the standard in the comic book medium, especially their art. With John Ramiya Sr. and John Bashima sending the Marvel look.

2:39While brilliant artists in their own right, the company also forced their other artists to follow their standard, ending the innovation that led to Marvel's rise. As a result, DC, which works like The Dark Knight Returns and The Watchmen, started to break out in the 1980s and even surprised Marvel by surpassing them in sales. The artists at Marvel needed to break out, and their inspiration came from an artist in Arthur, Art Adams, in a miniseries, many dismissed, called Longshot, but ultimately, for better or for worse, changed the style of comic book art in the 1990s and beyond.

3:10Arthur Adams was born on April 5, 1963, in Hollyoak, Massachusetts, the oldest of five brothers. His family moved around a lot, due to his father being in the Air Force, going from Wisconsin to Philadelphia to West Virginia. His father was a loadmaster, meaning he had to make sure the cargo and airplanes was distributed evenly throughout so it wouldn't tip over a snap in half in flight, while his mother would work occasionally. Due to his father being in the Air Force, he was often away from the family up to a year at a time, thus his mother ended up in the disciplinarium.

3:40On a side note, Arthur Adams has no relation to fellow combat guarders Neil Adams, though he sometimes gets confused when he signs just Adams at first, thus he started to sign his full name, Arthur Art Adams. When they would meet years later, Neil Adams jokingly calls him my son and gives him a big hug, making light of the confusion.

Arthur Adams' Early Life

4:00Arthur Adams was fascinated by art from a young age. When he first saw stick figures, his father drew on the moving boxes to represent the family. His father would encourage his art while his mother bought stacks of used comics for him and his brothers, which were often the 10-pound bundles wrapped in twine and included Marvel Comics Treasury editions, such as the works of Ross Andrews, Jen Colman, and Wally Wood. Of his favorite characters in these comics, he enjoyed the Thing, the Hulk, and the Man-Thing. Despite this, Adams originally wanted to be a paleontologist because he loved drawing dinosaurs.

4:30Adams also loved superhero cartoons at the time, even if most of them were pretty bad, and was a huge Godzilla fan in relation to his love with dinosaurs. This grew the love of movie monsters in general, as they appeared in the Creature Features movies that ran on the Saturday morning TV, which included Frankenstein, The Creature from the Black Lagoon, and King Kong. Of his favorite artists, Adams loved Michael Golden and the Micronauts, from which he imitated much of his highly detailed style, Walt Simonson's run on Thor and the Uncanny X-Men and the New Teen Titans, which was another favorite,

5:01and the latter book he would call his Bible for comic books, especially how he told a clean story with multiple characters. Originally, Adams admitted to dismissing Jack Kirby at first before becoming an artist and realizing the brilliance of his work. Adams also loved Barry Windsor Smith's run on The Conan the Barbarian, and Frank Fidetta's paintings, which he would later try to imitate with watercolor. Adams later discovered Masumi Oshiro, which goes to the shell, which would lead to a strong influence of manga in his art as well. In high school, Arthur Adams was taught storytelling by his art teacher,

5:32Mrs. Kilgore, from the comic book strips, and stated that she judged him twice as hard as his fellow students, as she recognized his talent. Originally, Kilgore wasn't too happy to Adams with interested in being a comic book artist, but when he brought her covers of Creepy, the horror magazine from War of Publishing by Shandrelin and Enric, she realized it was actually well-done paintings. Adams as a fellow student even painted a mural on one of the school's walls, but it has since been painted over, which he's grateful for as he thinks it was pretty bad in retrospect. However, at one point, Adams thought about acting over her art,

6:04doing community theater, but dropped out at 19 as he finally decided to focus on his art more. Plus, Adams admits he really started because there was a girl that was also acting that he liked.

6:14After high school, Arthur Adams worked at Round Table Pizza while avoiding the go-to-college living in the San Francisco area. During this time, he was submitting his art to comic book companies in the hopes of getting a job. Adams was able to get a table at the Creation Convention because he knew Bob Shrek, who was in charge of the Artist Alley, and there, Adams was able to make $20 a sketch doing various pin-ups and customer requests. It was at these conventions he met his friend and future comic book creator of Hellboy, Mike Magnolia, who was also looking to break into the comic book business.

6:45At these conventions, Joe Robenstein saw Adams' samples, who took them to Denny O'Neill at Marvel, who is currently doing the Bizarre Adventures series. O'Neill gave Adams a three- to four-page story, which Rupinstein inked. Unfortunately, the Bizarre Adventures comic would be canceled before his story was ever published, called The Return of Richard Besnick. Though Adams admits later that he wasn't happy with it, but it would still be over a year before he nearly got comic book work again. While waiting, he did contribute to the Away Off There and the Softly Winking Lights in 1984 Pacific Comics'

7:17three-dimensional alien worlds. Before this, Adams did unpaid work for the self-published High Energy No. 1 fanzine in the spring of 1982, which is why Adams calls that part that is not part of his professional career. The story was called One-Eyed Jack, which Adams called Pretty Bad, though it was his first published work. He also did a sketch published in DC's Captain Carrot and the Amazing Zoo crew, getting $10 for a Farrah Foxette character sketch for Roy Thomas, which he based on the classic poster of actress Farrah Fawcett

Arthur Adams' Career

7:50in a red swimsuit from Charlie's Angels. Finally, Arthur Adams' years of submissions paid off when Al Milgram, who was leaving Marvel to go freelance, was cleaning out his desk and he noticed them. Milgram showed them to editor Carl Potts before leaving, who was impressed, and he and his assistant, Anna Shinty, sent Adams a 10- to 15-page script of the Defenders to do layouts for, which at the time included a team lineup of Angel, Beast, Iceman, Moondragon, and Gargoyle, for which he was paid $20 a page. However, Marvel wasn't completely impressed with Adams' art yet,

8:21as his action was stiff and his proportions were in the wrong places. Thankfully, he was about to have a chance to show what he could really do. Anna Shinty had to come up with a concept over the idea of a superhero with no memory of his past, along with the ability to manipulate luck in his favor. The story of that forum was about Longshot, a slave in the Mojoverse, where inhabitants are addicted to a gladiator-style TV show in which the ruler Mojo runs it, and Longshot is his biggest star. However, Longshot escapes his enslavement, and the Mojoverse on a quest to discover his past

8:53which springs from the Earth and interacting with various Marvel superheroes from Spider-Man to Doctor Strange. Arthur Adams was given the task of penciling it, mainly because no one else wanted it. Adams gave Longshot a mullet hairstyle like the singer L'Omiel in the bang, Kajagoogoo, while also having his costume be based in the Starfleet universe from Star Trek The Motion Picture, with pouches for functionality. Adams never liked that heroes could just pull a device out of a skin-tight outfit. But also jokes, the image artist who would later follow this up

9:25would go overboard with it. It was Ann and Chinty who came up with the idea of Longshot's left eye glowing with his luck powers activated, while to show that he was from another dimension, he was only given three fingers in each hand. The look of the character of Ricochet Irita, a human Longshot by Friends on Earth, was based on Ann and Chinty, though he admits he is terrible at drawing lightnesses, thus she only kind of looks like her. As for the villain Mojo, and Chinty's instructions were to create a disgusting monster, which is where his design came from.

9:56It took two years for Adams to complete this six-issue miniseries, with the first issue alone taking eight months, because Adams admits to being scared this being his first major job. Louis Simonson was the original editor, though reportedly was pretty hands-off, thus the lengthy time period. While Elliot Brown and Marvel's editor-in-chief, Jim Shooter, helped Adams with storytelling, showing panel-to-panel structure from the old Marvel book. Adams would credit his past acting experience in helping create his characters, but admits to a long time was also due to having to learn to draw things he never did before, such as windmills, babies,

10:26and people smiling. Also on the comic was Will Spottasio, who inked the comic and would be heavily influenced by Adam Steyer later on, as the rest of the image creators were, for better or for worse. Our Adams' friend, Mike Pignoglia, also helped inking on the last issue when Spottasio wasn't able to do it. Finally, on September of 1985, Longshot No. 1 debuted, and despite these delays, the comic was well-received, though the first issue only sold 110,000 copies. At a time when 90,000 got you canceled. While many criticized the writing,

10:57Arthur Adams' art was singled out as the highlight of the series, introducing a dynamic style that immediately grabbed readers' attention, along with more than a few burgeoning hours to get entered in the field. Longshot was meant to be an ongoing series after issue No. 6, which ended up being double-sized, according to Adams. And in the chint, they had written a script for the next issue along with a graphic novel, Wood plans to start it up again in 1988. The idea of Longshot bouncing between dimensions each issue while battling with Mephisto, the version of the devil in the Marvel Universe. However, Adams immediately went

11:27to other projects, Dusty faded away, while Nachenti would make Mephisto the villain in Daredevil, which he was writing at the time. As for Longshot, the miniseries would have a permanent impact on the X-Men and Marvel books, as Longshot himself would join the X-Men in the X-Men Annuals No. 10 in 1986, eventually marrying fellow X-Men the Dazzler, and being the parents of Shadow Star of the X-Force. Mojo World, Mojo, his mortal-armed assistant, Spiral, would also become regular fixtures in the comics. Of course, it also launched Arthur Adams

11:57into the comic world. Nachenti's position as the editor of the X-Books got Adams the attention of Chris Claremont, its main writer, which led to him penciling the New Mutant Special No. 1 and X-Men Annual No. 9 in 1986, for which Adam Nachenti was editor on both. Nachenti was asked Adams to do the covers for Heroes for Hope, a 1985 book meant to raise money to battle famine in Africa, which had contributors from numerous creators, from Stephen King to Harlan Ellison. Chris Claremont wrote the New Mutant Special,

12:27which was the first time Adams worked with him and was done by the Marvel method, i.e. Adams was given the plot first, the draw, with Claremont coming back afterwards to insert the dialogue. This all led to another significant moment in Arthur Adams' career when Adam Nachenti had him design a poster of Wolverine based on a cover of Uncanny X-Men No. 173 by Paul Smith, featuring Wolverine in his brown and yellow costume with his claws out running towards the viewer. It soon became one of the most iconic images of the character and this poster was everywhere,

12:58with Adams collecting an immense royalty from it along with $1,000 up front as it eventually was converted into a standee for comic book stores. This led to a lucrative avenue for Adams as he did other posters for the new mutas and the X-Men were also huge sellers, making $100 to $150 for 30 minutes of work, plus royalties and future sales. Adams also did the interior art for the two-issue run on the X-Factor and the one-shot Excalibur Mojo Mayhem in 1989 along with the X-Men annuals in 1988 and 1990.

13:28It was here that Adams believed he was finally a professional artist and he felt confident in what he was doing. In these comics, another addition Adams helped make to the X-Universe was co-creating the X-Babies with Chris Claremont, essentially kids' versions of the X-Men. They were inspired when Mojo turned the X-Men into kids in the X-Men annual number 10 in 1986 and then in annual number 12 in 1988, Mojo, believed the X-Men were dead, had clones created because he missed his biggest ratings generator only to get babies as a result.

13:59Mojo was about to kill them in response into how he learned that the X-Babies got his highest ratings ever. Adams would return to the penciling in Excalibur Mojo Mayhem in 1989 where Kitty Pryde has a train ride interrupted when she has to rescue a group of X-Babies from Mojo. Adams started to show more of his manga influence here as the inspiration for the X-Babies is in part from the Japanese comics making chibi, Japanese for little, style version of the characters which has been done in everything from the anime Attack on Titan to the American Ruby cartoon,

14:30both of which are highly recommended if you haven't watched them yet. It was during this time that despite the demand for art for Adams due to his immense talent, he would also develop a reputation for being laid on books. Adams admits that part of this was whenever he had money in the bank he got lazier and it would only speed up when he started to go broke again. Adams did state he could, on average, do a page a day because he could do a regular monthly series if he wanted to though he was often exhausted afterwards. As a result, Adams often found himself regulating the covers which he hated doing if he wasn't

15:01also doing the interior art as he felt it was also called a form of false advertising. It didn't help that Adams rarely knew what the story was about when he did the covers just they rarely related to the story. In 1986, Arthur Adams did several pages in the landmark Batman No. 400 with his look from The Dark Knight being heavily influenced by Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns and did the Cloak and Dagger No. 9 for Marvel along with the covers for Appleseed the English translation of the Japanese manga which he painted. Next he did X-Men annuals

15:31No. 12 to 14 but he hated that they were part of an ongoing story he wasn't a part of. He also didn't enjoy doing the Web of Spider-Man annual mostly due to the editor he had to work with. While Arthur Adams was making himself a name at Marvel he continued to find work at DC penciling Action Annual No. 1 with John Byrne in 1987 which he admits was another key moment in his career. Adams would use his art to vent some frustrations as he depicted a female character being killed as looking like his ex-girlfriend complete with her wearing the same Mr. Peanut t-shirt. He even used her as an excuse

16:03as to why his pages were late to Mike Carlin the editor at DC he worked with who only responded he didn't care and DC needed those pages. As mentioned earlier Adams was heavily influenced by Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns especially looking for the characters and thus his Superman had a huge chin like Miller's. When Carlin complained about it Adams decided to just be a bit of a jerk and this made it bigger. However Carlin and John Byrne would be frustrated with his storytelling thus they would re-erase the panel layouts against Adams injections. Vic Giordano did provide the

16:33inks though which Adams was thrilled by. In a surprising move Arthur Adams' next project was the Gumby Summer Fun Special for Comico Comics. He was offered a job by Comico editor Dana Schultz who noticed how he inserted Gumby into a long shot miniseries and liked the look he gave the character. Originally Adams was afraid to take the job as he thinks he would be typecast as the Gumby artist so he told Comico he would do it if they got Bob Burden from the flaming character write it. A half hour later Adams

17:04got a call that Burden would write Gumby thus he found himself drawing it. The timing actually worked out pretty well as new cartoons of the character by creator Art Coakley were being created around the same time and Adams would have noticed some strange crossovers. For example when he depicted Gumby gritting his teeth in the comic the cartoon would do the same. The Gumby Summer Special not only ended up being a huge success but an acclaimed one as well winning the Eisner for best single issue in 1988 showing that Adams was just as adept as comedy as he was action.

17:34He would follow this up with the Gumby Winter Special with writer Steven Purcell in 1989 and was featuring the great comic book artist volume 2 by Ron Goulart along with 54 other artists with Adams providing the front and back covers. His next significant work was the new Fantastic Four story by writer Walt Simonson which ran for three issues in Fantastic Four number 347-349 on December of 1989 to February of 1990 in which he had Ghost Rider, Spider-Man, the Hulk, and Wolverine team up when

18:05the original team is believed to be dead. Simonson came up with the idea because he liked replacing the Fantastic Four when Marvel was then top-selling heroes at the time. Originally it was suggested to use the Punisher over the Hulk but Adams preferred the Hulk especially since he was currently in his Mr. Fixing persona in the comic. The Punisher would make a cameo at the end of the story while Adams would design Hulk toys for Marvel in the 1990s as well. Of course his third issue was late in line with his growing reputation but the series was a huge success with the first issue selling a million copies

18:36thanks to multiple printings and variant covers. Adams still considers this one of his favorite works as the story also featured the alien race of Skrulls and the Mole Man and his numerous monsters which gave Adams a chance to show off his ability to draw them to great effect, something he would put to use in his next job.

18:53Arthur Adams had become acquainted with Randall Stradley and the others at Dark Horse Comics who originally tried to recruit him to work on their Aliens license. However he didn't want to work on Aliens but instead another property they had the license to, an old childhood favorite, Godzilla. In 1992 Arthur Adams penciled and wrote the Godzilla color special number one for Dark Horse where he created the G-Force, a kind of Japanese version of Fantastic Four who mentioned previously they fought the villain Scruminoid who would make an appearance in his later work.

19:23Toho, the movie studio that owned Godzilla would later introduce a version of the team and in 1993 Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla 2 and a book of this making of the film featured a color illustration that was a copy of Adams' comic book which he enjoyed.

19:37Adams would continue to do more Godzilla stories for Dark Horse such as King Kong vs. Godzilla vs. Godzilla vs. Urban Dungeons 1, noted for being the only story Adams wrote, penciled, inked, and lettered, and Trampoline Tokyo in Negative Burn 18 of December 1994 that was written by Alan Moore. In 1995 he penciled Godzilla vs. Hero Zero and wrote issues number 5 through 8 of the series Target Godzilla.

20:01Also at Dark Horse, when he learned that they acquired the rights to do the comic book adaptations of classic universal movie monsters, he lobbied to do an adaptation of the classic 1954 film The Creature from the Black Lagoon. He first wanted to do a sequel of the film, but Dark Horse asked Adams to first adapt the original with the promise that if successful, a sequel would follow up later. Adams originally found the job tricky as he found he couldn't find a script from the film and he had to dig up an old videotape just for reference. Ironically, after he completed the comic, Adams later found the complete scripts

20:31and novelizations at the famous Powell's Bookstore in Portland, Oregon. Great place if you're in the area, and joked that this was part of the curse that Walt Simonson once told him about, that whenever you needed a reference for your art, you could never find it. The 50-page adaptation of The Green Trooper and the Black Lagoon was released in 1993, and despite the comic being rarely received, it lost money initially, thus Dark Horse had to cancel the entire universe of Monster line, including Adams' proposed sequel.

21:01Despite this, Arthur Adams had to develop a strong relationship with Dark Horse comics to the point that when Eric Larson approached him and Mike Bernoulli to join Image Comics, they both turned them down. It did spur Adams to finally make a try and create her own work, dusting off an idea originally called Angel and the Ape, though he went to change the name as that was a comic by DC published back in 1968, created by E. Nelson Bridewell, about a female detective and her simian partner. His idea would actually be similar in concept, now called Monkey Man and O'Brien, about the daughter of a missing scientist, Anne

21:32Daryl O'Brien, whose experiments teleported a super-intelligent Ape, Axwell Tiberius, the titular monkey man, to Earth from another dimension, while also causing Anne O'Brien to grow to seven feet tall with superhuman strength. The two then engaged in numerous adventures together, including taking on the previous mentioned Scruminoids from his run on Godzilla. This was part of a larger legend imprint by Dark Horse that they created in Reaction to Image Comics, allowing creator-owned works. It would include Mike Magnolia, with his Hellboy,

22:03Frank Miller's Sin City, John Burns' Next Man, Paul Chadwick, Jeff Dorrow, Mike Alfred, and Dave Gibbons. Monkey Man and O'Brien first appeared in the San Diego Comic-Con Comics No. 2 in 1993, and then Dark Horse presents No. 80 that same year, and then later Dark Horse Insider No. 27 in 1994. Next, Monkey Man and O'Brien would finally appear under the legend imprint as the backup feature in Mike Magnolia's Hellboy, Seated Destruction, the first comic book for the character,

22:33miniseries in 1994, eventually getting its own miniseries in 1996.

22:38Adams had plotted up the 24 issues, but he never got around to finishing it, as Adams started to get other little jobs here and there, like the crossover with Gen 13 and Image, and appearing in Savage Dragon No. 41 in September 1997. Finally, working with Image Comics and Eric Larson. Adams would even do a Gen 13 Generation X cover for the crossover between Image and Marvel Comics. While Monkey Man and O'Brien has been eventually defunct since then, along with Legend, which ended in 1998, Adams

23:09admits he wanted to start up the comic book again, Dark Horse would be game, but he just found himself doing other work.

23:17Arthur Adams would later work at America's Best Comics ABC with Alan Moore and Tom Strong No. 4 and Joni Future in 1999. The latter book was a futuristic series Adams co-created with writer Steve Moore, meant to be a mix of Adam Strange and Barbarella, about Joni Future, who after inheriting her uncle's house upon his death, learns he was an interdimensional defender and takes up his mantle. The series appeared in an eight-page installment in Tom Strong's Terrific Tales, with her first appearance being in issue No. 1, with

23:47Adams penciling the first ten issues for 2002 to 2004. Adams admits to a stronger romantic influence in designing the character from being a mix of Vampirella and the Capcom video game characters. To date, Arthur Adams considers Joni Future his best artistic work.

24:06Adams also did two issues of The Authority at Wildstorm in 2002, which DC requested he redrawed it, the emphasis of violence after 9-11, to something to Adams' frustration. In addition, he got to work on The Rocketeer with Dave Stevens at Comic-Go. To date, Arthur Adams mostly works as a cover artist while providing private commissions for freelance work, such as the covers of PlayStation Magazine, or providing designs for polyresin busts of female characters for Dynamite Entertainment, which also includes Red Sonja and Vampirella.

24:37When asked if he ever intends to return to interior art, Adams states it would be for a revival of Monkey Man and O'Brien. Adams says he tries to get his drawing table at 9 in the morning and work through it through 5, and he believes he has bad layout skills, thus he tries to hide them with lots of characters. He does try to leave space for word balloons, especially with complete scripts. Adams, amidst his tight penciling keeps his process longer, thus preventing him from doing a regular series and only able to work on the covers or miniseries. Most recently, Marvel published

25:07the Marvel monograph, The Art of Arthur Adams, X-Men, a 120-page collection of his work at Marvel. In his personal life, Arthur Adams is married to Joyce Chen, a fellow comic artist known best for her coverage at Marvel, DC, Dark Horse, and so forth, whom he met at the 1996 San Diego Comic-Con, and they have both settled in Walnut Creek, California. The two have even worked together, inking each other's pencils at times. As for his legacy, Arthur Adams still remains an accomplished and in-demand artist, artist, and he could arguably be

25:37the chief influencer of today's artistic style, in which the highly detailed art that Todd McFarlane, Jim Lee, and later Joe Maduria displayed. While it's been pointed out that Michael Golden, who influenced Adams, did it earlier, it was Adams who made him popular with his dynamic poses, reflected surfaces, and costumes with numerous accessories. Thus leading to, for better or for worse, the art style that set the image comic books in the 1990s that was later copied in Digi-wide. While Adams himself never went so far as they did, as his work on Gumby and Godzilla showed,

26:08he did represent a significant shift in the comic book style in the 1980s and 90s, thus ensuring his place in comic book history.

26:16I would like to thank the chief source for this episode, Modern Masters Volume 6, Arthur Adams, by George Corey and Eric Nolan-Wevington, which features a great interview of Arthur Adams along with some nice reprints of his art. A solid read for any comic book history fan.

26:35And now it is April 23rd, 2026, time for the favorite comic of the week, Head Lopper by Andrew McLean, which is a semi-annual return to the series. It's a great refresher. It comes in a giant-sized comic that's like 85 pages that basically features the adventures of Head Lopper, a fantasy satire series that finds the titular Head Lopper and his friends going to another adventure where

27:05he naturally is lopping off heads. Andrew McLean has a lot of fun with this series. It's very much a fantasy satire where it's a very simple present but he adds some great mythology to it. It's a great catch-up for new readers because he actually goes back to the mythology of the world that Head Lopper takes place in. His art is very nice and cartoony and simple, basically making the very violent head lopping very fun to watch. So yeah, great original series, one of the better fantasy series on the stands, and just a great read in general. And with that, I want to first off apologize for

27:36this last bit of the quality because I'm recording this from my hotel room in D.C. I'm taking some vacation time, but heading to the museum. One of the things I love about coming to D.C. is there are so many great ties into the comic history down here. Like, I went to the American History Museum and they of course had features about Captain America's shield, and Storm's costume was on display from the X-Men movies. They also had some trades of the classic Marvel comic books on sale. The Spy Museum showed that Jack Kirby actually

28:06provided artwork for the Argo Canadian caper, where they made a fake film to sneak people out of Iran. A lot of great stuff. William Martin Marsden's lie detector was on display. A lot of very cool stuff. A lot of