The Mutants, Monsters, and Mademoiselles of Arthur Adams

foreign [Music] hello welcome to Comic tropes I'm your host Chris I'm gonna tell you a story I discovered the comic book store somewhere around 1986 and I could distinctly remember going in somewhere around 1987 to get back issues of things like Transformers and Ninja Turtles and I remember seeing on the wall a cover that made an impression on me this cover long shot number four now at the time I had no idea who long shot was to be fair not many people did at that point but I had no idea what that was I was pretty sure that that was Spider-Man in the corner but I still didn't know that much about Comics but that cover just caught my eye for whatever reason and over the next several months could have been years for all I know I just remember looking at it all the time and it wasn't until years later when I finally learned about the intricate the detailed The Classy artwork of Arthur Adams and it was even more years later when I finally realized that Arthur Adams had been an influence on some of the artists that I was excited about in the late 80s early 90s guys like rob liefeld it was even more years later that I finally started discovering Arthur Adams's influences guys like Michael golden it was a cool process of learning all this stuff but today today I want to talk about that artist because eventually I did discover him and boy am I a fan of Arthur Adams we're going to talk about his history his techniques and what makes him special in looking at the work he does on mutants monsters and Madame zells and yes I absolutely used a thesaurus to come up with that just to be clear before I go too far I do want to say I currently have a cover that I drew for the comic book Vampirella that is available online only there's a campaign Link in the description below it's only available for a little bit longer I hope you'll consider supporting my Endeavor there and without any further Ado Let's Talk About Arthur Adams Arthur Adams was born in 1963 and as part of a military family moved around a good amount in his early years eventually settling in a suburb near San Francisco his parents gave him Comics like Marvel treasury grab bag and he has said in interviews his favorite early characters included monsters like Hulk and man thing he also noted enjoying artists like Frank Frazetta in the Modern Masters book about Adams he also commented on discovering the artwork of Michael golden when he was in high school saying quote I was collecting comic books from the mid 70s and then I discovered Michael golden working on micronauts and I don't know exactly what it was about the very first issue of micronauts something about it just blew me away that was the book that made me say yeah this is what I'm going to do for my career for the rest of my life I'm going to find a way to draw comic books man Adams has said his second biggest influence is Walt Simonson's work especially from the X-Men Teen Titans crossover book by age 17 he was bringing his portfolio to conventions looking to break into comics in 1982 his first published work appeared in a fanzine called high energy for a story called one-eyed Jack his first paid work was getting ten dollars for a pinup in Captain carrot and his amazing zoo crew in 1983 he was hired to draw a story in Marvel's Anthology Bizarre Adventures but the book was canceled before it could be published in 1984 he had a short story published in a 3D anthology by Pacific comics and in 1985 he got noticed in a big way for drawing a limited series called long shot for Marvel with a story by Ann nissenti Longshot had been passed on by every artist nicente approached an until editor Carl Potts came across some of Arthur Adams submissions pages and suggested him when we look at page one we can see the intricate detail Arthur Adams would become known for the style itself is very recognizable if you look at his modern work there was no firm deadline on long shot and Adam said it took eight months for him to finish the first issue it has some of his Hallmarks like Extreme Action with a manga influence for Speed lines and yet he also uses Western techniques like the DeLuca effect to imply motion with repeated figure work the backgrounds are incredibly intricate and detailed the characters tend to be diverse and feature more open Line techniques that tend to give them a youthful appearance that said some of the character design like Longshot himself with the leather texture on his suit and a bandolier of knives across his chest requires a lot more line work than most characters and one thing Adams has always been good at is the conversation scenes keeping his characters expressive and making the situation clear and I just want to interrupt for a moment to point out how interesting this is that Arthur Adams isn't a guy who went to school for studying this formally he didn't Apprentice underneath somebody yeah we know his uh influences we know the comics that have influenced him but it's it's especially interesting to see that somebody really forged their own path was just like I Like Comics I'm gonna make comics and he made it happen it's pretty impressive Longshot was specifically designed off of kajagugu singer lamal you know the never-ending story song guy Adam's design for the villain Mojo is even more complex with biomechanical elements throughout it's also interesting to see Spider-Man's brief guest appearance in Issue four where Adams gives his web UPS a lot more texture than what had been normal Todd McFarland later popularized the so-called spaghetti webbing on his run on Spider-Man Adam said it took him two years to finish all six issues of a long shot but they definitely made a splash and Marvel kept using Adams on stories for X-Men annuals and fill-in issues the long shot stuff was Inked by Brent Anderson and wills pretacio and Adams would illustrate with very tight pencils that said the artwork itself did not always benefit from the flexographic printing technology of its day and it is sometimes a little muddy but it was as detailed as Comics could allow for at the time the one entertaining thing about looking critically at the long shot pages is you can see towards the end of a bunch of issues that all of a sudden some backgrounds start to disappear it's clear that he's trying to make up for some lost time here and there by 1986 Adams was drawing X-Men and his first page of them shows how he made them his own Adams was especially good at capturing Wolverine's roguish attitude and storms Regal nature Adams did more stories like storm getting as guardian powers and Mojo's Creations the ex-babies and as women became much more Buxom and attractive in his early X-Men work the majority of Arthur Adam's work is for Marvel but from the mid-80s through the end of the 90s he did start experimenting working for other people he did a Batman story he did a Gumby issue which ended up winning an Eisner for best single issue the year that it came out uh he mostly said that he liked drawing characters like the X-Men because he preferred that over drawing somebody specifically like The Punisher because in Arthur Adam's own words he felt he couldn't draw realistic guns I don't know if that's true or not but as the 80s Drew to a close he got to start drawing something he really was passionate about monsters Arthur Adams can clearly imbue his art with a lot of Fine Line work but his storytelling skills grew quickly with experience and 1992's Godzilla color special through dark horse shows what he can do when he is especially engaged with the work he's also said that he prefers to draw from a plot as compared to a full script so that he can Pace things the way he would like to and if we look at Godzilla yeah it doesn't have as many panels as long shot being printed just a few years later than the X-Men stuff it's clear that printing technology has approved the pages here look even cleaner Adams has always been great at texture and he takes no shortcuts but also the Godzilla stuff uses a lot of great lighting techniques of course the action is incredible it emphasizes Godzilla's size with decisions like wide shots or extreme angles to Showcase size and when it comes to Godzilla's Atomic breath you can see the Walt Simonson influence the clean shapes are very reminiscent of Simonson's work I'm a sucker for anything Godzilla but trust me his Godzilla work is something special it's really cool he even created this group called G-Force who was a bunch of scientists tasked with tracking and possibly overcoming Godzilla reminds me a lot of the scientists in the Ultraman TV show but anyway looks great he's done a few Godzilla things they're all very special most of Adams's art is no more than three issues because he tends to work relatively slowly an example around this time was his fill-in art on Fantastic Four with Walt Simonson writing that featured a fill in Fantastic Four team of Hulk Spider-Man Ghost Rider and Wolverine and the enemies of course it had to be the mole man and his giant monsters another passion project for Adams was Creature from the Black Lagoon one of his favorite Universal monster movies working with dark horse he learned that they were getting the license to make Universal monster comics and he lobbied to make a sequel to creature Dark Horse countered that they wanted him to adapt the 1954 movie first then he could make sequels however the book ultimately underperformed and no sequels arrived nevertheless it features some of Adam's best artwork with inks by Terry Austin the environments are grounded in realistic detail and his characters look diverse in terms of body shapes Adams is pacing for the horror is great and the detail on the creature itself is impressive Adams's women are gorgeous moving forward yeah there's a big cheesecake element to his women but when they're drawn this well I'm not complaining it's an underrated book his posing lighting detail it's all coming together to form something special Arthur Adam's style was fully formed he was drawing with confidence it was time though to roll his interests in beautiful women and monsters into something of his own instead of drawing other people's characters that led to the creation of monkey man and O'Brien which began being told in Dark Horse Comics in 1993 but the idea itself came even earlier in comic book artist issue 17 John B cook asked Adams if he had any interest in doing his own thing after a long shot came out Adams replied quote that never even occurred to me really until image showed up I was content working on various Marvel things I'd done a little bit of DC stuff but not too much at that particular point you know it never occurred to me until the early 90s when Eric Larson called and asked if I ever considered making up anything of my own and that now is 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 monkey man 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 came up with Angel and the ape Adams released several monkey man and O'Brien stories at Dark Horse through their Anthology and as dedicated issues with the legend branding Legend was dark horse's Creator owned line comprised of John Byrne Frank Miller Mike mignola and of course Arthur Adams monkey man and O'Brien riffs on B-movie Staples with scientists and Monsters the titular characters are scientists that battle against characters like the shroom annoyed and the froglodytes these stories took atoms through to 1999. Arthur Adams has such a distinct style it's instantly recognizable but you can also see his influences the super expressive faces and gentle Line work of Michael golden the clean shapes Walt Simonson uses for energy and action and the curvy women in cyberpunk Tech of masamuni Shiro and while Adams did the occasional short story or fill in on titles like Batman or the Authority or gen 13 his next work also rolled together the pope sci-fi he loved and culminated in what he's called his best work Joni future in 2002 Adams co-created Joni future with writer Steve Moore in Tom Strong's terrific Tales issue one if we compare Adams's work on Joni to Longshot there are going to be advances that are relatively subtle the panel to panel storytelling is something you really need to experience rather than me showing you the differences but the style is remarkably recognizable even though there's nearly 20 years worth of growth I'd argue the biggest difference is Adam seems to spend even more time on the hatching details and focusing on line weights to pull the foreground away from the backgrounds this is especially interesting when you learn atoms primarily inks his own work these days and prefers felt tip pens over brushes these days Arthur Adams keeps busy with things like posters art books a lot of commission work and comic book covers he's one of those people like a peach momoko or a Brian Bond that is able to focus primarily on covers and not have to do too much interior work it's a very different set of skills but he's great at it and more power to him I love everything Arthur Adams has touched I do uh I can't look at any one project and say you know what no that wasn't for me of course I'm going to be a little bit more excited for certain things than others Godzilla for instance and you know what a lot of my love goes back to that first comic he did long shot maybe that's just Nostalgia speaking or maybe it just speaks to how strong his illustration skills were from day one thank you so much for following me on this look at Arthur Adams I'll be back next week with a look at something I think a little bit lighter just sort of fluffy and fun and cool we'll see uh in the meantime again if you would consider taking a look in the description maybe picking up one of my comic covers or spreading the word I'd appreciate it uh time is ticking away and I just want this to be as successful as possible until then I'll see you next week and I want you to keep reading comics bye thanks for watching this video if you liked it please consider hitting like And subscribe if you'd like to support the show there are merchandise links beneath the YouTube video and you can always hit join on YouTube or visit comic tropes on patreon to get access to special perks until editor Carl parts Carl Parts how about Carl Potts Chris by every artist in the sentia print a preached I can get this one out Adams gives his webs a lot more texture than that uh also I'm not aiming my face of the camera enough but it's storing story selling [Music] thank you [Music] foreign

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Length: 19min 6sec (1146 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 09 2023