#2 Art Adams
Art Adams was one of those artists that I never paid much attention to while I was reading comics in the 80s. Frankly, he never drew enough be really make a big splash in my little comics world. I became more familiar with his stuff after I started drawing. Like most young artists I started drawing by copying all the guys I really liked. It's one of those practices that in a way can teach you more than you would imagine. These days I can look at something Art Adams drew decades ago and recognize how influential he was because while I know I wasn't copying him, I was copying someone else that had already copied him.
He should make a dime every time Jim Lee, J. Scott Campbell, Tood McFarlane and Rob Liefeld draw anything. Look at the cover of Heroes For Hope below and tell me you haven't seen Rob Liefeld draw that same exact figure over and over and over. It doesn't matter if he calls the character Cougar, Fighting American, Prophet or Capt Geech and the shrip shack shooters, it's always a rip off of that Heroes for Hope wolverine.
So why is he number two on my list of my favorite artists of the 80s? Well it's because of how influential he was to all the artists that I loved in the 90s. It's a become a cliche, but his work really was ahead of it's time. From giant splash panels, to overly bowed legs, even those big "manga style" heads and eyes with no pupils. Every bad art cliche from the 90s that I absolutely loved, started with his run on Longshot way back in 1985.
It's tough finding a lot of Art Adam's work. After he finished the Longshot limited series, he never stayed on a book for more than a few issues. The Longshot TPB is a good place to start and I'd also recommend picking up the last few issues of the current Hulk book. After that you're going to be digging through a lot of back issue bins looking for single issues.
0 comments:
Post a Comment