Your favorite Neal Adams covers 2 2

[paqart]

When I was a kid, I had almost every cover drawn by Neal Adams up to 1979, when my mother forced me to sell my collection. Any cover you can think of, I had it. Many of them I had three or four copies of, particularly the Detectives and Batman covers. The rest were there also: Bob Hope, Brave and the Bold, Superman, JImmy Olsen, X-Men, Avengers, House of Mystery, anything you care to name, I had it. And then they were all gone. 

The covers I had the hardest time obtaining were the Green Lanterns. At the time I was looking, they were hot and outside my price range at twenty-five to seventy-five dollars a copy. Then one day, someone I knew told me about a guy who was getting rid of his comics. He wanted me to help him sell the collection. He had a full set of Amazing Spider-Man and Fantastic Four. He also had the green Lanterns and other miscellaneous DC comics with Adams covers. In his mind, those were the junk. He gave them to me for nothing. All in near mint condition. I later found a buyer for his other comics, and earned a $750 commission for the price I obtained for him. I want to say I got him $3,000 but I'm not sure about that. I took the $750 and bought about 200 comics by Carl Barks, all in VF-NM, including Christmas on Bear Mountain and Only a Poor Old Man (both Four Colors but the numbers elude me atm).

I'm about three years into an effort to recover my original collection. Some of the items are well outside my price range, like my 9.6-9.8ish Fantastic Four #5, probably the most valuable comic I ever owned. Others, I can afford. One group I've been avidly wanting to recover all those fantastic Adams covers, particularly on the late Silver/early Bronze DC's. DC was using a special color technology for those covers, which made them look better than earlier comics and later ones. The prices, however, are very steep on some of these comics. Others are affordable, and some teeter on the edge. Looking at the prices, I realized I wasn't going to get them all, short of a stroke of luck. Instead, I decided to target my favorites.

To find them, I went through the cover images on GoCollect and MileHigh comics to compare every cover I could think of, to see which I preferred. Of the group I selected, I now have the three attached to this post. In each case, I like them as much for the story and the blurb as the art. The Supergirl does not use the special color process but the other two do. The Supergirl is my favorite of this group. The look of horror on Superman's face, the utter carelessness evident in Supergirl's posture, and that screaming blurb "you've just killed seven million people!" is among the most powerful covers I've ever seen. There may be other covers I like more but if so, I either forgot which titles they were on or they were too much for me.

 

What are your favorite Adams covers?

[theCapraAegagrus]

Possibly this one:

[namisgr]

And

 

[D2]

Although I understand the relevance of posting previous topics dedicated to a subject...

For the OP however, it doesn't make them feel like they are part of a community. 

No one, who is looking to engage and connect with another person, is going to feel like scrolling through a topic from 2007 and be like "OH MY GOD I LOVE THIS COVER TOO WITH THIS RANDOM PERSON FROM 2009! WHAT A GREAT EXPERIENCE!"

 

The search function should be mainly used for questions people have that can be answered, not connecting to like minded collectors.

 

[D2]

On 6/15/2023 at 9:05 AM, Low Dollah said:

  Reveal hidden contents

I take it you're unfamiliar?

 

 

[namisgr]

On 6/15/2023 at 8:51 AM, D2 said:

Although I understand the relevance of posting previous topics dedicated to a subject...

For the OP however, it doesn't make them feel like they are part of a community. 

 

The links to prior threads are posted for informational purposes.  One is that many of the old posters are no longer active on the Boards.  They're not in any way intended to suppress ongoing discussion, but to enhance and further inform it.

[D2]

On 6/15/2023 at 9:55 AM, namisgr said:

The links to prior threads are posted for informational purposes.  One is that many of the old posters are no longer active on the Boards.  They're not in any way intended to suppress ongoing discussion, but to enhance and further inform it.

then I recommend also posting your favourite Neal Adams covers... to continue the discussions, and not misinterpret your intent on forwarding off old links to old posts and then peacing out.

[The Commissioner]

I love Neal Adam's art. Here are a few from my collection!

[theCapraAegagrus]

On 6/15/2023 at 10:29 AM, The Commissioner said:

I love Neal Adam's art. Here are a few from my collection!

Ooooh, I like this one!

[D2]

although I'm sure this isn't his best work, this was one of my first introductions to him, and the perspective of this cover, still, is so astounding to me.

 

[aardvark88]

Happy birthday to Neal Adams and his favorite blue shirt if he was still living to this day.

[namisgr]

On 6/15/2023 at 10:19 AM, D2 said:

then I recommend also posting your favourite Neal Adams covers... to continue the discussions, and not misinterpret your intent on forwarding off old links to old posts and then peacing out.

Being already posted in both prior threads, it would be imposing on other Board members, most of whom have seen them already.  Beyond that, they're no longer in my possession.  Like these two.  Anyone who wants to see more of my favorites can go through the linked prior threads.

Edited June 15, 2023 by namisgr

[Ken Aldred]

 

The first comic I ever read with Neal Adams art, and still one of my all-time favourite covers, with his brilliant design sense on show.

Edited June 15, 2023 by Ken Aldred

[drbanner]

Here's the best Neal Adams cover, also posted in one or more of the other threads but I love it so why not here too!

[paqart]

On 6/15/2023 at 9:11 AM, Low Dollah said:

Close but not quite. Its a great story tho:

https://comicscomicsmag.com/?p=508

We're not talking about the same thing. I noticed these colors long before I started working for Marvel and DC but didn't think of asking about it until a few years ago. Gregory Wright told me it was DC's production supervisor (and the guy who colored the cover to Action Comics #1) who created the color technique I am referring to. He did say that Adams did his own colors sometimes, but not always. Almost all of the covers I collect from this group were colored by the production supervisor. I think his name was Jack Abel but I'm not sure about that. He did it, according to Gregory, by introducing a halftone black plate to the colors. It was not used as black, but to control color mixing of other colors. It did increase production costs, and that is why they stopped doing it after a few years. Many of Kirby's Fourth World covers were done this way, along with just about everything else during that time period. Abel did not do them all, but I like his the best. Adams' coloring was fine but I've always thought Abel was more creative. I'd post some examples but don't want to stray too far from the OP.

Some of the last covers to use the technique are Kamandi #19, House of Mystery #211 (HOM #201 is one of the best examples), House of Secrets #100, Tarzan #228, Detective #421, Superman #252, Batman #244. An early example is Teen Titans 21.

[paqart]

On 6/15/2023 at 1:43 PM, drbanner said:

Here's the best Neal Adams cover, also posted in one or more of the other threads but I love it so why not here too!

I was tempted to go for this over the HoS #91, but I love the huge eagle crashing through the window.

[paqart]

On 6/15/2023 at 10:36 AM, D2 said:

although I'm sure this isn't his best work, this was one of my first introductions to him, and the perspective of this cover, still, is so astounding to me.

 

The first comic I ever owned, I think, was Avengers #93, one of the best Adams stories aver.

[ADAMANTIUM]

I don't know about "favorite", but you mention the color, and this was dark and moody enough that it made it hard to capture with a lens. I like it though   

[DINGER033]

So many that I like hard to choose but this one is cool!!

[Flanders82]