Remembering my
meeting with Neal Adams way back in 1985.
Just found two signed
copies of a Batman magazine from way back in 1985, by Neal Adams!
In 1985-1986 I
lived in Stockholm/Sweden for 2 years, and worked at my dads company doing
graphic work for his costumers. At the time, Marvel was not represented in
Denmark, and I was negotiating with Marvel, to publish Spider-man, FF and
Daredevil. Unfortunately the project was cancelled, due to lack of financial
support.
In the summer of
1985, I was in Bologne, Italy, inviting by Marvels foreign right representing
(forgot her name) to a Marvel-party, where Marvel hired a bunch of actors to
perform as Spider-man, Hulk, Daredevil, The Thing etc. I have never had so much
fun as this event! A fun thing to look back at: at the time, the Internet
og SMS and emails was not available, so all correspondance with Marvel was
either on the phone or by Telex :-)
In 1985, I went to
New York, to meet with the legendary Neal Adams. Neal and I set up a meeting in
his office on Manhatten, with the purpose of publishing Neal’s own magazine “ECHO
of futurepast” in Scandinavia. As I recall there was problems with the
rights, because the artists owned the rights themselves, contrary to what - at
that time – was normal for the industry. Neal was a great spokesman for the
cause that artists maintained the rights to their own writing and artwork.
Today, this is standard for the industry, and Neal was one of the persons who
made this possible.
Unfortunately, the
project never materialized, because the financial backing did not believe that
the project would be profitable – which they probably was right in at the time J
My trip to New
York was not – after all – in vain. I got a chance to meet one of my absolute
favorite artists and I returned to Denmark with two signed copies of original
Neal Adams work on Batman. One of them is hanging on my wall.
Thanks, Neal for
the great tribute you have brought to e.g. Batman, Green Arrow and other
titles. Together with Mike Ploog, Stan Lee, Curt Swan, Marv Wolfman and Johnny
Romita, you were on the main reason that I started reading and collecting
comics back in the 1970s.










