Neal Adams meeting in 1985

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.