A lot of kids were reading comics in the 1960s and 1970s. They taught us values. Values that we still carry to this day. A few years back when Stan Lee died, I posted this diary about his contributions to advocating for Civil Rights:
www.dailykos.com/…
Stan laid the groundwork across the Marvel line of comics.
Marvel readers, you can be sure, noticed Stan Lee’s support of civil rights. One reader wrote Stan in 1969 to complain about Marvel’s support for civil rights, ending his letter by stating “I’m not a racist, just a concerned Marvelite who doesn’t want his favorite comic company to be ruined by something that doesn’t concern you as comic publishers.”
Stan’s published response in the letters page of the comic?:
“But, such matters as racism and inequality do concern us, Tim — not just as comic mag artists and writers and publishers, but as human beings. Certainly it’s never been our intention to portray all, or even most, white Americans as hard-core bigots or screaming racists. Maybe it’s just that we think that many people in the land of the free have too long turned their backs or averted their eyes to the more unpleasant things that are going on every day. Maybe we felt we could do something — even within the relatively humble format of what used to be called a ‘comic-book’ – to change things just a bit for the better. If we failed, let’s just say that we’d at least like to have it said of us that — we tried.”
Neal Adams was doing art for Stan Lee’s Marvel Comics in 1969 on X-Men and Avengers. On the later he was paired up with writer Denny O’Neil. And they clearly were cut from the same mold as Stan.
When they left Marvel for DC they commenced groundbreaking work on Green Lantern / Green Arrow that addressed racism, including white do-gooders inaction, head on in a realistic manner. The panels pictured at the top of this story is part of an iconic scene that is revered by comic fans for its emotional impact on them as readers.
As part of Neal Adams’ and Denny O’Neil’s effort, they created the first black Green Lantern, John Stewart.
He was not just a new black superhero like the Black Panther. He was the first black character to actually take on the same mantle and name of a major superhero. This creation taught comic fans to see the world in a new more diverse way in which blacks could take over rolls considered suitable only for a white character. A diversification of superhero universes has followed that has led to new popular diverse versions of established historically white superheroes like Miles Morales as Spiderman and America Chavez as Ms. Marvel.
For a comic fan, seeing a black Queen Charlotte of England in Bridgerton or a black George Washington in Hamilton is familiar not shocking.
Neal Adams was a major artistic talent. He created many very memorable stories and characters. He also, consistent with his values, fought for creator rights, first in attempting to unionize creators and then, when that effort failed, by putting pressure on corporations to make incremental and important changes to how they treated creators. Due to Neal’s efforts, comic artists got their art back from their employers and public credit for their creations. His life story is too long for me to relay here.
But it is a story worth seeking out, as are the stories he drew.
RIP Neal.