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C2E2 Day 3: Neal Adams Q & A

I know we’re mostly a television blog but this was an event that I felt was worth mentioning.

This panel is exactly why I still try to maintain faith in comic conventions. I know C2E2 is for entertainment too, which I also have a huge stake in, but the entertainment section isn’t really a community so much as a mashing of people.  I didn’t have to wait on some line at 4 in the morning nor did I have to deal with anyone who didn’t know exactly who they were there for. It was a ridiculously small group for someone so legendary in the field, but it was a relief after all the insanity I was combating earlier.

 It was the usual cast of mostly men, some of their girlfriends, random senior citizens and that one weird guy who probably follows the main speaker like a groupie would for Phish on tour.

Neal Adams is like your dad. You idolize him yet you also get really mad at him when he tells you the truth and you want to go upstairs, slam your door and blast Motley Crue. I understood the points (and agreed with a few) that he made on the forever-bitter subject of Roy Lichtenstein being a thieving hack and The School of the Art Institute, my present school, as pretentious while praising/similarly laughing at School of Visual Arts students.

 

He was cracking some fun jokes with the audience, then he got into his Art History 101 lesson of weaving, which yes, was used primarily as decoration during medieval times, but he agreed with how stupid and pointless it was. I can take critiques on Lichtenstein (one of my favorite artists) and my school, but please don’t say something without minding the craftsmanship and artistry that weaving can have. When you’ve spent 16 hours straight on a loom operating on orange juice, Easter candy and fear, you’re going to be defensive about that subject.

He also made some general comments on Renaissance painters that have been said countless times and I could understand, but they came off arrogant on occasion. It felt like he was a step away from decreeing comic artists as gods sometimes, it was a little too strong for me.

He was self-aware, pulled himself back and covered his bases to remember that despite his dismissive comments, people are capable of extraordinary things in those fields. Though I know I shouldn’t have taken the comments all too seriously in the first place, they’re things that are close to my heart and even the steel can be sensitive to heat.

In a very dad fashion, Adams then unfurled his wise tales of the business and how comic artists have to stand up for themselves, not referring to free speech and the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, but that comic artists are often willing to accept being underpaid which is worse considering they don’t even have health benefits. Of course someone brought their kid who was forced to hear some cursing, but Adams apologized that he was quoting a boss and that’s just how they used to speak back in the day. I’m mad I couldn’t find his booth to get my things signed and a picture with him, I was just hella lost all weekend even with a map. Oh those ladies, right?

In the end, I still love & respect him and the influence his work has had on me. Even with that groupie guy who talked down to me, trying to explain Neal Adams’ work to me while I had one of his early issues of Green Lantern tucked in my camera bag (and we were both in a Neal Adams panel). Of course that type of scenario happened to me A LOT that weekend which will be brought up in my “girl geek debacle” article in the future.

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