Neal Adams is a legendary comic-book artist, known for his influential run on ‘Hard Travelling Heroes’ with prestigious writer Denny O’Neill. In my last article, I went into Adams’ fight to create a respectable black superhero, namely John Stewart as Green Lantern.

In the next episode, we hear the difficulties artists used to have with retaining the rights to their work on the comic books we have come to know and love. Adams goes into his persistent but professional fight (self-admittedly with additional dramatic flair) for his fellow comic book creators.

 

But beyond this is the truly inspirational and heartbreaking story of how two college kids from Ohio, Joe Shuster and Jerry Siegel, were not given the respect, recognition nor the royalties they deserved for creating one of the world’s most recognised icons – Superman. They were effectively blackballed and removed from the picture, and who knows how long it would have stayed that way if it wasn’t for Adams.

Even with hindsight, hearing about the struggle is heartbreaking: particularly when you realise that Shuster was living in a shabby apartment with his windows taped up, unable to even afford to go watch the Superman play that had just been brought to Broadway.

It’s a must listen, and you can just do that by visiting FatMan on BatMan on iTunes or clicking on the link below:

Originally written for Pyro & Ballyhoo HERE.

For more from Neal Adams and Kevin Smith on Twitter, follow them @nealadamsdotcom and @ThatKevinSmith

For more from me, find out more at http://www.hariramakrishnan.com or follow me @HotChocHari on Twitter!