Comic Book Cats, number 190: Aquaman #52, written & drawn by Neal Adams and lettered by John Costanza, published by DC Comics in July 1970 and House of Mystery #189 cover drawn by Neal Adams and colored by Jack Adler, published by DC Comics in November 1970.
Legendary comic book artist and advocate for creators’ rights Neal Adam passed away on April 28th at the age of 80 years old. During a career that spanned six decades, Adams had groundbreaking runs illustrating Batman, Deadman, Green Lantern / Green Arrow and Superman for DC, and Avengers and X-Men for Marvel, as well as working in the horror, sword & sorcery and humor genres. And every once in a while Neal Adams drew cats.
Aquaman #50-52 featured a three-part Deadman serial by Adams that ran parallel to the events of the main story by Steve Skeates & Jim Aparo. In this truly mind-boggling tale Deadman finds himself teamed up with the mysterious, beautiful Tatsinda against the alien Id-Men. When she is in earth’s dimension Tatsinda can only appear in the form of a cat-like creature… but that doesn’t stop her from throwing Boston Brand some serious shade!
As crazy as this story is, it features some absolutely stunning artwork by Adams, and is a good example of the layouts & storytelling he utilized that influenced an entire generation of artists.
Additionally, here is Adams’ spooky cover for issue #189 DC’s supernatural anthology series House of Mystery. I previously featured the interior story “Eyes of the Cat” by the very unusual art team of Jerry Grandenetti on pencils and Wallace Wood on inks in a very early Comic Book Cats entry. Adams cover spotlights the angry, sinister black feline from “Eyes of the Cat”… or maybe he’s just hungry. Sometimes my cat gives me that look when I don’t feed him on time!
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