Bats, Cats, Cartoons and Comics

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Neal Adams ruined comic books for me -- and I am eternally grateful. For a decade, starting in 1967, the legendary pencil-and-ink illustrator revolutionized -- and dominated -- comic books. Now, in "Batman Illustrated," a slick, full-color $50 hardcover, DC Comics has for the umpteenth time reissued Mr. Adams' work on his signature character, Batman, whom he rescued from the campy caricature of mid-1960s television and restored to his original Gothic darkness.

After my first taste of Mr. Adams' supreme command of superhero anatomy, hyper-realistic renderings of human facial expressions, draftsman-caliber depictions of buildings and vehicles, radical reordering of camera-angle perspective and page layout, I could never again read comic books illustrated by anyone else.

Faintly insulting became his predecessors, with their window-pane layouts and stiff, chunky Eisenhower-era clods, and his successors, from 1979 onward. The latter fell into two camps: the Neal wannabes, who invariably fail at their task of god mimicry, and those who determinedly abandon the Neal Way, either to draw Batman like the Hulk, a steroid-addled freak with 150 teeth, or, worse yet, in some annoying avant-garde mixture of pastels and watercolors last seen in Hannibal Lecter's basement.

Neal Adams also revolutionized the industry -- championing socially relevant comics, breaking the barrier against illustrators working simultaneously for DC and Marvel comics, forming an artists guild, securing pensions for Superman's destitute creators and establishing his own company.

There were also some bumps in the road. Fed up with their royalty structures, Mr. Adams left DC and Marvel in the late 1970s to develop his own creations for Continuity, a profitable effort he cut short to survive the industry-wide collapse in the 1990s. Since that strategic retreat, the native New Yorker, now 62, has made an enviable living from his Manhattan studio, doing storyboards and such for Hollywood and Madison Avenue.

Now, like an apparition from the darkness, comes the new Batman retrospective volume "Batman Illustrated," the first of a projected three-volume set. But wait. The coloring on a few stories seems new -- computerized, deeper, richer, more sophisticated than the four-color candy-dot techniques of 1969. And the lettering on the onomatopoeia -- "PFSUNK!" "BLAM!" -- is straight-edged, perfect, not hand-drawn. Even much of the penciling itself has been -- can it be? -- redrawn altogether. Whole pages.

Mr. Adams' foreword doesn't mention anything about this -- so who had the nerve to mess with his classic work from his peak period? The answer is Neal Adams himself -- and many fans aren't happy.

Erik Larsen, an Adams devotee and creator of "Savage Dragon" on Panels, the Comicon.com chat board, writes: "New Neal DOESN'T DRAW LIKE old Neal -- I wanted to SEE those stories as they WERE! I don't want to see a kinky-haired Superman drawn with a marker sitting next to a panel where he has smooth hair and is inked with a far thinner and more expressive inking tool! Does this look better -- to ANYBODY?"

To some, apparently, it does. Mr. Adams says the book, having quickly sold out its 5,000-print run, will likely double that figure and that his mail runs 10-to-1 in support of his fine-tuning. Those defenders descended on Panels like the Flash.