Today's tale is from artist Dan Adkins, who got his start in comics as Wally Wood's apprentice, often collaborating with Wood himself, as well as with other young artists in the Wally Wood Studio. Some of his earliest comic stories were for Wood's Tower Comics line in 1965, and soon thereafter was doing solo artwork for Warren Magazines along side such established artists as Wood, Crandall, Torres, Orlando, and the rest of Warren's top-notch art staff.. Adkins showed himself to be an excellent student of Wood's, with a clean, attractive style very similar to his teacher. From Creepy # 11, 1966, please won't you step right through....
THE DOORWAY!
Isn't it amazing that so many artists did their best ever work in the Warren mags? Even Frazetta for that matter, with his great covers. Thanks for the frequent postings on your site.
ReplyDeleteBob, the more I dig through my old Warren's, the more I realize how fantastic these stories are, in particular (for me, anyway) the earliest issues, before they started outsourcing all the Spanish artists...not that the Spanish artists weren't talented, but there is such a rich history with all the 'hardcore early artists -- Ditko, Severin, Crandall, Orlando, Frazetta, Grandenetti, Torres, Sutton, Colan, etc., etc., etc.....
ReplyDeleteI love this story. I just linked to it at my Wood blog here:http://wallywoodart.blogspot.com/2009/11/adkins-doorway.html
ReplyDeleteAwesome, Booksteve!
ReplyDeleteThat reminds me to remind everyone to do like I do when I need a fix of wondrous Wally Wood -- go check out HOORAY FOR WALLY WOOD!
The link is above and on the side! If that don't grab ya, go check out BOOKSTEVE'S LIBRARY!
The 1st episode of DR. STRANGE I ever read, oddly enough, was in STRANGE TALES #167... by Dan Adkins. I've been a fan of his ever since. I found out years later, that just happened to be the issue where he decided to go nuts with the layouts, trying to "keep up" with Jim Steranko! Many years later, I used Adkins "overlapping photos" thing with the panels in one of my own comics.
ReplyDeleteHenry,
DeleteThat's cool! Yeah, I was a fan of Dan Adkins comic work before I realized the WOOD connection...and of course he was a friend with Steranko and other great artists, too. His work stands up on it's own, though it's hard to separate the obvious Wood influence sometimes.