Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Adkins' Doorway


One of Dan Adkins' most Wood-like (with a dash of Ditko thrown in even) solo stories is "The Doorway" from an early issue of CREEPY. The whole thing is on view at the always interesting blog, BLACK 'N' WHITE AND RED ALL OVER.

http://blacknwhiteandredallover.blogspot.com/2009/11/post-11-doorway.html

Adkins himself, in his COMIC BOOK ARTIST interview, saw this story as the first stepping
stone toward his solo career:

CBA: When did you go off on your own? When you were working for Warren?

DAN: Yeah, and I did it in a cowardly way, according to Wally. [laughs] I went down to Archie, and had to beg him for about six months to let me do a story for him, which turned out to be "The Doorway." I was still working for Wally, until my third Warren story, "The Day After Doomsday." When that came out, I took my samples—I'd had my name on three jobs for Wally, and I had three jobs published on my own, including a one-page filler for Blazing Combat, plus my science-fiction stuff for years—and I went to Marvel. I saw Sol Brodsky, and went in to see Stan, and they gave me a Bill Everett "Sub-Mariner" job to ink. So I inked that, brought that back in, and they gave me my first pencil job, which Stan wrote. He gave me a plot written out on index cards. It was "It Walks Like a Man," or something like that. A thing from radiation. So, I did that story with Stan, and the second half I did with Roy Thomas, and those were my first stories.


While you're over at that site, why hot revisit "The Curse" also at
http://blacknwhiteandredallover.blogspot.com/2009/11/post-6-curse.html

2 comments:

  1. Hi Booksteve! Wally Wood is my fave comic artist, with Steranko a close second. I enjoy your blog! Thanks for the mention and for the extra information about Dan Adkins. Of all the Wood 'students' I find Atkins my favorite, although I also enjoy Reese, Kirchner, and Howard, among other 'Wood ' - ites...
    Thanks!

    ReplyDelete
  2. 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.

    ReplyDelete