Arthur Adams, Legendary Artist Talks Comics, Monsters, and Dinosaurs at Royal Tyrrell Museum
This audio interview was conducted by Chris Doucher, Editor-in-Chief, Writer and Comic Panel Moderator for GeekNerdNet. (Image credits to: Arthur Adams and GeekNerdNet)
Arthur Adams at Calgary Expo 2023 (image credit: Chris Doucher/GeekNerdNet)
I had the absolute pleasure to sit down and chat with legendary artist Arthur Adams about his career in comics to date. With such a breadth of work under his belt, really the only place to start was at the beginning. Adams started out with this gem of a comment:
“I started out , I was hoping I could be a paleontoloigist, but I found out that was a lot more work than I was actually willing to put in. But I loved dinosaurs, and through that I found I loved monsters, through that I found Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko MONSTER comics that were being reprinted around the time I was starting to get into comics—late 60’s and early 70’s. I was following those, I liked that, I liked the FANTASTIC FOUR because The Thing was there. I liked HULK comics because he’s a monster…somehow just by following the comics I liked I discovered Michael Golden’s THE MICRONAUTS…that’s when I thought to myself, this is what I would like to do for my career.”
Of course, we got into a super-fun chat about his first series that got him started in the business, and at Marvel, a LONGSHOT mini-series…where in chatting about it I drop an absolutely awful dad joke, which Adams called “painful.” So, yup, I kept it in there for you to hear. Back to the man of the hour, though. Adams tells a great story about how he was invited to do tryouts (not meant to be published), and he talks about the one piece that got noticed for its hilarity, and steered the powers that be to offer Adams the series about the new character LONGSHOT. If you listen, you’ll learn how Adams interpreted what drawing the power of “luck” looked like, and his eventual move to X-Men comics after Chris Claremont stole him to work on the X-books—and how it’s Claremont’s “fault” there weren’t more Longshot books.
After quite a bit of work with Marvel, as well as a bit of DC work, Adams talks about his first creator-owned work on MONKEYMAN and O’BRIEN, and how KING KONG was an inspiration for it. We moved on to a discussion about travelling the world and going to conventions in different countries, and not only how nice it is for people to admire his work-no matter where he is, but also how it’s part of modern comics and a source of income. Sometimes, though, a show will more than surprise Adams in the best way possible. Take Calgary Expo as a prime example. The dinosaur-loving Adams lights up in the best possible way talking about his trip to the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology (located in Drumheller, Alberta—just a 1 hr. 45 min. drive from Calgary) and being fortunate enough, as Adams said: “…I got to have a backstage tour of the Royal Tyrrell and got see all kinds of really cool stuff and meet lots of people that were doing stuff I thought of doing when I was a little kid.”
There’s so much more to his Alberta dinosaur adventure, so go ahead and hit play below, and enjoy the full interview with one of the nicest creators in comics, Arthur Adams.