Recently, I had the distinct pleasure of sitting down with celebrated comic book artist Neal Adams. With The Wolverine hitting theaters today, I wanted to get Adams' opinion on the character, as well as his thoughts on comic book films in general.
Many people credit Adams with saving the "X-Men" comic series back in 1969, and he did so without using Wolverine. In fact, his first time drawing the character came last year with the release of his "First X-Men" series. While discussing the challenges that writing Wolverine presents, Adams likened the clawed mutant to DC's Superman, an insightful link that I had never considered before.
"I think that we have a problem with Wolverine that's the same problem that we have with Superman," Adams begins, "that is that he's too strong. Wolverine is too invulnerable, he's too able to reconstruct himself. There's a point when you want to go 'enough already!',"
He continues by saying that we often see Wolverine's body nearly destroyed by writers, but because of his abilities it doesn't matter if he's nothing more than an adamantium skeleton; he's always going to regenerate. Readers can't imagine what it's like having their body so badly battered, and they certainly don't feel sympathy for a character that they know will heal entirely.
"I think that there's certain writers, unfortunately, that have pushed the limit so far that now we have what seems to be an immortal character, and that's very uncomfortable for anybody who writes the character. We want somehow to believe that he is mortal and you can kill him, but for the time being he's alive."
With this being his primary complaint about the character, I correctly assumed that Adams would be optimistic about The Wolverine, which was taken from a story arc by Chris Claremont and Frank Miller that deals with Logan being stripped of his immortality.
"I think the good thing about that is that it was chosen from an early time with Wolverine. It wasn't chosen from a later time when he seems to become even more immortal," says an enthusiastic Adams. "So I have very very high hopes for this movie being a slightly more realistic retelling of exactly the problem...you just don't want to see Wolverine as a Terminator...you want to see him as a wounded man who is able to repair himself, and then to remove that ability, I think that's a really good direction for one single movie."
In regards to actor Hugh Jackman and his portrayal of Wolverine: "He's great. He's not 5'6", but he's still a great Wolverine. I'm willing to lose the 5'6", 5'5" Wolverine in place of Hugh Jackman. Or as we call him, 'Huge' Jackman."
Steering the conversation towards the growing genre of comic book films as a whole, I wanted to know what Adams thought of the recent influx of superhero movies. After all, there have been six X-Men films alone since 2000 with a seventh in production already. Adams not only viewed comics becoming films as a positive trend, but he also gave the sense that the union was obvious. There doesn't even appear to be a doubt in his mind that comics should remain on the page.
"I think [comic books branched out to film] far too slowly. I think it should have happened 20 years ago or 30 years ago," proclaims Adams. "The good thing about it happening today is our technology is so much better that we can do more things. Essentially a comic book artist/writer - which I am - sees into the future an awful lot and we do the things that are going to become movies 20 years from now."
He also shows no fear that movies will steal attention from comics or be able to outdo them in terms of creation. "They will never catch up to us. Because we're always that many steps ahead. Why? Because an artist can sit down and draw a $100 million movie in one month and then go onto another one. The only thing that holds us up is the writers, to be perfectly honest."
So what does Adams consider to be a perfect comic book film? In his mind, The Avengers is the pinnacle of the genre thus far, wholly because of writer-director Joss Whedon. "[Whedon] gets it," Adams says as he begins his praise for Whedon, who himself has contributed to the "X-Men" comics world. "He doesn't step out of the bounds of what should be done." He goes on to say that The Avengers succeeded in every way and that he can't find any mistakes in the film. Adams felt the Hulk was handled incredibly well, particularly his inspired response to Loki's speech. Most importantly, he found the whole film to be fun and funny, and he had a great time watching it.
Adams then rattles off an exhaustive list of problems he had with Man of Steel, citing it as an example of a film that steps out of bounds. "The idea of him not being able to save his father, because his father says no?" posits a puzzled Adams. "I'm sorry, would you listen to your dad if he said no don't save me? He can move so fast that you can't see him, so why wouldn't he do it?"
His criticisms of the logic behind the choices of Man of Steel go on for a while, leaving me unable to contain my laughter. "You can make [Superman] grittier...but he's got a blue and red costume" jokes Adams. "I can think you can do gritty and make it realistic without making it silly. Silly is a little hard to take. I don't think they succeeded in making him dark and brooding. He is still Superman. He's the Superman we remember and that we know, he's just had black shoe polish put on everything."
Adams then offers up some interesting advice to Warner Bros, the company producing all upcoming DC films.
"I would prefer that DC comics, if they do have an editorial policy, would require the movie to be more like the comic books, like Marvel does."
