Questionnaire

I answered a questionnaire for the Spanish newspaper El Periodico de Catalunya. It should have been printed by now, so I'll put it up here on the blog as well.

1. Describe an image from your childhood.

I am on my way home from the comic book store. I have a copy of the new Batman in my hands. Two bullies from junior high step in front of me. They knock me down and steal my comic. I lie in the bushes, crying. I can hear the voice of a woman, from somewhere above me. -Don't cry, her voice says. -One day you will see Neal Adams at a comic book convention in America.

2. Where will you be in 10 minutes?

In two minutes a woman will knock on my door. She wears sunglasses and a beat up fedora . She says she has something to show me. I put on my shoes and follow her down the stairs. In the street we pass the mailman. We sit down on a parkbench. It's still a bit wet from the rain. -Well, what?, I say. -Not yet, she answers, looking at her silver pocket watch. Two more minutes pass. And then...

3. And in 10 years, with some luck?

I'll be bald and fat. I'll have retired from comics, after the fiasco of the I killed Adolf Hitler movie. I blame Hollywood. I become an alcoholic. I wander the earth, losing all my money. I wake up in a gutter somewhere. A woman looks at me. She wears a familiar perfume. She gives me a bowl of soup. I become her gardener, finding out I don't miss comics that much.

Guys and dolls

So, musicals... I don't know. Singin' in the rain is one of my favourite films, and I like most of the Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers films. Those Astaire tapnumbers are always fun to watch. But most musicals I find a bit boring, and this film is no exception.

Frank Sinatra is Nathan Detroit, Marlon Brando is Sky Masterson. Sinatra makes a bet that Brando won't be able to seduce Salvation Army Officer Jean Simmons. If you've seen a couple of these movies you know how this will turn out. Of course, it's Brando who falls for Simmons, who is very appealing in her part, and the scene where she gets drunk is pretty funny. Vivian Blaine's Adelaide, Sinatra's girlfriend, is however pretty tiresome. You don't really care what happens to those two characters. Blaine also plays the part in a bigger, more theatrical style than the others.

There's a couple of good songs, but also some forgettable ones. Brando is no singer, but does all right. Sinatra really wanted to play Sky Masterson, and Luck be a Lady is the one song that he could have done better. At two and a half hours the film feels a bit too long.

Strange Tales

The paperback version of Strange Tales is now out, from Marvel. I did a four page story of Spider-Man.

A drawing...

...from around 86.

The Manchurian Candidate

Frank Sinatra (having lost most of his skinny look by now) plays a major who keeps having nightmares of his time of capture during the Korean War, dreams involving Sergeant Laurence Harvey. Angela Lansbury is Harvey's ambitious mother and Janet Leigh is the girl who falls for Sinatra.

The film is about political powerstruggles and brainwashed assassins, and realisticly speaking it doesn't all make that much sense. There are some silly parts, like the Jump in the lake-sequence and that Harvey's girlfriend just happens to be dressed as the Queen of diamonds at a masquerade. There's also a genuinly shocking sequence where Harvey acts against his American operative's enemies (I'm trying not to give too much away here!)

In the remake by Jonathan Demme, starring Denzel Washington, they updated the story and made everything more logical, something that made the whole film fall completely flat. They lost all the fun and creepy stuff from the original, like the women's tea party scene. The original is still a tremendously entertaining and exciting film.

Next: Guys and dolls

Tim and Tom

This was the first comic I ever made, probably in 79.

Frank Sinatra

Moving on, I'll be watching a couple of Frank Sinatra films. First: Suddenly, or Je dois tuer (I must kill) as it's called in French. Suddenly is the name of a little town where one day it's announced that the president of the U.S.A. will be arriving on the afternoon train. Sinatra and two other men show up, claiming to be FBI agents, but their job is to kill the president. Sterling Hayden is the sheriff who must prevent it.

Frank Sinatra was someone you didn't mess with. He had a temper and got into fights for nothing. He is using that side of him in this film, doing a convincing portrayal of a coldblooded killer. It's a good, but not great film. It's clearly low budget. I'm not even sure if it can be called a film noir. Everything is very black and white, the bad guys and the good guys. There's none of the moral questioning that you find in the better films of the genre.

Next: The Manchurian Candidate