MAY 19 • 2022 | 117
C
omic artist Neal
Adams, who died at
age 80 in New York
City on April 28, is best known
for having revolutionized
Batman and other iconic comic
book characters for both the
DC and Marvel brands. But
Adams himself was also a
fearless crusader: He battled
comics publishers for the
rights of artists and writers,
rescued Superman’s Jewish cre-
ators from abject poverty and
campaigned for a Holocaust
survivor to regain portraits she
painted in Auschwitz.
Adams, who was born in
New York City in 1941 and
spent much of his childhood
on a U.S. military base in
postwar Germany where his
father was stationed, was not
Jewish. But he had a strong
interest in the Holocaust,
both because of his childhood
memories from Germany and
because his mother-in-law
was a Jewish refugee from
Nazi-occupied Poland who
helped the Polish Embassy in
Morocco design counterfeit
documents for other Jews flee-
ing from the Nazis.
In school, “they showed us
some pretty harrowing stuff
— newsreel footage of what
the Allied troops found when
they liberated the camps,
severely emaciated prisoners,
huge piles of dead bodies,”
he later recalled. “It was very
hard for a 9-year-old to take.
I came home from school and
wouldn’t speak to anyone for
days.”
Those memories would
influence his interest in
Holocaust education many
years later.
In 1967, Adams began
drawing for DC Comics, the
publisher of Batman and
Superman and, a few years
later, for Marvel Comics, home
of Spider-Man and the X-Men.
Under Adams’ pen, super-
heroes who previously were
drawn in exaggerated, car-
toonish ways, took on a new,
powerfully realistic appearance.
Sales of Adams-drawn comics
skyrocketed.
Jewish artists, writers and
editors have played major roles
in the comic book industry
from its earliest days, start-
ing with Jerry Siegel and Joe
Shuster, the Jewish teenagers
from Cleveland who creat-
ed Superman in 1938. They
sold the rights to the Man of
Steel to DC (then National
Periodicals) for $130 and a
10-year work contract.
When Adams met them
in 1971, Siegel was working
as a clerk and Shuster, nearly
blind, was sleeping on a cot in
a relative’s apartment. Shocked
to hear that Superman’s cre-
ators could not even afford
tickets to see the Broadway
play based on their character,
Adams led a campaign to
pressure DC “to just do the
right thing already,” as he put
it. The publicity he generat-
ed eventually convinced the
publisher to give Siegel and
Shuster a modest pension and
health care coverage.
In 2006, Adams took up the
cause of Dina Babbitt, a Czech
Jewish artist seeking the return
of portraits that she had been
forced to paint in Auschwitz
by the infamous “
Angel of
Death,” Dr. Josef Mengele. The
Auschwitz-Birkenau museum,
which acquired eight of the
portraits after the war, claimed
ownership. Despite Adams’
efforts, the museum never
returned the paintings.
Adams drew a comic strip
about Babbitt’s plight, which
was published by Marvel
Comics, and then later adapt-
ed into an animated short for
a DVD of Holocaust-related
stories created by Disney
Educational Productions.
Later Adams, together with
comics historian Craig Yoe and
myself (Rafael Medoff), coau-
thored a book, We Spoke Out:
Comic Books and the Holocaust,
which showed how comic
book stories about the Nazi
genocide played a pioneering
role in Holocaust education in
the 1950s and 1960s.
Remembering Comic Book
Legend Neal Adams
RAFAEL MEDOFF JTA
Suzanne was born on
May 15, 1953, to Pauline
and Bernard Jonas in
Detroit. She was the young-
est of three children, with
two older brothers, Marc
and Shmaya. Her kind spir-
it and love of animals were
evident from an early age
as she would often rescue
and nurture injured and
abandoned animals, a pas-
sion she would continue
throughout her life.·
Caring became a hall-
mark as she was called to
a career in nursing and
volunteered with organiza-
tions like Austin Wildlife
Rescue, KLRU and Legacy
of Giving.
In 2007, Suzanne and her
husband, Marc, received the
LBJ Humanitarian Award;
and later the family was
honored with the Maislin
Humanitarian Award
from the Anti-Defamation
League. Suzanne was also
proud of the fact that she
earned a Kundalini Yoga
instructor certificate.
She leaves a legacy that
will be honored and contin-
ued by her three children,
Eli, Alex and Jacob; her
grandchild, Asher; and her
husband, Marc. She is also
survived by her father and
two brothers. The family
expresses extreme gratitude
to Suzanne’s caregivers and
large circle of friends who
brought her so much joy.
The funeral was at
Congregation Agudas
Achim in Austin followed
by a graveside service at
Austin Memorial Park
Cemetery. Contributions
may be made to worldcen-
tralkitchen.org; or austin-
wildlifeAescue.org.
Neal Adams poses in
his office in New York,
April 14, 2008.
NICHOLAS ROBERTS/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES