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