John Pannozzi

This recap of a tribute panel for both Neal and George Perez is an enjoyable read.

I especially find this part interesting:

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PhantomStranger

Was Neal responsible for Havok's design?

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I believe so. Alex Summers had appeared in the previous 5 issues, drawn by Don Heck, but issue 58 was his first appearance as Havok with the costume, which was pencilled by Adams

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Josh-da-man

Neal Adams' X-Men comics shocked me the first time I saw them. These books were published in the late 1960s, but the art in them looked like it could have been a book that came out twenty years later. It's quite a shock to go from years of rather pedestrian Jack Kirby, Werner Roth, and Don Heck art to this stuff that wouldn't have been out of place in an Image book. It also never occurred to me before, but I could also see that he was a big influence on Jim Lee.

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I wouldn’t call Kirby or Heck pedestrian but their artwork depended a lot of who was inking their pencils. Also, they were asked to work fast and efficient. And that’s were Adams greatness came in. To me he was one of the first artists to work very detailed pencils and inks and do it efficiently and fast. Only George Perez, Joe Kubert and Jerry Ordway seem to have this same efficiency and quickness while maintaining a great detail on their art. That’s one thing that modern legends like Jim Lee/Scott Williams, Todd McFarlane, Le Weeks and Alex Ross couldn’t even do. Even at Jim Lee’s prime during the X-Men run, he couldn’t work as fast as the book was released so for that reason , Whilce Portacio, Mark Silvestri and Rob Liefeld were brought in to fill every other issue for Uncanny X-Men. It’s incredibly hard what Adams did for decades and thats why he was on high demand at both Marvel and DC to the point that he could call his own shots and make a difference in the industry.

PhantomStranger

Big artists today can barely maintain one book a month and seemingly need fill-in artists every few months.

Josh-da-man

Kirby's X-Men is, I believe, generally considered to be on the lower end of his early Marvel work. Heck is kind of the consummate journeyman creator, and he shared art duties on a lot of the X-Men issues with Roth; one did breakdowns and the other full pencils.

In X-Men #64, the first appearance of Sunfire, Don Heck and inker Tom Palmer did a pretty admirable imitation of Adams, though.

The 1960s were a different time. I suspect that most of the artists were able to work faster than modern artists because deadlines were more tightly enforced, the artwork and storytelling was simpler, and it wouldn't surprise me if there was some assistance from the bullpen.

You mention Perez, Kubert, and Ordway. I think Byrne could also be included in there as well. Their skills were kind of a rarity for their time, though.

The generation with Lee, McFarlane, and Silvestri also had a lot of detail, but added more elaborate layouts, too. And they were also of the Comicon generation, where they're off doing conventions and store signings. (And the video game generation, too...)

One thing that always struck me about skilled artists is how quickly they can work. Every art teacher I've had could pick up a stick of charcoal and bang out a pretty damned good portrait in about three minutes. Whereas I could struggle for an hour and come up with something that wasn't even half as good. I've also seen caricature artists at fairs and other events who are able to rattle off good portraits in minutes. I've often wondered if comic book artists have that kind of speed; as quickly and instinctively as they work, I could see my art teachers and those caricature artists rattle off an entire comic book in a couple of days, or the skill set to do fast portraits and the like doesn't translate over to sequential art.