To read Part One click HERE. To read Part Two click HERE. To read Part Three click HERE. To read Part Four click HERE To read Part Five click HERE. OFFENBERGER: With such a long and outstanding career in comics is there anything you wish you could have done, but never been given the chance or the time to do? ADAMS: No, not really. I mean I am doing it. I just did a book on how the universe works. What’s better than that I don’t know. OFFENBERGER: When can we expect to see that? ADAMS: I should have had it out by now. I am getting it out as quick as I can. I don’t think of it as being a book that comes out at a particular time. When it’s ready we will send our stuff into the distributor and it will be out. People will go, “Oh it’s done.” It’s been done. We are just busy. Our livelihood is not going to depend on it. We are only going to sell between eight to ten thousand copies. It won’t mean much to us financially. Hopefully people who want to read it will buy it. Maybe it will get good arguments going and maybe it will get to the right people, and maybe the science community will see the light, poor bastards that they are, stumbling around in the dark. You know what science says? It says that all the continents were together in one gigantic continent on one side of the Earth. OFFENBERGER: I remember this from science class. I have also seen the NASA video on your site with the tectonic spreads. ADAMS: When I first head the theory, I thought if I had my little spaceship and I was traveling through space and I came across this planet, and all the continents are all together on one side, and three quarters of the Earth is all ocean, five miles deep, I’d look at it and go, “This is the most messed up planet I have ever seen in my life. How did it get like that?” It wouldn’t make any sense to me. It came to my mind 40 years ago. It’s pretty funny. You might not think its funny. I think it’s funny as hell. It’s a giant continent on one side. OFFENBERGER: I always wondered how they came to the conclusion that all the land masses were like that. ADAMS: First of all they did what any 10-year-old boy would do. They said, “Gee it looks like Africa and South America fit together. Africa and South America seem like they could fit together.” Maybe they did, maybe they were together. The truth is they were together. Not only were they together, they don’t actually fit together. There is a 25 degree angle that you can’t compensate for if you push them together. What they found is that if you measure tectonic levels, which are like these layers, in Africa and you measure the ones in South America, they kind of fit together. Then if you study paleontology you discover certain dinosaurs lived on all seven continents at the same time. Well, you have to say that kind of proves that all the continents were together doesn’t it. OFFENBERGER: It definitely leads to that kind of theory. ADAMS: Right. If they were together there are only two ways they could be together. The first would be that the Earth was smaller, and all the continents were the crust of that smaller Earth. As [the Earth grew], that crust would have grown apart, split and moved apart. The dinosaurs didn’t really move. They just stayed on the surface they were on as the Earth would grow. Like an outer coating on a balloon, and you just blow the balloon up and they kind of stay in the section they’re at. They seem to move apart, but they don’t really move. Or you could say all those continents were once shoved together in one giant continent on one side of the Earth and broke apart, and moved around the Earth. With that, you sort of have to come up with some concept, or theory, to move the continents around. What immediately comes to mind is those little Warner Brothers ants - the little guy with the trumpet in front taking your picnic away; carrying continents across the globe. The advantage that scientists had in those days was that they couldn’t visualize well. They somehow used the ocean as a way to imply that they floated, which is a little strange. So if you mentally take the ocean away and then you look at it, it is a little hard to imagine how those continents could have been together and floated apart. What they have now are called rifts. They split and moved apart and that’s how the continents [shifted]. If they moved apart, if the rifts moved apart, where are all those pieces that are the oceans, now? Where are all those pieces? The thing that fights this stupid theory is that the continents are between 2 and 5 billion years old, while the ocean floor is only at its oldest 200 million years old. Most of it is under 70 million years old. So you’ve got 4 billion then 70 million. Originally, they figured that the ocean floor must be really ancient like the land, so they sent all these ships around the Earth and took plugs from the bottom of the ocean, and measured the age of the ocean. There are no ancient fish fossils under the ocean, so that was really troubling. Around the rifts it’s like no-years-old and the oddest it gets is like 180 million years old; at the beginning of the Jurassic period. Where do you go to find ancient fish fossils? Well, you go to Utah, you go to China, you go to Italy. You can find fish fossils in Utah that are 250 million years old, but you can’t find them at the bottom of the ocean. What it really means is that the bottom of the ocean wasn’t there. It is a little hard to conceive that the Earth could have grown. OFFENBERGER: Everything else in life grows. Even the Sun expands in mass during its life cycle. ADAMS: You would think that the Earth would have the same privileges as the Sun. OFFENBERGER: Everything in nature grows. ADAMS: It’s funny. It’s kind of a model. Or I’m wrong. The bad thing is, some scientists actually argued that the Earth grew, way back in the 1960’s. They all got shot down. The reason they got shot down was because those guys were geologists, and all they know is geology. They don’t know anything else, they know geology. So they get their asses kicked because people ask them physics questions. They say how it is possible for the Earth to grow. You can’t ask a geologist how it is possible for the Earth to grow because they are geologists. You need somebody in physics who believes in the possibility, to use physics to show how that’s possible. But if you did that, you see then you would have to say that all the stuff we have learned in the last 150 years is sort of wrong. OFFENBERGER: Over time science changes. No one thinks the Earth is flat. We don’t use leaches anymore. ADAMS: Actually… we do. So what you need is somebody who could study all the sciences, because all the books are out there. [You need someone] who is actually willing to spend two or three years on a problem, because he doesn’t have his teaching degree based on it and he doesn’t have to worry about tenure. [Somoene] who doesn’t have to worry about anything and is really not afraid of anything, to plow through all this stuff and make it clear. You need somebody whose livelihood doesn’t depend on if they are a geologist or a physicist. Somebody that is not a geologist or physicist and is willing to study it all and fill in all those little blank spaces. If you can do that you might be able to justify how the Earth could possibly grow. The problem with that, which I thought at that time, was all I really have to do is show how the Earth grew. It seemed to me a limited goal, but it wasn’t. What happens is, it has all these connections to everything else. What you then find out is there was no big bang. Matter exists in a primitive stage all throughout the universe and we are floating in it’s pre-matter. You can’t identify it because it doesn’t extend its electromagnetic field outward. We have a growing universe, and everything is growing. Planets, moons, suns are growing. And there is no such thing as gravity, it is all electro-magnetic attraction, all these principals that we have lived by and we thought we understood. Theories we don’t understand are wrong. Because we started out 150 years ago with guys that said, “Well, this is how the universe worked - you had this big empty space and all this stuff. Gravity collected all this stuff into planets, suns and moons, and that’s how you get the universe. Since then we actually haven’t come up with a better theory than that. It is pretty much the theory that exists now. Now, we say it was all compressed into this thing the size of a walnut or a football, or a barn - one of those three - and it all blew up, blasted out into space and then it all collected into suns and moons. Pretty much the same theory but it shows what it was before that. If that theory is right then it means that all the matter that exists always existed and always will exist. The same amount, world without end, Amen. And that it was never created. Or you go with the theory that what you have is this universe that was filled with pre-matter. You don’t know how it got there but it was something you couldn’t identify, call it dark matter. It filled the universe. Something happened to that pre-matter and a piece of matter was created, and then another, and another, until you had the universe you have today. If that’s the case then who turned off the off switch? Or if nobody turned it off, then the universe is still growing, matter is still being created and being created everywhere. OFFENBERGER: Most scientists believe the universe is still expanding outward. ADAMS: Well, that’s the thing about it. That’s what makes the joke. They say it’s expanding outward because that’s an explosion. But what I say, and what this theory says is true, is that the universe is growing. That’s why it’s expanding outward. It’s expanding outward just like a one-year-old baby who becomes a two-year-old baby. It’s growing. It’s not becoming less dense, the universe is a balance of negative and positive energy, and these two fields are always to remain in balance. So there has to be a given amount of stuff in a given amount of space and if there is more then they move away from each other. So as you make more, it grows. The cells of your body aren’t touching one another, they move apart and if you introduce more atoms in there your body will grow. That’s what’s happening to the universe. More matter is being created and the universe is growing. On the outer edges it seems like it is growing real fast, because it’s on the outer edges and we are multiplying because we are men. Not gigantic galactic beings. You think it’s happening fast, but it’s really not happening fast at all. We are just multiplying it outward. If it’s 100 million miles it’s this and if you go 100 miles more it doubles that, and if you go another 100 million miles it doubles that, and if you go another 100 million miles it doubles that. All we’re doing is watching it happen. We are watching the growth of our universe. The impression that scientists are now giving us is more stupid impressions - the universe is moving outward, dissipating. We are alone as a speck in the middle of the universe, and we will never see our neighbors because they will be so far away. This is just so much bullshit. It makes so little sense. It goes against everything else we know. Everything else we know grows outward. Even crystals grow. We live in a universe, balanced negative and positive perfectly, and as new matter is created out of pre-matter, it gains an electro-magnetic field that faces outward, instead of an electro-magnetic field that faces inward. That is why we can’t identify it. Now we have an outward facing electro magnetic field. The balance of the negative and positive of that electro-magnetic field means it needs to take up some more room to grow. That’s how the universe works. It’s really quite simple, and I am either right or wrong. If I am right, everything we know has to change. Fuck ‘em if they can’t take a joke. That’s what I say. I don’t mean to make a fuss of it, but when I was doing comic books I said, “We really should be getting 64 colors, instead of 32 colors. It’s just that we are not getting tone yellow, guys.” They said to me, “You’re an idiot. You don’t know what you are talking about. It’s too expensive to get the tone yellow, and we are just going to make due with the solid yellow.” I said, “Why don’t you call the separator and ask how much it would cost for tone yellow, Sol? Marvel Comics is getting tone yellow, I don’t think they are paying any more money for it, are they?” He said, “Let me explain it to you, every plate costs money. You have 100% blue, you have 50% blue, you have 25% blue, you have 100% red, you have 50% red, you have 25% red, you have 100% yellow, you don’t need 50 and 25% yellow.” I said, “Oh yes you do, because you can’t make flesh color, and that’s what you have at DC Comics, you have pink flesh. You can’t make all the other subtle colors. You add those two colors, Sol. If you add those two colors, by simple mathematics instead of 32 colors you have 64 colors. You add two more colors, you multiply with the other colors, and you get 64 colors. DC Comics has half the color that Marvel has. How does that make sense to you? Sol said, “Its economics. We’re not paying for it.” So I slipped the info. to the president of the company through Joe Kubert. “How come we don’t get as many colors as Marvel, Jack?” Jack said, “What?!” Joe told him, “We don’t have tone yellow. Marvel has tone yellow. Are they paying a lot more then we are?” Jack said, “God damn it. Harrison, get in here, what’s going on? What’s this thing about tone yellow, we’re getting less color then Marvel?” Sol, said, “It would be more expensive.” Jack said, “Call them up and find out how much more expensive.” It turns out the same guy is doing the separations for both Marvel and DC. Sol calls and asks, “Angelo, how much more would it cost us to get tone yellow?” setting up the conversation of course. [When the conversation ended, Sol said,] “It turns out Jack, it wouldn’t cost us any more to get tone yellow, we will get it from now on. He asked me if I wanted it, and I said, ‘Yeah.’” Jack said, “Fine. No more money?” Sol replied, “No. No, we’re fine.” How long did that conversation take? Half a minute and DC Comics had twice as many colors. By asking. That’s why I would say to Sol, “Just ask.” In another conversation, Sol would say, “You can’t put more than 250% of a color on anything. If you put 100% red, 100 % blue, you can’t put 100% yellow, you have to take one of the colors out, it’s too much color. It will slide off the paper.” I said, “It will slide off the papers.” Sol replied, “You don’t understand if you have too much ink on a certain area of the press the paper will slide.” I said, “I have heard about this principal, that’s why they don’t put too much color under black, Sol. But, we are printing on toilet paper, we are not printing on coated stock. But, even if we did, you could take more then 250% of color. Its comic book paper, it’s the cheapest paper you can buy. It will soak up ink like a sponge.” Sol said, “You don’t know what you are talking about, God damn it. Get the $@#% out of here.” The next day Sol said, “I just saw the color guides for the new Batman, am I right, the sky is solid, yellow, solid red, solid blue?” I said, “Yes Sol, that is more than 250% of a color, so I guess the page is going to slide.” Sol said, “Yeah.” Neal replied, “Then they will tell you, right?” Sol: “Son of a bitch.” Neal: “It’s already off at the separators.” Sol:“God damn it.” Neal: “You could call it back, Sol.” Sol: “No.” Suddenly another one goes down, the paper didn’t slide around. ADAMS: There are things that, if you understand science, will happen and won’t happen. And I have depended, at various times in my career, that the science will work. You can depend on the science. I live in a world of science. And that is what the universe is. It doesn’t seem like it should relate to comics books and I’m sure a lot of people will laugh in the end. But in the end it really is that. It shouldn’t not make sense. OFFENBERGER: Everything should make sense; everything should be fairly straitforward. ADAMS: That’s what I say. Every new advance in science makes sense and makes everything seem simpler. It’s like when we discovered atoms. We discovered everything is made out of atoms. Now everyone wants to make it complicated again. They are going around telling everyone how complicated it is, and me, I’m this comic book guy, who’s trying to keep things simple. I don’t think it’s complicated and I don’t think there are all these little particles. You can put all the names on them you want. I think there is one, period. If you split it in half, you have a positive and a negative. It’s sort of like this.. you have a zero universe, okay, you have zero particle, as you split them apart becomes negative and one becomes positive and that’s how the universe works. All those little particles are trying to get back together to become zero. If you can find a way to keep them apart, you can have matter. That’s it. No more complicated then that. You get plus one and minus one. That’s why we have so many plus ones and minus ones. You came from a zero. Well there you go, now you have something to think about. OFFENBERGER: Well, thank you very much for your time. To visit Neal Adams on the web go to www.nealadams.com Neal’s Batman redesign Batman of tomorrow Science links Latest discussion Challenge to geologists New model of the universe Science videos Rainbows of Mars Let’s do it! Earthmoon Rik Offenberger has spent the last several years running the Super Hero News service. In his free time he interviews comic book creators. He has been published both online and in print. His work has appeared in The Comics Buyers Guide, Comic Retailer, Borderline Magazine, and SilverBulletComicBooks.com. He maintains his own websites at SuperheroNews and MightyCrusaders.Net. To read Part One click HERE. To read Part Two click HERE. To read Part Three click HERE. To read Part Four click HERE To read Part Five click HERE. |
