From Marvel to Meadowlark

Visitors to Meadowlark Gallery in Grant are in for a treat Friday, Aug. 1 with an open house featuring comic artist Bob Hall and music by gallery favorite Joe Hall.

Bob Hall worked in the comics industry for more than 45 years, starting at Charlton Comics in 1974 illustrating horror stories and drawing covers. That same year he took a course in creating comics by John Buscema, one of Marvel Comics mainstays. At the end of the class, Buscema recommended Hall to Archie Goodwin, Editor-in-Chief at Marvel, as a penciler.

Hall was immediately thrown into drawing a group book, “The Champions,” written by Bill Mantlo, who mentored Hall through his first jobs.

Over the next 15 years, he illustrated most of Marvel’s major books and characters: “The Champions,” “Doctor Doom,” “The Red Skull,” “The Avengers,” “The West Coast Avengers,” “The Squadron Supreme,” “Spider-Man” (including Spider-Man meeting the original Saturday Night Live cast), “Thor,” “Nick Fury,” “Moon Knight,” one issue of “The New Mutants,” and “What if Conan Were Trapped in the Twentieth Century, Part 2.” He also did several movie adaptions including “Willow,” “Dark Man,” and what he calls “arguably the worst superhero movie ever,” the 1980s “Captain America.” He believes his best work for Marvel appears in the graphic novel, “Emperor Doom.”

In 1977 Hall was offered a job as one of a new group of sub-editors, signing on for a six-month tenure since a stage adaptation he had co-authored, “The Passion of Dracula,” then running off-Broadway, was due to receive a West End production in London. “There was no question that I was going to be there for that period,” Hall said.

“Those six months in the bullpen gave me the opportunity of working with some of the most talented people in the comics field,” Hall said. “I learned more about making comics than any time before or since.”

In the 1990s, Hall wrote and illustrated 35 issues of “Shadowman,” set in New Orleans and featuring a musician and voodoo, “all stuff I could dig into,” Hall said. His next project was a crime series, “Armed and Dangerous,” what he considers his finest work in comics.

In the late 1990s, Hall found himself an unemployed comic creator with the collapse of the comics industry, but went on to found a Shakespeare Festival in his hometown of Lincoln, and ran Flatwater Shakespeare for 15 years. Since then, he has been involved in independent comic work with a resurgence in comic interest and “comic cons” becoming big business. 

He has also illustrated poems, done portraits, comic stories and other commissions through his agent Scott Kress. Hall's work can be seen at the website catskillcomics.com.

Open House

The public is invited to the gallery on Grant’s Central Avenue Friday, Aug. 1, 5-7 p.m. to meet Hall and view a sampling of his work, as well as enjoy refreshments and be entertained by Joe Hall of rural Venango whose vocals, guitar playing and interesting music backstories have earned him appreciative audiences at the gallery and at Westview Retirement Community in Grant.