Radio's Howard Stern reported on yesterday's show that his cousin Jack Adler had passed away over the weekend at the age of 93. Jack Adler was a staffer at DC Comics from 1946 to 1981, working in the production department and eventually becoming vice-president in charge of production. What that means: The folks in the production department are the ones who prep a comic book to go to press, taking care of the technical specifications and doing art corrections and mechanical tasks. Adler did all that. And at DC, it meant supervising and often doing the coloring.
It would not be exaggerating to say that Jack Adler was the guy in charge of color in DC Comics for 35 years. It would actually be understating his contribution because Jack invented many of the procedures and techniques used to print comic books, especially their covers. During that period, he colored most of DC's covers and even did the color separations by hand on them for many years. He also designed the color schemes of most of their characters.
Adler's involvement in DC Comics supposedly dates back to the beginning. It is said (some dispute this) that he did some of the color separations for Action Comics #1 which in 1938 featured the debut of Superman. That was done for one of several outside art services that Adler worked for before joining DC in '46. The photo above shows him working for one of those firms, doing by hand the color separations for a Prince Valiant Sunday newspaper page. The one below is him in the DC offices in 1974…
He was brought in by his friend and former classmate Sol Harrison, who had been hired to run DC's production department. Adler and Harrison had a long but sometimes contentious relationship. In 2004, Jack was a Guest of Honor at the Comic-Con International in San Diego and I had the pleasure of interviewing him on several panels and speaking with him in private. He made it clear in both venues (more forcefully in private) that he felt he'd received insufficient recognition for his many technical breakthroughs and inventions; that too often, credit had gone to Sol and the entire department. Many who worked there supported his view. DC Editor Julius Schwartz called Adler, "The guy who knew more about how to color and print a comic book than any man alive."
Others called him that, as well. The company put out a good-looking product for decades and a lot of that was due to Jack Adler.