Bob Hall | Portrait of a Superhero…Artist

Bob Hall at work in one of his home studios.

by Tim McMahan

When Bob Hall left his home in Lincoln, Nebraska, for the bright lights of Manhattan in 1972, he had visions of becoming a Broadway director, not a member of the Mighty Marvel Bullpen.

But like many who arrive in the Big Apple hoping to make their mark in the theater, Hall had to first figure out a way to make that monthly $350 rent payment for the one-bedroom flat he shared with his wife on the Upper West Side. His artistic ability and a love for the funny pages turned a part-time gig into a full-time job drawing and telling stories about American icons like Spider-man, The Fantastic Four, Captain America and The Avengers during Marvel Comics's glory days.

From Measles to Marvel
Hall's love of comics began before he could read, when one morning the four-year-old woke up vomiting blood. His parents, who made a living as superintendents of a Lincoln apartment building, naturally panicked and rushed the toddler to the hospital. As doctors tried to figure out what was wrong, his folks brought Bob a pile of comic books to pass the time in his private hospital room. "I couldn't read them," Hall said, "but I was fascinated that you could glean a whole story from the pictures if it was done well."

The private hospital room ended up being a stroke of luck, as the doctors eventually figured out Hall had intestinal measles. Because the malady was so contagious, they immediately sent Bob home with the enormous pile of contaminated comic books. "That was my first comic book collection, and I was very intent on learning how to read them," Hall said.

His parents nurtured his love of comics by parking Bob by the comics spinner rack while they grocery shopped, letting him take home a couple afterward. "I mainly bought Disney comics," Hall said. "The guy who did Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge was a genius named Carl Barks. But I also loved Batman, Superman, Tarzan and anything else I could get my hands on."

An only child with few friends living in the neighborhood near their apartment building, Bob passed the time in his room learning to draw. He said he was a loner. "That can be helpful if you're going to become a comic book artist," he said, "because you end up spending a lot of time sitting alone in a room, drawing."

By the time he was a teenager, Hall fell in new love with the theater. After taking roles in plays during his senior year at Lincoln High School, he discovered he was even better at directing. He earned a degree from the University of Nebraska in Theater in 1970 and spent two years running an early version of Omaha's Children's Theater before heading to New York City in 1972 with dreams of becoming a director.

"I quickly realized from friends who had been living there that the trap was having to find some kind of day job to make ends meet," Hall said. "Those temp jobs had a way of replacing the dream that brought you to the city in the first place." Hall thought drawing comic books could be his day job to supplement his $50-a-week salary as an associate director at New York's CSC off-Broadway repertory.

After landing an initial gig drawing horror comics for $15 a page, Hall knew he would have to improve his skills to compete with veteran artists who were at the heart of the medium's renaissance. Thanks to his portfolio, he was accepted in a drawing class taught by legendary comic artist John Buscema, known for his work on Marvel staples like The Avengers and Silver Surfer.

"I was scared shitless to show him my work," Hall said, "but John turned out to be a gruff pussycat. I took classes from John for the next nine months and, at the end, he got me a job at Marvel."

From The Champions to The Avengers
It was 1975 and Hall, then 31, was joining Marvel during a time many consider to be the publisher's heyday. Marvel icon Stan Lee had created a mystique about the "Mighty Marvel Bullpen" - a Manhattan office where artists and writers worked side-by-side sharing ideas. Through his monthly column - "Stan Lee's Soapbox" - Lee introduced readers to the creators and described a scene where on any given day you could find superstar artists like Buscema, John Romita (Spider-man) or Jack Kirby (Fantastic Four) gossiping with writers like Chris Claremont (X-men) and Jim Shooter (Avengers).

"Stan created this myth that we all went to work in the same Marvel office and knew each other," Hall said, "And, of course, that was totally untrue. We were working out of our apartments."

Hall's first Marvel assignment was drawing a new comic called The Champions - a hodgepodge superhero team consisting of The Angel, Black Widow, Ghost Rider, Hercules and Iceman, who were "united to battle for the common man… because the world still needs heroes!"

"It was a disaster," Hall said. "I think they gave me a group book because I had been trained by John Buscema, who was the ace for doing group books. He could somehow sort out all of those different characters running around. I did about four issues of Champions before they switched me to Super Villain Team-Up - Dr. Doom's comic. I thought it was a much better fit. I figured they haven't fired me yet; I know I'll do better on this one. It'll be okay."

And it was, though with each new assignment, Hall felt the pressures associated with meeting grueling comic book deadlines.

"Everyone who comes into comics thinks, 'I don't know how they make these deadlines,'" Hall said. "You had to be able to do 22 pages in about two weeks. That would seem impossible when you first started, but eventually you figure out how to do it."

Over the course of 15 years, Hall would work on more than two dozen different Marvel comics titles, including Amazing Spider-Man, Fantastic Four, Thor, Defenders, Power Man and Iron Fist and both The Avengers and West Coast Avengers - the latter being a new title he helped create.

Most comic book artists and writers are freelancers who don't work exclusively for one comic book publisher. The same was true for Hall, who also picked up work at DC Comics, working on horror titles House of Mystery and Weird War Tales, and years later, on Batman.

But Hall never lost sight of his dreams in theater, co-writing a successful off-Broadway stage play, The Passion of Dracula, that ran for two years in New York City and in London. Marvel Editor-in-Chief Jim Shooter saw the New York production and asked Hall to become a Marvel editor, responsible for story development, continuity and work-flow. "For the first time I felt like a real part of the Marvel Bullpen," Hall said.

He also never really lost touch with Lincoln. In the 1980s, Hall was invited to be the Artistic Director of UNL’s  Nebraska Repertory Theatre for six summer seasons, an effort that earned him a Lincoln Mayor's Arts Award and a Governor’s Arts Award. 

After Marvel and a return to Lincoln
In the late '90s and early 2000s, the comic book industry began a slow, steady decline after catering to a collectors' market. Comics, once sold in drug stores and on news stands, were now sold almost exclusively in comic book shops to older readers. When that collectors' market fizzled, publishers quickly discovered the youth market it had been built upon had vanished, never to return.

When the business declined at Marvel in the '90s, Hall went to work at Valiant Comics - a new comic book publisher started by former Marvel editor Jim Shooter. Desperate for writers, Hall was asked to write scripts for superhero comic Shadowman. He would go on to write and draw a non-superhero comic called Armed and Dangerous - a noir-style black-and-white comic about the Irish Mafia on New York's Upper West Side, which gained a cult following.

By the mid-'90s, Hall said he began to make "real money" from comics thanks to royalties and increased rates. With this new income, he moved to England and Ireland for three years, but when Valiant Comics' business declined, so did the work. Hall moved back to Lincoln in 2001 to become the artistic director for the nonprofit Flatwater Shakespeare Company, a position he held for 15 years. At the same time, he placed a new focus on his art, earning an MFA in painting from UNL.

Hall's comic art and painting talent will be on display in a one-man exhibit hosted at Omaha's Ming Toy Gallery throughout May 2024. The show includes examples of work Hall has done over the years for Marvel, DC and Valiant, as well as more recent work. In addition, the show will include a series of paintings based on a production of Hamlet that Hall produced. The show opens May 3, the day before the international holiday known as Free Comic Book Day, which will be celebrated both at Ming Toy Gallery and Legend Comics & Coffee, a comic book shop located right next door.

Interacting with fans is nothing new to Hall. At age 79, he says he makes his living taking part in the growing phenomenon known as comic book conventions. "I have become nostalgia," Hall said.

Held weekly throughout the country, comic cons are opportunities for fans to meet and interact with their favorite artists, hear them speak on panels, and maybe even purchase one of their original drawings. Hall travels to cons in his tiny Honda Fit crammed full with original art, signed prints and posters for sale. "It can be pretty lucrative," he said.

But Hall has more than comic cons in his future. He said he's in the process of writing a new play and has some ideas for producing a graphic novel. "That's the part of the craft I miss most," he said, "the storytelling."

Ming Toy Gallery is located at 6066 Maple Street in Omaha’s Benson neighborhood. Legend Comics & Coffee is right next door at 6068 Maple Street.

Bob Hall: Dracula and Captain America

Bob Hall: Armed and Dangerous

Bob Hall: Hamlet (one of a series)