Roosevelt Island is an island in New York City's East River, within the borough of Manhattan. It lies between Manhattan Island to the west, and the borough of Queens, on Long Island, to the east. Running from the equivalent of East 46th to 85th Streets on Manhattan Island, it is about  long, with a maximum width of , and a total area of . Together with Mill Rock, Roosevelt Island constitutes Manhattan's Census Tract 238, which has a land area of , and had a population of 11,722 as of the 2020 United States Census.

Lying below the Queensboro Bridge, the island cannot be accessed directly from the bridge itself.  Vehicular traffic uses the Roosevelt Island Bridge to access the island from Astoria, Queens, though the island is not designed for vehicular traffic and has several areas designed as car-free zones.  Several public transportation options to reach the island exist.  The Roosevelt Island Tramway, the oldest urban commuter tramway in the U.S, connects the island to Manhattan Island's Upper East Side.  The Roosevelt Island station carries the F and <F> trains of the New York City Subway.  The NYC Ferry also maintains a dock on the east side of the island.  On-island transport is provided by the Red Bus service.

The island was called  by the Lenape and Varkens Eylandt (Hog Island) by the Dutch during the colonial era and later Blackwells Island. It was known as Welfare Island when it was used principally for hospitals, from 1921 to 1973. It was renamed Roosevelt Island (in honor of Franklin D. Roosevelt) in 1973.

Roosevelt Island is owned by the city but was leased to the New York State Urban Development Corporation for 99 years in 1969. Most of the residential buildings on Roosevelt Island are rental buildings. There is also a cooperative named Rivercross and a condominium building named Riverwalk. One rental building (Eastwood) has left New York State's Mitchell-Lama Housing Program, though current residents are still protected. It is now called Roosevelt Landings. There are attempts to privatize three other buildings, including the cooperative. The New York City Fire Department also maintains its Special Operations Command facility at 750 Main St. on the island.

History

17th and 18th centuries
In 1637, Dutch Governor Wouter van Twiller purchased the island, then known as Hog Island, from the Canarsie Indians. After the Dutch surrendered to the British in 1664, Captain John Manning acquired the island in 1666, which became known as Manning's Island, and twenty years later, Manning's son-in-law, Robert Blackwell, became the island's new owner and namesake. In 1796, Blackwell's great-grandson Jacob Blackwell constructed the Blackwell House, which is the island's oldest landmark, New York County's sixth oldest house, and one of the city's few remaining examples of 18th-century architecture.

19th century
Through the 19th century, the island housed several hospitals and a prison. In 1828, the City of New York purchased the island for $32,000 (), and four years later, the city erected a penitentiary on the island; the Penitentiary Hospital was built to serve the needs of the prison inmates. By 1839, the New York City Lunatic Asylum opened, including the Octagon Tower, which still stands but as a residential building; it was renovated and reopened in April 2006. The asylum, which was designed by Alexander Jackson Davis, at one point held 1,700 inmates, twice its designed capacity.

In 1852, a workhouse was built on the island to hold petty violators in 220 cells. The Smallpox Hospital, designed by James Renwick, Jr., opened in 1856, and two years later, the Asylum burned down and was rebuilt on the same site; Penitentiary Hospital was destroyed in the same fire. In 1861, prisoners completed construction of Renwick's City Hospital (renamed Charity Hospital in 1870), which served both prisoners and New York City's poorer population. In 1877, the hospital opened a School of Nursing, the fourth such training institution in the nation.

During the impeachment process of New York State Supreme Court Justice George G. Barnard in 1872, the first charge that the New York City Bar Association brought against Barnard was that he discharged at least 39 prisoners from the Blackwell's Island penitentiary before their sentence was expired.

In 1872, the Blackwell Island Light, a  Gothic style lighthouse later added to the National Register of Historic Places, was built by convict labor on the island's northern tip under Renwick's supervision. Seventeen years later, in 1889, the Chapel of the Good Shepherd, designed by Frederick Clarke Withers, opened. By 1895, inmates from the Asylum were being transferred to Ward's Island, and patients from the hospital there were transferred to Blackwell's Island. The Asylum was renamed Metropolitan Hospital. However, the last convicts were not moved off the island until 1935, when the penitentiary on Rikers Island opened.

20th century
The 20th century was a time of change for the island. The Queensboro Bridge started construction in 1900 and opened in 1909; it passed over the island but did not provide direct vehicular access to it at the time. In 1921, Blackwell's Island was renamed Welfare Island after the City Hospital on the island. In 1930, a vehicular elevator to transport cars and passengers on Queensboro Bridge started to allow vehicular and trolley access to the island.

In 1939, Goldwater Memorial Hospital, a chronic care facility, opened, with almost a thousand beds in 7 buildings on . Thirteen years later, Bird S. Coler Hospital, another chronic care facility, opened, and three years after the Coler Hospital's opening, Metropolitan Hospital moved to Manhattan, leaving the Lunatic Asylum buildings abandoned. The same year, 1955, the Welfare Island Bridge from Queens opened, allowing automobile and truck access to the island and the only non-aquatic means in and out of the island; the vehicular elevator to Queensboro Bridge then closed, but was not demolished until 1970. As late as August 1973, another passenger elevator ran from the Queens end of the bridge to the island.

More changes came in the latter half of the century. In 1968, the Delacorte Fountain, opposite the headquarters of the United Nations, opened. Mayor John V. Lindsay named a committee to make recommendations for the island's development in the same year. A year later, the New York State Urban Development Corporation (UDC) signed a 99-year lease for the island, and architects Philip Johnson and John Burgee created a plan for apartment buildings housing 20,000 residents. In 1973, Welfare Island was renamed Roosevelt Island in honor of Franklin D. Roosevelt, and two years later, planning for his eponymous park, Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms Park, started.

Federal funding for redevelopment came from the New Community Act. In 1976, the Roosevelt Island Tramway opened, connecting the island directly with Manhattan, but it was eight years before the New York State legislature created the Roosevelt Island Operating Corporation (RIOC) to operate the tramway, with a nine-person board of directors appointed by the Governor, two suggested by the Mayor of New York City, and three of whom are residents of the island. The tramway was meant as a temporary solution to the then-lack of subway service to the island, which began in 1989 with the opening of the Roosevelt Island station (serving the ).

21st century
During the 21st century, the area became more gentrified. In 1998, the Blackwell Island Light was restored by an anonymous donor. In 2006, the restored Octagon Tower opened, serving as the central lobby of a two-wing, 500-unit apartment building. In 2010, the Roosevelt Island Tramway reopened after renovations. A year later, Southpoint Park opened south of Goldwater Memorial Hospital, near the island's southern end, Cornell Tech, a joint venture between Technion – Israel Institute of Technology and Cornell University, was announced the same year.

In 2012, the Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms Park was dedicated and opened to the public as a state park. Hillary Clinton officially launched her 2016 presidential campaign at Four Freedoms Park in 2015. Construction of the new Cornell Tech campus began in January 2014 with the arrival of equipment on Roosevelt Island for the building of a fence around the construction site and for the demolition of the existing Coler-Goldwater Specialty Hospital's south campus; demolition began in March 2014, but city officials say they do not have plans to close the north campus of the hospital. The school began operations on the island in fall 2017.

On June 24, 2019, the Roosevelt Island Operating Corporation (RIOC) published an open call for artists to create a memorial for journalist Nellie Bly. Bly's investigative reporting about the abusive treatment at the New York City Insane Asylum at what was then called Blackwell's Island, led to new forms of journalism as well as the reform of New York City institutions. In October, a committee of RIOC employees and community leaders selected The Girl Puzzle proposal by American artist Amanda Matthews. The public art installation of a plaza featuring bronze sculptures, stainless steel spheres and a fully accessible walkway was planned for unveiling in 2021.

Architecture

Though small, Roosevelt Island has a distinguished architectural history. It has several architecturally significant buildings and has been the site of numerous important unbuilt architectural competitions and proposals. The island's master plan, adopted by the New York State Urban Development Corporation in 1969, was developed by the firm of Philip Johnson and John Burgee. The plan divided the island into three residential communities, and it forbade the use of automobiles on the island; the plan intended for residents to park their cars in a large garage and use public transportation to get around. Another innovation was the plan's development of a 'mini-school system,' in which classrooms for the island's public intermediate school were distributed among all the residential buildings in a campus-like fashion (as opposed to being centralized in one large building).

The first phase of Roosevelt Island's development was called "Northtown". It consists of four housing complexes: Westview, Island House, Rivercross, and Eastwood (also known as the WIRE buildings). Rivercross is a Mitchell-Lama co-op, while the rest of the buildings in Northtown are rentals. Eastwood, the largest apartment complex on the island, and Westview were designed by noted architect Josep Lluis Sert, then dean of Harvard Graduate School of Design.

Eastwood, along with Peabody Terrace (in Cambridge, Massachusetts), is a prime example of Sert's high-rise multiple-dwelling residential buildings. It achieves efficiency by triple-loading corridors with duplex apartment units, such that elevators and public corridors are only needed every three floors. Island House and Rivercross were designed by Johansen & Bhavnani. The two developments were noteworthy for their use of pre-fabricated cladding systems.

Subsequent phases of the island's development have been less innovative, architecturally. Northtown Phase II was developed by the Starrett Corporation and designed by the firm, Gruzen Samton, in a pseudo-historical post-modern style. It was completed in 1989, over a decade after Northtown. Southtown (also referred to as Riverwalk by the developers) is the third phase of the island's development. This phase, also designed by Gruzen Samton, was not started until 1998 and is still in the process of development. When complete, Southtown will have 2,000 units in nine buildings.

The Octagon, one of the island's six landmarks, was restored in April 2006, and the national landmark building is now part of a high-end apartment complex. It also houses the largest array of solar panels on any building in New York City. When The Octagon opened its doors, many young, affluent tenants started to occupy the studios and one-, two-, and three-bedroom units; 100 of the units therein are set aside for middle-income residents.

In 2006, ENYA (Emerging New York Architects) made the island's abandoned southern end the subject of one of its annual competitions. In addition to Louis Kahn's  Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms Park at that tip, whose public dedication on October 17, 2012 was tangled in litigation, the island has also been the site of numerous other architectural speculations. Rem Koolhaas and the Office of Metropolitan Architecture proposed two projects for the Island in his book "Delirious New York": the Welfare Island Hotel and the Roosevelt Island Redevelopment Proposal (both in 1975–76). That proposal was Koolhaas's entry into a competition held for the development of Northtown Phase II. Other entrants included Peter Eisenman, Robert A. M. Stern, and Oswald Mathias Ungers.

, six of the Southtown buildings, with a total of 1,200 units, have been completed. Residential development of Southtown has brought new retail businesses to Roosevelt Island.

Transportation

Although Roosevelt Island is located directly under the Queensboro Bridge, it is no longer directly accessible from the bridge itself. A trolley previously connected passengers from Queens and Manhattan to a stop in the middle of the bridge, where passengers took an elevator down to the island. The trolley operated from the bridge's opening in 1909 until April 7, 1957. Between 1930 and 1955, the only vehicular access to the island was provided by an elevator system in the Elevator Storehouse that transported cars and commuters between the bridge and the island. The elevator was closed to the public after the construction of the Roosevelt Island Bridge between the island and Astoria in Queens in 1955; the elevator was demolished in 1970, but a similar elevator ran from the Queensboro Bridge to the island as late as 1973.

In 1976, the Roosevelt Island Tramway was constructed to provide access to Midtown Manhattan. The tram was closed from March to November 2010, during which time all of the components of the tramway, except for the tower bases, were replaced.

New York City Subway access to the rest of Manhattan and to Long Island City in Queens via the IND 63rd Street Line began in 1989, but access to the rest of Queens did not start until 2001. Located more than  below ground level, the Roosevelt Island station () is one of the deepest stations below sea level in the  system. The BMT 60th Street Tunnel () and the IND 53rd Street Line () both pass under Roosevelt Island, without stopping, on their way between Manhattan and Queens.

Roosevelt Island's residential community was not designed to support automobile traffic during its planning in the early 1970s. Automobile traffic has become common even though the northern and southern tips of the island remain car-free areas. Visitors can access the island by car over the Roosevelt Island Bridge but must park in the Motorgate Garage for overnight stays or in metered roadside spaces for short-term visits. MTA Bus's  route, operating between the island and Queens, obviates the need for automobiles to some extent. However, RIOC operates the Red Bus, a free on-island shuttle bus service. The service uses easily visible bright red buses, and competes directly with the Q102 in connecting apartment buildings to the subway and tramway.

Roosevelt Island has been served by NYC Ferry's Astoria route since August 2017. The ferry landing is on the east side of the island near the tramway station.

Demographics

2000 US Census
As of the 2000 US Census, Roosevelt Island had a population of 9,520. Fifty-two percent of the population (4,995) were female, and 4,525, or 48%, were male. The population was spread out, with 5% under the age of 5, 20% under the age of 18, 67% between the ages of 18 and 65, and 15% over the age of 65.

The racial makeup of the island was 45% white (non-Hispanic), 27% black (non-Hispanic), 14% Hispanics or Latinos of any race, 11% Asian or Pacific Islander, and .3% other races.

The median income was $49,976. 37% had an income under $35,000. 40% had incomes between $35,001 and $99,999, and 23% had an income over $100,000.

55% of the total households were family households, and 45% were non-family households. 17% of the residents were married couples with children, and 19% were married couples without children. 36% of the households were one-person households, and 9% were two or more non-family households. 3% were male-based households with related and unrelated children, and 16% were female-based households with related and unrelated children.

2010 US Census
As of the 2010 US Census, Roosevelt Island had a population of 11,661. The racial makeup of the island was 54.4% white, 23.4% black, 14.9% Hispanics or Latinos of any race, 20.0% Asian, 0.6% Native American or Pacific Islander, and 5.4% other races. 42.7% of the population was born outside the US.

The median income was $76,250. 69.3% of households earned more than $50,000. 30.5% earned less than $50,000.

2020 US Census
As of the 2020 US Census, Roosevelt Island had a population of 11,722.

International population

Due to its proximity to the headquarters of the United Nations, Roosevelt Island is home to a large number of diplomatic sector employees. At one time these included then-United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan.

In addition to several Christian denominations, the island is home to two Jewish synagogues, and as of 2019, a mosque via the Islamic Society of Roosevelt Island. In September 2017, Chabad of Roosevelt Island, the island's Chabad-Lubavitch Jewish congregation, launched a Chabad Jewish student organization in concert with the launch of Israeli-affiliated Cornell Tech, seeking to provide for the spiritual needs of international students from Israel.

Between the 2000 and 2010 Censuses, Roosevelt Island saw a 9% growth in the percentage of residents who identified as Asian. A large proportion of this growth has been driven by Chinese international student enrollments which skyrocketed following the financial crisis of 2007–2008, seeing local schools such as Columbia University receiving the fifth-largest enrollment of Chinese students in the United States during the 2014–2015 school year. The Chinese student and young professional population on the island has led to an increase in the number of businesses accepting payments via Mainland China mobile applications, as well as restaurants featuring regional Chinese cuisine and Chinese-language religious outreach.

Government and infrastructure
The neighborhood is part of Manhattan Community District 8. The Roosevelt Island Operating Corporation operates and maintains the island's government and infrastructure. The United States Postal Service operates the Roosevelt Island Station at 694 Main Street.

Garbage on Roosevelt Island is collected by an automated vacuum collection (AVAC) system using a system of pneumatic tubes that measure either , , or  wide. Manufactured by Swedish firm Envac and installed in 1975, it was the second AVAC system in the U.S. at the time of its installation, after the Disney utilidor system. It is one of the world's largest AVAC systems, collecting trash from 16 residential towers. Trash from each tower is transported to the Central Collections and Compaction Plant, traveling through the tubes at up to . The collection facility contains three turbines that spin the garbage; the trash is then compacted and sent to a landfill. The pneumatic tube system collects  or  of trash each day. On several occasions, tenants have damaged the system by throwing large objects, such as strollers and Christmas trees, into the tubes.

Since 2003, Roosevelt Island has not had its own fire station. Engine Company 261, in Long Island City, was near the Roosevelt Island Bridge and served the island until mayor Michael Bloomberg closed it, and five other stations, on May 26, 2003. There was controversy over the firehouse's closure, as Community Board 8 had not been sufficiently notified in advance; a New York Supreme Court judge subsequently ruled that the closure was illegal. In 2019, mayor Bill de Blasio's office told reporters that the island had "additional resources in place in the event they are needed for an emergency."

Recreation
There are four recreational fields on Roosevelt Island:

 Capobianco Field, located south of the Roosevelt Island Bridge ramp; measures
 Firefighters Field, located next to the ferry terminal north of Queensboro Bridge; measures
 McManus Field, located across from the New York City Department of Sanitation building at the north end of the island. As of 2019 it is currently closed for renovations. The park was renamed from Octagon Field in October 2019 to honor Jack McManus, the former Chief of the Roosevelt Island Public Safety Department.
 Pony Field, located east of the Octagon; measures

In addition, the  Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms Park is located at the extreme south end of Roosevelt Island. Four Freedoms Park, a New York State Park, opened on October 24, 2012. The park is named after President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Four Freedoms speech, which he made to the United States Congress in 1941. Directly to the north is Southpoint Park, a  green space containing the landmark Strecker Lab and Smallpox Hospital buildings.

At the northern tip of Roosevelt Island is another park, Lighthouse Park, named after the Blackwell Island Light.

The entire island is circled by a publicly accessible waterfront promenade.

Education

Roosevelt Island, like all parts of New York City, is served by the New York City Department of Education. Residents are zoned to PS/IS 217 Roosevelt Island School, which opened in 1992, combining schools at various locations on the island. Some of the locations that formerly housed the fragments of PS/IS 217 now house The Child School and Legacy High School, which serve K–12 special needs children with learning and emotional disabilities.

On December 19, 2011, Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced that Cornell Tech, a Cornell University-Technion-Israel Institute of Technology graduate school of applied sciences, would be built on the island. The $2 billion facility includes 2 million square feet of space on an 11 acre city-owned site, which was previously used for a hospital. Classes began off-site in September 2012 at the Google New York offices, and the first classes on the Roosevelt Island campus began on September 13, 2017. The first phase of the campus includes main academic building, a graduate housing tower, and an innovation hub/tech incubator. Construction of a conference center and a hotel began in 2018.

Library

The New York Public Library operates the Roosevelt Island branch at 504 Main Street. The library began in a community room, then moved to its own building at 524 Main Street in 1979. The library on Main Street was named the Dorothy and Herman Reade Library of Roosevelt Island in honor of a local couple who had founded the island's first, unofficial, library collection. In 1998, the library became a branch of the NYPL system. The current location at 504 Main Street opened in January 2021 and covers .

On April 12, 2016, the Empire State Center for the Book dedicated a United for Libraries Literary Landmark plaque marking Roosevelt Island's literary connections.

Organizations

The Roosevelt Island Garden Club has existed since 1975.  Each gardener is assigned a plot and can choose to grow what they wish.  The club is made up mostly of Island Residents that rent plots to grow all kinds of different plants. The membership is $65 a year and the wait list is extremely long. Visitors can view for free on Saturdays and Sundays.

Media
Roosevelt Island has three dedicated news sources.

The Roosevelt Island Daily, is a community blog maintained by David Stone since April 2016.
The Roosevelt Islander, is a community blog maintained by Rick O'Conor.
 The Main Street WIRE, was founded in 1979 by Dr. Jack Resnick and usually published about every two weeks (monthly in July and August).

Notable residents and visitors

Due to its proximity to the United Nations Headquarters, Roosevelt Island has long been a popular neighborhood for diplomats and United Nations staff.

Prisoners

 George Appo - A pickpocket and con artist. A biographer provides a description of the penitentiary on Blackwell's Island in the later half of the 19th century as having lax security, with prisoners being able to escape if they knew how to swim.
 Ida Craddock – convicted for obscenity under the Comstock laws
 Ann O'Delia Diss Debar - served six months for fraud as a medium
 George Washington Dixon – served six months for libel against Reverend Francis L. Hawks
 Fritz Joubert Duquesne – Nazi spy and leader of the Duquesne Spy Ring, the largest convicted espionage case in United States history
 Becky Edelson – for "using threatening language" during a speech
 Carlo de Fornaro – for criminal libel, in 1909
 Emma Goldman – several times, for activities in support of anarchism and birth control and against the World War I draft
 Billie Holiday – served on prostitution charges
 Mary Jones – a 19th-century transgender prostitute who was a center of media attention for coming to court wearing feminine attire.
 Peter H. Matthews – for operating policy games (illegal lotteries) all over New York City
 Patrick McLaughlin – Tammany Hall tough
 Eugene Reising – firearms designer convicted of violating the Sullivan Act
 Madame Restell – for performing abortions
 Dutch Schultz – arrested for burglary
 Boss Tweed – served one year on corruption-related charges
 Mae West – served eight days on public obscenity charges for her play Sex

Visitors
 Charles Dickens – described conditions at the "Octagon", an asylum for the mentally ill then located on the northern portion of the island, in his American Notes (1842)
 William Wallace Sanger – oversaw police interviews of 2000 prostitutes at Blackwell's Island and wrote up the findings in The History of Prostitution (1858)
 Joseph Lister - near the end of his trip to the United States, Lister, at the invitation of surgeon William Van Buren, performed an operation at Charity Hospital on Blackwell's Island. (1876)
 Nellie Bly – went undercover as a patient in the Women's Lunatic Asylum and reported what happened in the New York World as well as her book Ten Days in a Mad-House (1887)

Residents

Current residents
 Jonah Bobo (born 1997) – actor
 Michael Brodsky (born 1948) – author
 Roy Eaton (born 1930) – pianist

Former residents
 Kofi Annan (1938–2018) – United Nations Secretary-General
 Michelle Bachelet (born 1951) – president of Chile and Executive Director of the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN Women)
 Alice Childress (1912–1994) – playwright and author
 Billy Crawford (born 1982) – singer, songwriter and actor
 Mike Epps (born 1970) – stand-up comedian, actor, film producer, writer and rapper, best known for playing Day-Day Jones in Next Friday and its sequel, Friday After Next
 Wendy Fitzwilliam (born 1972) – former Miss Universe and Miss Trinidad and Tobago
 Amanda Forsythe (born 1976) – light lyric soprano known for her interpretations of baroque music and the works of Rossini
 Buddy Hackett (1924–2003) – comedian and actor
 Tim Keller (1950-2023) – Christian author and minister
 Al Lewis (1923–2006) – actor, best known as "Grandpa" in The Munsters
 Sarah Jessica Parker (born 1965) – actress
 Andrea Rosen (born 1974) – comedian
 Jon Sciambi (born 1970) – ESPN broadcaster
 Lyndsey Scott – model, actress, iOS mobile app software developer
 Fez Whatley (1964–2021) – co-host of The Ron and Fez Show on Sirius XM satellite radio
 Paul Feinman (1960–2021) – associate judge of the New York Court of Appeals

In popular culture
Literature
 1867 – In chapter 13 of Horatio Alger's novel Ragged Dick: Or, Street Life in New York with the Boot Blacks, the character Mickey Maguire, a young tough from Five Points "had acquired an ascendency  among his fellow professionals, and had a gang of subservient followers, whom he led on to acts of ruffianism, not infrequently terminating in a month or two at Blackwell's Island".
 1893 – In the opening chapter of Stephen Crane's novelette "Maggie: A Girl of the Streets", "a worm of yellow convicts" is seen emerging from a prison building on Roosevelt Island.
 1904 – In O. Henry's short story "The Cop and the Anthem", the main character, a homeless man named Soapy, schemes to have himself arrested so as to spend the harsh winter serving a three-month sentence in Blackwell's Island prison.
 1922 – Yank, the main character in Eugene O'Neill's comedy The Hairy Ape, is imprisoned in Blackwell's Island prison, in chapter VI.
 1925 – Roosevelt Island appears in F. Scott Fitzgerald's classic novel The Great Gatsby as Blackwell's Island, in Chapter Four, when Nick and Jay drive into Manhattan via the Queensboro Bridge.
 2001 – Roosevelt Island's ruins, particularly the Smallpox Hospital and the Strecker Memorial Laboratory, play a central role in Linda Fairstein's police procedural novel The Dead House (Scribner 2001).
 2004 – A significant scene in Caitlín R. Kiernan's story "Riding The White Bull" takes place on Roosevelt Island.
 2005 – In the novel by Caroline B. Cooney, Code Orange, the main character, Mitty, is studying smallpox for his own survival. He goes and visits the Smallpox Hospital ruins on Roosevelt Island.
 2007 – In the novel by Cassandra Clare, City of Bones, the protagonist is drawn to the island for a showdown with the elusive villain, Valentine.
 2022 - In the novel by Warren Mead, The Pox Academy, the main character, Lincoln, lives in a secret magic school on the site of the former Smallpox Hospital.

Film
 1932 – A Paramount Pictures film entitled No Man of Her Own is released, a light comedy film starring Clark Gable and Carole Lombard. Upon learning that Gable's character is not in South America, but instead learns he has negotiated a deal to serve 90 days and "he's across the river", Lombard's character then looks out of her hotel window to a view across the East River and the Queensboro Bridge, later referring to this as "Blackwell's Island".
 1939 – A Warner Bros. film entitled Blackwell's Island is released. It stars John Garfield as a crusading reporter investigating corruption in the island's prison.
 1966 – In the film Mister Buddwing, a sign posted on a bridge in the film reads "Stairway to Welfare Island". Suzanne Pleshette, playing the character Grace, tries to throw herself off the bridge wearing nothing but a fitted trench coat and white ankle boots, before James Garner's character saves her.
 1972 – The Exorcist begins principal photography in mid-August with a scene shot at Goldwater Memorial Hospital.
 1981 – A Roosevelt Island Tramway car is held hostage in the Sylvester Stallone film Nighthawks.
 1983 – The 1983 Italian B movie Escape from the Bronx has a scene filmed at the north end of the island.
 1985 – In the final scenes of the film Turk 182 the Timothy Hutton character swings above Roosevelt Island on the Queensboro Bridge.
 1990 – In the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles film, exterior shots of the Renwick Ruins are used as the fictitious location for the Foot Clan's secret hideout.
 1991 – In the opening scene of City Slickers Billy Crystal's character "Mitch Robbins" is shown commuting to work via the Roosevelt Island tram.
 1993 – In the film For Love or Money, Doug Ireland (played by Michael J. Fox) wants to buy the "abandoned hotel" at the south end of Roosevelt Island, referring to the ruins of the Smallpox Hospital.
 1994 – In The Professional, Mathilda Lando (played by Natalie Portman) takes the Tramway to Roosevelt Island to seek asylum at what is implied to be the Spencer School; however, in the beginning of the film the school's head mistress states on the phone that the school is located in Wildwood, New Jersey.
 1997 – The film Conspiracy Theory was shot on location in and around New York City, including Roosevelt Island.
 2001 – The fictional "Saint Adonis Cemetery" in the film Zoolander was built on Roosevelt Island.
 2002 – Near the end of the film Spider-Man, the Green Goblin blows up the Roosevelt Island side tram station and leaves a group of children hanging inside one car. He also brings Spider-Man down to fight with him in the abandoned Smallpox Hospital on the island. The tram and the island make other appearances in Spider-Man media. The island is featured in the video game Spider-Man 2. In The Amazing Spider-Man #161 and #162, appearing on the cover of the latter, and Spider-Man and Hulk fight on Roosevelt Island in The Amazing Spider-Man #328.
 2002 – In the film Gangs of New York, Leonardo DiCaprio's character Amsterdam Vallon is seen leaving "Hellgate House of Reform, Blackwell's Island, New York City".
 2003 – In the film Anything Else, Woody Allen's character, David Dobel, is a schoolteacher who lives on the island.
 2005 – Roosevelt Island is the setting for the film Dark Water by Brazilian director Walter Salles, where Dahlia (Jennifer Connelly) moves into a low-rent apartment with her daughter and then is terrorized by the ghost of a girl that used to live upstairs.
 2007 – In the film The Brave One, starring Jodie Foster, a scene takes place at the Roosevelt Island parking lot. The film mentions the island several times.
 2009 – In the final scene of Daddy Longlegs, the characters board a tram for Roosevelt Island.
 2023 - In the film John Wick: Chapter 4, there is a scene where Wick (Keanu Reeves) meets with Winston (Ian McShane) at a cemetery. This scene was filmed on Roosevelt Island, with the cemetery on the site of the real world Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms Park.

Television
 1958 – In the "Violent Circle" episode of Naked City (season 1, episode 5), Detective Halloran (James Franciscus) poses as a mental patient in a hospital mental ward on the Island to uncover a murderer.
 1963 – In the "Carrier" episode of Naked City (season 4, episode 29), a woman (Sandy Dennis) escapes from a chronic care hospital on Welfare Island – as it was then called – to carry a rare disease through New York City.
 1993 – in the "American Dream" episode of Law & Order (season 4, episode 8), a body is found during archaeological excavation on Roosevelt Island, forcing a new trial of a Wall Street broker (Željko Ivanek) who had been convicted based on a witness claiming they had buried the body in New Jersey in the early '80s.
 2005 – In the second season episode of CSI: NY called "Dancing with the Fishes", a crime is committed inside the Roosevelt Island tram.
 2010 – On the TV show 24, NY CTU is based on Roosevelt Island.
 2010 – The reality TV show America's Next Top Model filmed a photo shoot on the Roosevelt Island tram on April 7.
 2011 – The television series Unforgettable takes place in part on Roosevelt Island.
 2012 – The season three finale of White Collar is set largely on Roosevelt Island, including a stunt in which the show's protagonist jumps midair between Tram cars to avoid being captured by the FBI.
 2013 - The second season episode "On The Line" of Elementary opens with a woman shooting herself on the Roosevelt Island Bridge and staging it to look like a murder in order to frame the man who got away with killing her sister.
2015 - In season four, episode sixteen of the TruTV show Impractical Jokers, "Captain Fatbelly", a punishment is filmed on the Roosevelt Island Tram. During the scene Joe Gatto performed several strange tasks while riding on top of the tram dressed as the superhero "Captain Fatbelly".
 2015 – The second season of FX's series The Strain has several scenes which take place on Roosevelt Island.
 2016 – In the third season episode '"P is For Pancake", of TV Land's series Younger, a potential love interest for Hilary Duff's character is rebuffed when he is revealed to be a resident of Roosevelt Island.
 2018 – In the Netflix original miniseries Maniac, Jonah Hill's character lives on Roosevelt Island.
 2019  - The fourth season episode "Maximum Recreational Depth" of Billions, first broadcast on April 21, features a meeting between Wendy Rhoades and Taylor Mason at the FDR Four Freedoms State Park, where they discuss Roosevelt's State of the Union speech and the relationship between architect-designer Louis Kahn and his son.
 2019 - The seventh season episode "Into The Woods" of Elementary, first broadcast on June 20, has Joan meet with billionaire Odin Reichenbach at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms Park; at the end of the episode, she and Sherlock meet him there again to confront him over sending them on a wild goose chase. The following episode, "Command: Delete", immediately follows up on this, continuing this meeting.

Video games
 1992 – In the final level of the video game Atomic Runner for the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis the level takes place on Roosevelt Island Southpoint Park.
 2008 – In the video game Grand Theft Auto IV there is an island resembling Roosevelt Island, named Colony Island. It also includes the ruins of a hospital, similar to the Smallpox Hospital. There is also a replica of the tram available for players to ride.
 2011 – Parts of the video game Crysis 2 take place on Roosevelt Island.

Other
 1973 – In the original video for Pink Floyd's song "Us and Them", Roosevelt Island appears during a lengthy sequence shot from the Queensboro Bridge.
 1986 – The King Kong Tramway ride at Universal Studios Hollywood opens, featuring the Roosevelt Island Tram. Another version of the ride would open at Universal Studios Florida in 1990.
 2006 – The fictional high school which the main characters attend in the GONZO anime series Red Garden is on Roosevelt Island.
 2009 – On May 23, the island was the site of Improv Everywhere's "MP3 Experiment Six". Approximately 4,500 people traveled to the island to take part in a performance art piece where the southernmost point of the island became a "battleground" for the re-enactment of a fictional melee between townspeople and an ancient wolf.

See also

 New York City Department of Correction

References
Informational notes

Citations

External links

RIOC:
  for RIOC, Roosevelt Island Operating Corporation
 Parks & Recreation Roosevelt Island Operating Corporation's website for Events, memberships, permits
 Roosevelt Island Residents Association

Community resources, news, events, issues:
 The Main Street WIRE
 Timeline of Island History, by The Main Street WIRE
 Roosevelt Islander, blog by Rick O'Conor

Other:
 Roosevelt Island 360
 1903 Panorama of Blackwell's Island, N.Y., Library of Congress, Thomas A. Edison motion picture
 The Island Nobody Knows, a fully digitized exhibition catalog about Roosevelt Island from The Metropolitan Museum of Art Libraries

Defunct prisons in New York City
Car-free islands of the United States
Prison islands
Islands of Manhattan
Neighborhoods in Manhattan
Islands of the East River

Roosevelt Island


A debutante is a young woman who is first introduced into society. In former times, these young ladies would be part of nobility, or the upper class. Originally, the term meant the young person was now old enough to be married. The purpose of the coming out was to display her to eligible bachelors and their families. The term comes from French, and can be translated as "beginner".

In those days, a young lady of quality could not meet anyone unless they were introduced to her. This introduction could happen at an event (such as a ball) which was part of the 'season'. In the United Kingdom there was a formal presentation of the debutants to the monarch at the Royal Court (abolished by the present Queen Elizabeth II in 1957). According to the peerage guide Debrett's, the traditional social season runs from April to August. The dress code for debutantes is traditionally a pure white ball gown and white evening gloves.

References

Society
Women

Debutante


An automotive city or auto city is a city that facilitates and encourages the movement of people via private transportation, through 'physical planning', e.g., built environment innovations (street networks, parking spaces, automobile/pedestrian interface technologies and low density urbanised areas containing detached dwellings with driveways or garages) and 'soft programming' e.g., social policy surrounding city street usage (traffic safety/automobile campaigns, automobile laws and the social reconstruction of streets as reserved public spaces for the automobile).

Origins

"The old common law that every person, whether on foot or driving, has equal rights in all parts of the roadway must give way before the requirements of modern transportation" – McClintock, a Consultant for Los Angeles Traffic Commission in 1924. (Norton, 2008, p. 164)

Multiple competing views have attempted to explain the rapid dominance of automobile use over alternative modes of transportation in North America in the early 20th century. Two compelling arguments are:
That the automobile was selected by city dwellers, as the liberated and preferred mode of transportation.
That the automobile was deliberately promoted, at the expense of mass transit systems, by the corporate or professional elites, guided by interests in the automotive industry (see General Motors streetcar conspiracy).

While both arguments are nuanced, the basic principles behind each – advocacy of private transportation and advocacy of automobile production and consumption – informed the American automobile manufacturing boom of the early 1900s. By the late 1920s, the automobile industry was producing millions of cars each year, its surging growth due in part to the sociology of industrial phenomena related to Fordism.

The creation of the automotive city may be due, in part, to an attack on old customs by the good roads movement, seeking to pave the way for the rapidly expanding automobile market—and to the triumph of individual liberties, associated with consumption and the free market, over restrictive governance of the built environment and its use. By the 1930s, the interaction of automotive industry interests, a vocal, growing, minority of city motorists and favourable political sentiment, worked together to reconstruct the city street as a reserved space for the automobile, delegitimising previous users (such as pedestrians) and forging the foundations for the first automotive cities.

This transformative process could not have succeeded, were it not for the development, and deployment, of a system of symbols, codes and laws which would become the language of traffic signs, and infrastructure design.

20th century

By the end of the 20th century the automobile, and the land sequestered for its exclusive use (road infrastructure), had become synonymous with formulations of large North American and Australian cities. The label 'automotive city' has been used by academics such as Norton (2008) and Newman and Kenworthy (2000), to refer to the tendency of city design and configuration in many North American and Australian cities during the 20th century to privilege the private automobile above mass transit systems. The creation of the 'automotive city' detailed by Norton in Fighting Traffic, primarily involved the reconfiguration of American city transport infrastructure and services, from the early 1920s to the 1960s, around the growth of modes of private transportation (the automobile).

In the early 1920s this reconfiguration of American city transport infrastructure around the automobile, at the instigation of traffic engineers, resulted in the rewriting of an old English common law (which had previously defined the street as a space where all users were equal) to define the street as a space which privileges cars, allocating them the right of way (except at intersections).

This early and prolonged reconfiguration of the American, and Australian, city around private transportation served to dramatically alter the course of city development within these countries. This is made most tangible through the generally accepted shape the man-made environment has taken in cities such as Melbourne (which never got rid of its tram system), Los Angeles and Detroit, which cater to the needs of automobile ownership (i.e. sidewalks, grid city layout linked with dormitory suburbs, highways and private transport corridors, and the securing of land for car spaces).

Before usage of the automobile was ubiquitous in these regions, and its presence believed to be necessary to the efficient dispersion and mobility of human capital within a centralised, low density, metropolitan area, it was introduced to mixed traffic conditions, and was commonly viewed as a nuisance which endangered historically legitimate street uses. In 1913, New York was experiencing frequent congestion, and by 1915, many individuals had reverted to using the subway.

Chicago's electric streetcar company indicated that it had slowed by 44% in the city's CBD between 1910 and 1920. In San Francisco in 1914, the number of automobiles surpassed the city's 10,000 horse-drawn vehicles. By 1910, Los Angeles had the highest per capita car registration in the world, Detroit and other Midwestern cities followed shortly thereafter. This time period for North America was marked by substantial growth in automobile ownership amongst the population, creating friction between private transportation interests and mass transit interests.

The road lobby and securing the road infrastructure resource

The politics between different transportation stakeholders, who viewed roads as a securable resource and potential source of revenue, manifested in acrimonious conflict throughout the 1920s and 1930s. One particularly controversial example of this conflict occurred between the road and rail lobbies in the 1930s, when a holding company, National City Lines, made up of interests from oil, tyre and car industries, bought the private electric streetcar systems in 45 U.S. cities, before closing them down. The reason attributed to this being clear, each subway car operating on the road was replacing 50 to 100 automobiles.

They were viewed as obstacles to what was generally accepted, among stakeholders in the automobile, as the future of North American transportation.

The purchase, and ultimate closure, of the electric street car systems by National City Lines, occurred approximately 10 years prior to the United States Congress proscription of diversification among rival industries, outlined in the Transportation Act of 1940. The intent of this, in the words of the Interstate Commerce Commission, was, "to protect each mode of transportation from the suppression and strangulation, which might follow if control thereof were allowed to fall into the hands of a competing agency". In 1949 a Grand Jury ultimately convicted National City Lines, and its constituents; General Motors, Standard Oil of California, Mack Trucks, Phillips Petroleum and the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company on criminal indictment of anti-trust conspiracy, this decision did not, however, result in the return of electric street car systems.

280 million passengers were provided with the option of either taking the bus, or participating in the automobile industry. Within a few decades, the golden age of the automotive industry was well and truly under way, with cities such as Los Angeles being almost completely dependent on the automobile.

Substantial funds were required in order to develop and maintain infrastructure capable of sustaining the level of automobile dependence observed by the burgeoning automotive cities in North America. Advocacy for these funds was spearheaded in 1932, by General Motors' Alfred Sloan, who brought a number of automotive industry interest groups together under the banner of the 'National Highway Users Conference'. The combined lobbying power of this organisation resulted in the substantial U.S. Highway Trust fund of 1957, through which the U.S. government invested $1,845 million in highways between 1952 and 1970. Rail systems only received $232 million during the same period.

The decisive early action of large automobile lobbies in the U.S., in securing road infrastructure funding for their product, helped shape, and protect, the growth of automotive cities in North America and Australia through the 1900s. In many contemporaneous European and Asian countries the influence of automobile lobbies were tempered by equally large mass transit lobbies, and the dependence on the automobile, evident in the urban sprawl of detached dwellings with garages, and accompanying street systems, in North America and Australia, has not been as significant, possibly due in part to this reason

Suburban exodus

From the late 1940s and into the early 1960s the dispersal of the metro population in, and urbanisation of, U.S. and Australian cities correlated with increasing levels of car ownership for the same period, feeding into the political expectation that the car would be the future of urban transportation. The discourse surrounding city structure, which would remain dominant during this period, was succinctly expressed by Homer Hoyt in the 1943 Chicago Plan Commission article, 'American Cities in the Post-War Era'. Hoyt held that the rise of the automobile would remove dependency on fixed rails for public transportation, and that old city design concepts, such as the high density 'compact city', would be made obsolete due to the advent of the long-range bomber during World War II.

In Hoyt's concept of the ideal post-war American city, low density urban garden homes in dormitory neighbourhoods on the urban fringe would be separated from industry and employment by a green belt, and arterial roads connecting these zones to greatly expanded car spaces at the base of principal office buildings and department stores would accommodate private modes of transportation, supporting independent mobility and accessibility in and around downtown areas. Advocacy for this form of automobile dependent urbanisation, segregation of land uses, and low density expansion of the metropolitan area, was heavily informed by preeminent planned community systems such as Clarence Perry's 'Neighbourhood Unit', and Raymond Unwin's 'Garden Suburb'.

These new planned suburbs, located at the periphery of the metropolitan area, were advertised as a means of escaping the congestion and pollution associated with inner-city living in the early to mid-20th century. The development of replicable integral neighbourhoods, and processes of urban renewal (characterised by the development of street infrastructure) facilitated a suburban exodus from cities during this period, resulting in the dispersion of the western metropolis. In a short space of time, a considerable burden was placed on the transit networks of many major North American cities, as processes of urbanisation created entire communities, isolated from what were popularly viewed as obsolete modes of mass transit, of automobile dependent commuters.

21st century

Twentieth century Western city planning has been characterised by academics such as Vanderbilt (2010) as an exercise in retrofitting the metropolis for the car. While the benefits of private transportation and the mobility it affords citizens in a dispersed metro is widely acknowledged, logistically, it is exceedingly difficult, perhaps impossible, for planners to design a city which efficiently accommodates more than a fraction of its population in this manner. Unfortunately, current research points toward a transportation system which has caused as many problems as it has solved.

As early as 1925, the U.S. Secretary of Commerce, Herbert Hoover, had estimated that urban congestion costs were exceeding $2 billion a year. In 2009, The Texas Transportation Institute issued the Urban Mobility Report (2009), in which the estimated current cost of traffic congestion (in wasted fuel and lost productivity) was $87.2 billion in the U.S.

In Australia, through the twentieth century, Clapton makes the observation that the automobile has, "killed, injured and maimed more people than war has done to Australian soldiers" (Clapton, 2005, p. 313).

In the 21st century Western automotive city, road engineers fight against the phenomenon of induced traffic (new infrastructure creating more congestion), road authorities strive for balance between traffic safety, the independence awarded to private transportation users and the rights of various road users in a democratic society, while land speculators continue to design dormitory commuter neighbourhoods, in cities where planning agencies facilitate (or do not regulate) car dependent sprawl.

See also
15 minute city
Accessibility (transport)

Jaywalking

Mobility transition

References

Urban design
Car culture
Transportation planning
Cities by type

Automotive city


A Cenotaph is an empty tomb or a monument built in honor of a person or group of people whose remains are elsewhere. It can also be the first tomb for a person who has since been reburied elsewhere. Although most cenotaphs honor individuals, many noted cenotaphs honor groups of individuals, such as the lost soldiers of a country or of an empire.

Burial monuments and structures

Cenotaph


Carly is a given name, a feminine form of Carl. It is also a pet form of given names such as Carla and Caroline. Variant different spellings include Carley, Carlie, Carlee, Carleigh and Carli, as well as Karly, Karli, Karley, Karlee, Karlie and Karleigh.

The name became popular in large part, if not primarily, because of the success of Carly Simon's music in the 1970s – its first appearance in the top 1000 US baby names was in 1973, soon after her first success. It was most popular in the UK, Canada and Australia in the 1980s and in the United States during the 1990s. Over 2,000 American baby girls were named Carly each year between 1991 and 1998.

Carly and its variants may refer to:

People

 Carly Binding (born 1978), New Zealand pop singer-songwriter
 Carly Booth (born 1992), Scottish professional golfer
 Carly Chaikin (born 1990), American actress
 Carly Cole (born 1984), British reality television contestant, fitness trainer and model
 Carly Colón (born 1979), male Puerto Rican-Canadian professional wrestler
 Carly Craig (born 1980), American actress
 Carly Dixon (born 1973), Australian Olympic judoka
 Carly Fiorina (born 1954), American business executive and politician
 Carly Flynn, New Zealand journalist and television presenter
 Carly Foulkes (born 1988), Canadian model and actress
 Carly Gullickson (born 1986), American professional tennis player
 Carly Hibberd (1985–2011), Australian road cyclist
 Carly Hillman (born 1983), British actress
 Carly Hunt (born 1981), English footballer
 Carly Janiga (born 1988), American gymnast
 Carly Rae Jepsen (born 1985), Canadian recording artist and singer-songwriter
 Carly McKillip (born 1989), Canadian actress and musician
 Carly Melin (born 1985), American politician
 Carly Milne, Canadian writer
 Carly Paradis (born 1980), Canadian composer and pianist
 Carly Patterson (born 1988), American gymnast and singer
 Carly Pearce (born 1990), American country music singer and songwriter
 Carly Piper (born 1983), American Olympic swimmer
 Carly Pope (born 1980), Canadian actress
 Carly Ryan (1992–2007), Australian female murder victim
 Carly Schroeder (born 1990), German-American film and television actress
 Carly Simon (born 1943), American singer-songwriter, musician, and children's author
 Carly Smithson (born 1983), Irish American soul / pop rock singer-songwriter and actress
 Carly Rose Sonenclar (born 1999), American singer, songwriter, and child actress
 Carly Telford (born 1987), English international football goalkeeper
 Carly Wilson (born 1982), Australian basketball player

Pseudonyms
 "Carly Phillips", pen name of American novelist Karen Drogin (born 1965)

Fictional characters
 Carly Cardinal, mascot for the National Arbor Day Foundation
 Carly Corinthos, on the American soap opera General Hospital
 Carly Manning, on the American soap opera Days of Our Lives
 Carly Morris, on the Australian soap opera Home and Away
 Carly Shay, on the Nickelodeon series iCarly and its revival series of the same name
 Carly Snyder, on the American soap opera As the World Turns
 Carly Wicks, on the BBC soap opera EastEnders
 Carly Witwicky, in the Transformers franchise
 Carly Norris, on the film Sliver

References

See also

Carle (disambiguation)
Carley (disambiguation)
Carlye J. Hughes
Carli (given name)
Carry (name)
Charly (name)
Kali (disambiguation)
Karly

English feminine given names
English-language feminine given names
Feminine given names

Carly


Arthur Adams (born April 5, 1963) is an American comic book artist and writer. He first broke into the American comic book industry with the 1985 Marvel Comics miniseries Longshot. His subsequent interior comics work includes a number of Marvel's major books, including The Uncanny X-Men, Excalibur, X-Factor, Fantastic Four, Hulk, and Ultimate Comics: X, as well as books by various other publishers, such as Action Comics, Vampirella, The Rocketeer, and The Authority. Adams has also illustrated books featuring characters for which he has a personal love, such as Godzilla, the Creature from the Black Lagoon, and Gumby, the latter of which garnered him a 1988 Eisner Award for Best Single Issue.

In 1994, Adams joined a group of creators that included Frank Miller, John Byrne, and Mike Mignola to form Legend, an imprint of creator-owned comics published by Dark Horse Comics, through which Adams published Monkeyman and O'Brien, a science fiction adventure series featuring archetypal sci-fi monsters that Adams wrote and illustrated. Although the Legend imprint ceased in 1998, Monkeyman and O'Brien continued to appear in print, sometimes in crossover stories with other comics characters, such as Gen¹³/Monkeyman and O'Brien (1998), and Savage Dragon #41 (September 1997).

Because of his reputedly tight, labor-intensive penciling style, which was initially influenced by Michael Golden and Walter Simonson, and his admittedly slow pace, Adams mostly does cover work. When he does do interior art, it is usually for short storylines, one-shots, miniseries or contributions to anthologies, such as his 2002–2004 work on "Jonni Future", a pulp science fiction series he co-created with Steve Moore for the Wildstorm Productions anthology Tom Strong's Terrific Tales, and his 2008 work on Hulk (Vol 2) #7 - 9. His other cover work includes books such as Avengers Classic, Wonder Woman, and JLA, as well as pinups and other spot illustrations for books such as Sin City, The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe and his own published sketchbook series, Arthur Adams Sketchbook. He has done design work for toys and video games, and miniature busts have been produced based on his renditions of notable characters. In the early 2000s he was commissioned to create artwork for the drum kit used by System of a Down drummer John Dolmayan.

He is one of the most popular and widely imitated artists in the comics industry, whose drawing style has been credited as an influence upon artists such as Joe Madureira and Ed McGuinness, as well as the artists associated with the founding and early days of Image Comics, such as J. Scott Campbell.

Early life
Arthur Adams was born on April 5, 1963 in Holyoke, Massachusetts. His father was a loadmaster in the United States Air Force, and as a result, Adams frequently moved with his parents and four younger brothers to places that included West Virginia. When Adams was five years old, the family settled in Vacaville, California, near Travis Air Force Base. Adams' first exposure to superhero and monster comics came through the ones his mother would buy for him once a month at a thrift store. His enthusiasm for superhero stories by particular creators began when his father returned from an overseas trip with the first Marvel Treasury Grab-Bag, which included stories by Ross Andru, Wally Wood, and Gene Colan. He particularly liked Marvel Comics for their stories with monster-like characters like the Thing, the Hulk, and the Man-Thing. He became interested in dinosaurs and monsters like King Kong after watching Creature Features on TV every Saturday, and Universal Monster movies such as Frankenstein and Creature from the Black Lagoon. He also enjoyed superhero and science fiction programming, such as Super Friends, the 1967 Spider-Man cartoon, and Star Trek. Adams enjoyed drawing frequently in his youth, as far back as he could remember. He discovered the work of Frank Frazetta when he was 13 or 14, which was a "huge" early influence on him, and attempted to mimic his style using watercolor. Adams did not consider illustration as a profession, however, as he aspired to be a paleontologist. His interest in professional paleontology waned, however, when he realized that the extreme climates of the environments in which he would be required to work were not appealing to him.

Adams' desire to draw drawing comics professionally was cemented in high school, when he bought Marvel Comics' Micronauts #1, which was illustrated by Michael Golden, the first artist Adams noticed significantly. He relates:

I was collecting comic books from the  mid-70s, and then I discovered Michael Golden working on Micronauts. And I don't know exactly what it is about the very first issue of Micronauts. Something about it just blew me away. That was the book that made me say, 'Yeah, this is what I'm going to do for my career, for the rest of my life. I'm going to find a way to draw comic books, man!'

Adams would subsequently seek out work by other artists, and names as influences Barry Windsor-Smith, Mike Kaluta, Bernie Wrightson and Terry Austin. Adams also cites Bill Sienkiewicz's "Moon Knight" work in The Hulk! magazine and in particular Walter Simonson's work on The Uncanny X-Men and The New Teen Titans, which Adams saw as "the bible of how to draw comics", and "the perfect example of how to do a team book." Adams names Simonson and Golden as his two largest artistic influences. Simonson and his wife, writer/editor Louise Simonson, would later become close friends and collaborators with Adams, with Louise editing Adams' breakthrough project, Longshot. Adams also says he was influenced by Jack Kirby after he became a professional artist. Because he tends to consult source material when illustrating a book, he studied much of Kirby's work in particular during his 1990 run on Fantastic Four, learning much about focusing on clarity and dynamism over attention to detail. In a 1997 interview, Adams responded to the observation that fans had noticed a manga influence in his work by stating that he had likely been influenced by Masamune Shirow. Aside from books on drawing human anatomy, Adams' only formal education in illustration was learning newspaper strip-type drawing in his freshman year of high school from Mr. Vandenberg, a teacher who stressed the importance of clear storytelling and perspective. After a female classmate Adams was attracted to talked him into joining the acting club, Adams also considered becoming an actor, eventually doing community theater for two years. He quit acting when he turned 19, in order to concentrate on drawing.

Career

Early work

Adams initially created a portfolio of pinups and monster splash pages, and added story sequences when he began attending comics conventions at age 17.
At one of them, Adams met someone who, after seeing Adams' artwork, asked Adams for a submission for a comic book fanzine he was putting together called High-Energy. Adams submitted the horror story "One-Eyed Jack", which saw print High-Energy #1 (cover dated Spring 1982). Though it was an unpaid work, it was Adams' first published work, though he has lightheartedly decried its quality, saying, "It was pretty bad."

Adams' first paid work was a Farrah Foxette pinup that he copied from Farrah Fawcett's iconic 1976 swimsuit poster, which he submitted to the letters page of the DC Comics series Captain Carrot and His Amazing Zoo Crew! That series' editor, Roy Thomas, paid Adams $10 to publish the piece as a fan pinup.

At a Creation Convention in San Francisco, Adams received career advice from Steve Leialoha and Chris Claremont, and also met another aspiring illustrator, Mike Mignola, with whom Adams became friends, and later, business partners. Because of the popularity of the X-Men, Adams included a Wolverine story in his portfolio, although he was only a casual fan of the X-Men himself. He would later become closely associated with the X-Men in his early career. After showing his portfolio to editor Bob Schreck at a Creation Convention, he gained permission to set up a table, doing drawings for fans for $5 – $10. He began submitting samples to Marvel Comics when he was 18, taking a job at a pizzeria after graduating high school.

Adams' first professional job came about after he met Joe Rubinstein at a Creation Convention. Rubinstein took Adams' samples to Marvel editors Dennis O'Neil and Linda Grant, who in 1983 offered Adams the chance to write and draw "The Return of Richard Buzznick", a short story for the black and white anthology Bizarre Adventures. Though Adams completed the story, the series was canceled before his story was published, and Adams returned to submitting samples while working at the pizzeria. Adams later dismissed the story as poorly drawn. He also drew "Away Off There Amid The Softly Winking Lights", a story in the 1984 Pacific Comics anthology Three Dimensional Alien Worlds.

Longshot and X-Men
Al Milgrom, who was ending his career as a Marvel editor to go freelance, found Adams' samples as he was cleaning out his office for its future occupant, editor Carl Potts. Potts and his assistant editor, Ann Nocenti, sent Adams a Defenders script, from which Adams did layouts of 10 to 15 pages. Adams stated that while his action scenes were not rendered very well, the editors praised his casual, character-based scenes. Nocenti described to Adams the concept for a miniseries she was writing, Longshot, which had been turned down by every other artist she offered it to. Adams, now a couple of months before his twentieth birthday, did a series of preliminary design drawings, basing the main character's appearance and hairstyle on that of singer Limahl, and the female lead, Ricochet Rita, on Nocenti herself. The series was freelance-edited by Louise Simonson, and without a firm schedule, which provided Adams the time he needed to complete it. This was due in part to his problems with perspective and other things he was not accustomed to drawing, such as windmills, babies and people smiling, and in part because he had to redraw the first half of it, as Ann Nocenti's story was so dense that the pages featured up to 20 panels. As a result, Adams took eight months to draw the first issue. This problem was addressed by editor Elliot Brown, who showed Adams how to compose panels depicting multiple actions. Simonson would later introduce Adams to Marvel editor-in-chief Jim Shooter, who furthered Adams' understanding of storytelling clarity by sitting down with him and showing him the panel-to-panel structure in an old Marvel book. He would take two years to draw all six issues of the miniseries. Longshot #1 was published with a cover date of September 1985. Reviewing the first issue for Amazing Heroes, R.A. Jones, who criticized the writing, stating:

Longshot does have one major saving grace, and that is the penciling of Arthur Adams. I'm going to once again go out on my prophetic limb and predict that Art will soon become a fan favorite. He has a dynamic style that grabs your attention and won't let go. To be sure, he exhibits some of the weaknesses of any young artist, the occasional awkward pose or crude drawing--but as a first effort this is incredibly impressive. In fact, this limited series should be worth buying simply to watch the progress Adams makes from issue to issue.

Nocenti's position as editor on the X-Men books led to Uncanny X-Men writer Chris Claremont's discovery of Adams' work, and in turn to Adams' frequent association with that franchise during the 1980s, which began with New Mutants Special Edition #1 and Uncanny X-Men Annual #9, which were part of the "Asgardian Wars" storyline, and which Adams began drawing before Longshot #1 was published. Nocenti also asked Adams to produce a cover for Heroes for Hope, a 1985 book intended to benefit famine relief in Africa, which was written and illustrated by dozens of creators, including writers Harlan Ellison and Stephen King, and artists John Byrne, Charles Vess and Bernie Wrightson. Nocenti asked Adams to pattern the cover after Paul Smith's 1983 cover of Uncanny X-Men #173, whose focus was Wolverine charging the viewer. This in turn led to Bob Budiansky, who was in charge of producing Marvel's posters, asking Adams to produce a Wolverine poster with the same type of pose. The image, inked by Terry Austin, became not only a bestselling poster, but an iconic life-size standee for comics shops, and led to two other posters by Adams, a 1987 X-Men poster featuring most of the characters that had ever been a member of that team, and "Mutants", a modification of Adams' 1988 Marvel Age Annual #4 cover that featured most of the characters appearing in all the X-Men-related books at the time, also with a charging Wolverine in the center. By 1986, Adams' professional career had been cemented, and he moved out of his parents' home and into the same Oakland, California apartment building where fellow artists Mike Mignola and Steve Purcell lived. Adams and Nocenti reunited for a story in Web of Spider-Man Annual #2 (1986) in which Warlock of the New Mutants encounters Spider-Man.

His work on the X-Men franchise would continue with a number of covers for The New Mutants and The Uncanny X-Men in 1986 and 1987, respectively. He also drew all but three of the first 23 covers and interior frontispieces to Classic X-Men from 1986 to 1988. His interior X-Men-related work included a two-issue run on X-Factor and the one-shot Excalibur: Mojo Mayhem, both in 1989, and three Uncanny X-Men Annuals, in 1986, 1988, and 1990. It was in drawing the 1988 annual that Adams says he felt like a professional comic book artist for the first time, as he first felt confident that he knew what he was doing.

Diversification and experimentation
Adams did work for publishers other than Marvel during the 1980s, as when he drew several pages of Batman #400 in 1986 and Action Comics Annual #1 in 1987. The latter is viewed as a turning point in Adam's drawing style, characterized by bulkier figures of Batman and Superman, though Adams explains that this was in part due to the influence of The Dark Knight Returns. Adams also explained that the overall change in art was style partly due to deliberate experimentation on his part, and partly to Dick Giordano's inking, which exhibited a different line weight. That same year, he illustrated Gumby Summer Fun Special #1 by Comico Comics, a job he obtained through Comico editor Diana Schutz, an old friend who noticed the incidental images of Gumby that Adams had included in the pages of Longshot. Adams, who did not harbor fond memories of that cartoon as a child, and who feared he would be typecast as a Gumby artist if he took the job, told Schultz he would only do it if she could get Bob Burden to write it, on the assumption that Schultz would decline this condition. Schultz, who initially wanted Mark Evanier for the job, considered this, and eventually agreed to it after contacting Burden, who was enthusiastic about the idea. That book, which demonstrated Adams' versatility in handling comedy as well as superheroics, garnered him and Burden a 1988 Eisner Award for Best Single Issue. Adams would later illustrate a second Gumby book, Gumby's Winter Fun Special, which was written by Steve Purcell.

Adams was one of 54 artists profiled in Ron Goulart's 1989 book, The Great Comic Book Artists, Volume 2, whose front and back covers Adams illustrated.

1990s monster and creator-owned work
Adams' 1990s Marvel work included a 1990 three-issue run on Fantastic Four, in which the Hulk, Spider-Man, Wolverine and Ghost Rider formed a replacement Fantastic Four after being falsely informed that three of the original Fantastic Four had been murdered. Series writer Walter Simonson, who also was the regular artist on the title, decided to write a story for Adams to draw in order to catch up on his deadlines. Simonson asked Marvel's Marketing Department who the four top-selling characters were, and was told they were Wolverine, Ghost Rider, Spider-Man, and the Punisher. Adams disliked the Punisher, and especially disliked drawing guns, because he felt he was not good at it, and suggested the Hulk. When Simonson asked him what he liked to draw, Adams indicated that he was a fan of the classic elements of the book, such as the Mole Man and the Skrulls, which Simonson incorporated into the story. The three-issue arc, which is cited by Adams as one of his favorite works, was later referenced by late night talk show host Conan O'Brien in the "Fan Corrections" segment of a 2012 episode of Conan. Adams did more work for the X-Men franchise, such as the 1997 intercompany crossover one-shot Gen¹³/Generation X. His 1990s Marvel work also included providing designs for a line of Hulk action figures.

Adams became acquainted with Randy Stradley and other staff members of Dark Horse Comics, after which he illustrated a number of their books featuring the classic Universal Monsters he loved in his youth. His first Godzilla work was Godzilla Color Special #1 in 1992. For that story Adams created an organization called G-Force, which he designed to be a Japanese version of the Fantastic Four, and in the story, had that group mention that they had fought the Shrewmanoid, a villain Adams later created for Monkeyman & O'Brien. Toho, the production company that produces the Godzilla films, would later introduce a version of that team in the 1993 film Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla II. A book on the making of that film features a cover illustration of Godzilla that was copied from the Color Special, which amused Adams. Adams would follow these with other Godzilla works, such as "King Kong vs. Godzilla", a story that appeared in the anthology Urban Legends #1 that is notable for being the only work of his to date that he wrote, penciled, inked and lettered, and "Tramplin' Tokyo", an Alan Moore story he drew for Negative Burn #18 (December 1994). In 1995 he drew Godzilla vs. Hero Zero, and wrote issues 5–8 of Target: Godzilla! When Adams learned that Dark Horse would acquire the rights to the Universal Monsters, Adams lobbied to them to illustrate a comics sequel to the 1954 film Creature from the Black Lagoon, but Dark Horse wanted to produce an adaptation of the film first, and told Adams that if he illustrated that, that he would be able to illustrate a future sequel. The 50-page adaptation was published in 1993, but the line's low sales cost Dark Horse money, and it was canceled after four books, precluding the sequel that Adams wanted to draw.

In the early 1990s, Adams and Mignola were contacted by Erik Larsen, who invited them to produce books of their own creation for Image Comics, which Larsen and a group of other artists formed to publish creator-owned books. Adams had never before considered producing his own original material, as he preferred to illustrate the properties he enjoyed as a child. However, his talks with Larsen convinced him to create Monkeyman and O'Brien, a duo similar in concept to Angel and the Ape. The stories star San Francisco native Ann Darrow O'Brien, whose name is a tribute to Fay Wray's character from King Kong and that film's special effects creator Willis O'Brien, and Axewell Tiberius, a super-intelligent gorilla man from another dimension. The duo finds itself embroiled in a variety of adventures typical of classic B-movies, often featuring the type of movie monsters Adams is fond of, such as the subterranean Shrewmanoid and the extraterrestrial Froglodytes. Despite the offer from Image, Adams and Mignola (the latter of whom created Hellboy, which had been rejected by DC Comics), took their ideas to Dark Horse, for whom Adams had already done work, as it would allow them to collaborate with creators they admired, such as Frank Miller and John Byrne. Together with Paul Chadwick, Mike Allred, Dave Gibbons, and Geof Darrow, the creators formed Legend, a creator-owned imprint of Dark Horse. After an initial 1993 appearance in San Diego Comic Con Comics #2, Monkeyman and O'Brien appeared in installments in Dark Horse Presents #80 in 1993 and Dark Horse Insider #27 in 1994. The duo's first appearance under the Legend imprint was an ongoing backup story in Mike Mignola's 1994 Hellboy: Seed of Destruction miniseries. They would eventually graduate to their own self-titled miniseries in 1996. When first producing the series, Adams had on hand the Marvel Monsterworks reprint of the Atlas Comics monster stories "Where Monsters Dwell" and "Creatures on the Loose" for inspiration. Although the Legend imprint ceased in 1998, Monkeyman and O'Brien continued to appear in print, sometimes in crossover stories with other comics characters, as in Savage Dragon #41 (September 1997) by Erik Larsen, and Gen¹³/MonkeyMan and O'Brien (1998), both published by Image Comics, the latter of which Adams wrote and drew for Wildstorm Productions.

In 1996 Dark Horse Comics published Art Adams' Creature Features, a collection of Adams' previously published stories that paid tribute to various B-movie monsters, some of which had originally been published in black and white, but which were colored for the collection. They included Adams' Creature from the Black Lagoon, two of his Godzilla stories, and the "Trapped In The Lair of the Shrewmanoid" story from Dark Horse Insider #27. The collection featured an introduction by Geoff Darrow.

1999–present

In 1999, Adams returned to Wildstorm to draw an eight-page flashback sequence in issue #4 of Alan Moore's series, Tom Strong, which was published under Moore's brand for Wildstorm, America's Best Comics. His subsequent Wildstorm work would include Danger Girl Special #1 (2000) and two issues of The Authority in 2002, significant portions of which Adams was asked by DC Comics to redraw in order to de-emphasize the violence, in light of the September 11 attacks, much to Adams' frustration. That same year, Adams and writer Steve Moore co-created "Jonni Future", a pastiche of a pulp science fiction series such as Adam Strange and Barbarella, which was published in eight-page installments in the America's Best Comics anthology Tom Strong's Terrific Tales, the first ten issues of which Adams penciled from 2002 to 2004. Adams work on "Jonni Future" has been characterized as exhibiting a romantic influence, with greater amounts realism and fine hatching, which Adams refers to as "noodling". Adams says he was inspired by sources such as Paolo Eleuteri Serpieri, Warren Publishing's Vampirella, and the character designs in Capcom video game character books when he drew "Jonni Future", and refrained from using straight edges or templates in order to achieve a more elegant, hand-drawn appearance. He regards "Jonni Future" as his best work.

In the early 2000s Adams was commissioned to create artwork for the drum kit used by System of a Down drummer John Dolmayan, an avid comic book collector and vendor. Dolmayan commissioned Adams to illustrate a scene of giant women fighting robots and Godzilla for one drum, while the art for other drums in the kit, which depicted other characters and scenes, were produced by Simon Bisley, Kevin Eastman, and Tim Vigil.

Throughout the 2000s, Adams provided cover images for various DC Comics, such as Superman, Batman, and JLA: Scary Monsters, as well as for books by various other publishers, such as Vampirella, Red Sonja, Jurassic Park, Madman Adventures, Thundercats, Xena: Warrior Princess, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Adams' 2000s Marvel cover work include Generation X #67 - 72 in 2000 and 2001, and Incredible Hercules #113 - 115 in 2008, as well for three of its collected editions. His 2000s interior comics work includes Superman/Batman #26 (2006), an issue dedicated to writer Jeph Loeb's late son, Sam, to which dozens of writers and artists contributed. In 2008 he illustrated a Red Hulk story in King-Size Hulk #1, and later illustrated a Hulk/Wendigo story that appeared in 11-page installments Hulk #7 - 9, as well as those issues' covers. In 2010 he illustrated Ultimate X #1-5, his first work for the Ultimate Marvel line of comic books.

Outside the field of comics, Adams has provided illustrations for various magazines, such as PlayStation Magazine, as well as toy designs, video games, and X-Men-themed cans of Chef Boyardee pasta. A recreation of Barry Windsor-Smith's classic cover to Avengers #100 that Adams drew on a whim was later used by Marvel Comics as a variant cover to an actual issue, and in July 2019, as the image of a 500-piece jigsaw puzzle licensed by Aquarius.

On November 30, 2011, Gumby Comics/Wildcard Ink published a single volume collecting Adams' previous two specials featuring Gumby. The book was initially called Gumby's Arthur Adams Specials, but was eventually published with a sticker covering Adams' name on the cover, effectively renaming the book Gumby's Spring Specials. According to Rich Johnston of Bleeding Cool, this was done on Adams' request, who wanted nothing to do with the publisher, and took action to keep his name off the book's cover. The book is nonetheless sold by merchants such as Mile High Comics under its originally intended name.

In 2016 he provided the illustration for a satirical piece in GQ magazine that imagined a number of controversial public figures as comic book supervillains, including Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, Sepp Blatter, Martin Shkreli and Kris Jenner. Later that year, Dynamite Entertainment announced it that would be producing limited edition poly-resin busts of female characters for its Women of Dynamite line, based on Adams' renditions of those characters and sculpted by Jason Smith. The first bust was a Red Sonja bust debuting in November, followed by a Vampirella bust in February 2017.

In February 2020, Marvel released Marvel Monograph: The Art Of Arthur Adams, a 120-page omnibus collection of Adams' art.

In April 2022, Adams was reported among the more than three dozen comics creators who contributed to Operation USA's benefit anthology book, Comics for Ukraine: Sunflower Seeds, a project spearheaded by IDW Publishing Special Projects Editor Scott Dunbier, whose profits would be donated to relief efforts for Ukrainian refugees resulting from the February 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. Adams would provide one of the covers to the softcover edition of the book.

Though his work for Marvel takes priority for him, he also makes a significant amount of his income from private commissions, which he produces when time permits. In a 2017 interview he stated that if he did interior work again, it would more likely be on a creator-owned project, like Monkeyman And O'Brien.

Technique and materials

Adams' art style is noted for its high level of detail, and he has a reputation of being a "tight" penciller. He states that he works at a slow pace, which limits the amount of work he does. When he penciled Fantastic Four #347–349 in 1990 for regular writer/illustrator Walter Simonson, who needed a break in order to catch up on his own work on that title, Adams managed to pencil the first two issues in five weeks and four weeks, respectively, but was considerably late on the third. In 1997 Adams stated that he could produce a page of either pencils or inks in a day. In a 2007 interview, he stated he tends to produce  to  of a page a day, and can also ink at that rate, but can do up to two pages in a day if he is under pressure, as when he produced Cloak and Dagger #9 (1986) in 22 days, for example. Another example is the 1989 one-shot Excalibur: Mojo Mayhem, which due to changing deadlines, he completed at a quicker pace. Adams singles out one page of that book that he drew in a half-hour as his personal record for speed, but decries its poor quality. Adams is also noted for the humor in his work, as with, for example, the extraneous characters he places in cameo appearances in the backgrounds of his comics, as when he drew Gumby in the panels of Longshot, or the forms in which he depicted the shapeshifting alien Warlock in his The New Mutants work.

Adams prefers to work from a plot rather than from a full script, a result of Ann Nocenti's dense Longshot scripts, though he has worked from a full script, as with his work on Three Dimensional Alien Worlds for Pacific Comics and The Authority. Though he says he prefers group books because they more easily allow him to hide his "bad layout skills", he is nonetheless comfortable with solo character books. He begins drawing thumbnail layouts from the story he is given, either at home or in a public place. The thumbnails range in size from 2 inches x 3 inches to half the size of the printed comic book. He or an assistant will then enlarge the thumbnails and trace them onto illustration board with a non-photo blue pencil, sometimes using a Prismacolor light blue pencil, because it is not too waxy, and erases easily. When working on the final illustration board, he does so on a large drawing board when in his basement studio, and a lapboard when sitting on his living room couch. After tracing the thumbnails, he will then clarify details with another light blue pencil, and finalize the details with a Number 2 pencil. He drew the first three chapters of "Jonni Future" at twice the printed comic size, and also drew the fifth chapter, "The Garden of the Sklin", at a size larger than standard, in order to render more detail than usual in those stories. For a large poster image with a multitude of characters, he will go over the figure outlines with a marker in order to emphasize them. He will use photographic reference when appropriate, as when he draws things that he is not accustomed to.

In the early part of his career, Adams' pencils were embellished by inkers such as Whilce Portacio, Dick Giordano and Terry Austin. When Adams attempted to ink his own work before becoming a professional, he initially used a Croquille pen, but after meeting Mike Mignola, he was spurred to switch to a brush, which he used for approximately a year before returning to a Croquille. He eventually began to ink his own work, which he prefers to do. Beginning in the late 1990s, he began using the Staedtler Pigment Liner, a felt-tip pen. He prefers pens to brushes because pens feel "looser", and cited this as his reason for using felt-tip pens when he inked "Jonni Future".

Although Adams has experimented with painting with watercolor and oil paints (his 1989 covers for Appleseed were rendered with a combination of ink, watercolor and color pencil), his color work is so sporadic that he says he has to relearn what he has forgotten in the interim each time, and is usually dissatisfied with the results. Because a significant portion of his income is derived from selling his original artwork, he is reluctant to learn how to produce his work digitally.

Influence

Adams is one of the most popular and widely imitated artists in the American comics industry. His style is attributed as a direct influence on the artists who would found Image Comics, and the other popular artists of the 1990s associated with that era, such as Jim Lee and Rob Liefeld. Timothy Callahan of Comic Book Resources points to the use of dynamic action poses, idealized figures, costume designs featuring numerous accessories, a preference for copious crosshatching over brushwork in rendering, and the depiction of cybernetic limbs and other reflective surfaces seen in those artists' styles as being derived from Adams' work, in particular his run on Longshot. Callahan also points out that the detailed webbing for which Todd McFarlane became known during his run on Spider-Man had previously been used by Adams on the cover of Longshot #4, alhough Callahan notes that Adams did not necessarily originate these elements, but was influenced himself by Michael Golden and Micronauts, he states that Adams popularized them. Adams' conception of Spider-Man with a large-eyed mask, detailed "spaghetti"-style webbing, and more contorted poses while web-swinging can be seen in Web of Spider-Man Annual #2, published in June 1986 (approximately 1½ years before Todd McFarlane's first published Spider-Man work, The Amazing Spider-Man #298). Noting also that Adams' Longshot pencils were inked by Whilce Portacio and an uncredited Scott Williams, Callahan refers to that book as "early Image, in primal form". Artists whose work has been viewed as imitative of Adams' style, or who have named Adams as an influence include Joe Madureira, J. Scott Campbell, Ed McGuinness, Aaron Kuder, Shelby Robertson, Olivier Coipel, and Nick Bradshaw.

Personal life
Adams is married to fellow comics artist Joyce Chin, whom he met at the 1996 San Diego Comic-Con. Chin has inked Adams' pencils, and Adams has inked Chin's, as on Xena: Warrior Princess #4 (January 2000). As of 1997 they lived in Portland, Oregon. They later moved to San Francisco, California, before settling in Walnut Creek.

Adams does not have a favorite character to draw, having remarked in a 2015 interview, "I'm just happy that they pay me to draw." However, he dislikes drawing the Punisher, because he believes that he is not adept at drawing guns. His favorite Godzilla film is Godzilla vs. The Thing, and his other favorites include Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster and Monster Zero. His favorite color is green.

Regarding religion, Adams has stated that he does not believe in "any particular god". He does not drive.

Awards
1986 Russ Manning Most Promising Newcomer Award
1988 Eisner Award for Best Single Issue (with Bob Burden for Gumby Summer Fun Special #1)
2017 Inkpot Award

Bibliography

Interior work
Three Dimensional Alien Worlds: "Away Off There Amid the Softly Winking Lights" (with Bruce Jones, one-shot, Pacific Comics, 1984)
Longshot #1–6 (with Ann Nocenti, Marvel, 1985)
New Mutants Special Edition #1: "Home is Where the Heart is" (with Chris Claremont, Marvel, 1985)
Uncanny X-Men Annual #9–10, 12, 14 (with Chris Claremont, Marvel, 1985–1990)
Batman #400: "Resurrection Night!" (with Doug Moench, among other artists, DC Comics, 1986)
Cloak and Dagger #9: "The Lady and the Unicorn" (with Bill Mantlo, Marvel, 1986)
Web of Spider-Man Annual #2: "Wake Me Up I Gotta Be Dreaming" (with Ann Nocenti, Marvel, 1986)
Action Comics Annual #1: "Skeeter" (with John Byrne, DC Comics, 1987)
Gumby's Summer Fun Special: "Summer Fun Adventure" (with Bob Burden, one-shot, Comico, 1987)
Gumby's Winter Fun Special: "Winter Fun Adventure" (with Steve Purcell, one-shot, Comico, 1988)
Wonder Woman Annual #1: "Chapter 1: The Diving Bird" (with George Pérez, DC Comics, 1988)
X-Factor #41–42 (with Louise Simonson, Marvel, 1989)
Excalibur: Mojo Mayhem (with Chris Claremont, one-shot, Marvel, 1989)
Fantastic Four #347–349 (with Walter Simonson, Marvel, 1990–1991)
Marvel Holiday Special #1 (with Walter Simonson, Marvel, 1991)
Armageddon: Inferno #1, 3–4 (with John Ostrander, DC Comics, 1992)
Godzilla Color Special: "Godzilla: King of the Monsters" (with Randy Stradley, one-shot, Dark Horse, 1992)
Creepy 1993 Fearbook: "Bugs" (with Kurt Busiek, Harris Comics, 1993)
Urban Legends: "King Kong vs. Godzilla" (one-shot, Dark Horse, 1993)
Universal Monsters: Creature from the Black Lagoon (with Steve Moncuse, one-shot, Dark Horse, 1993)
Monkeyman and O'Brien (Dark Horse, 1993–1999):
 Dark Horse Presents #80, 100, 118–119 (1993–1997)
 Hellboy: Seed of Destruction (co-feature, 1994)
 Monkeyman and O'Brien #1–3 (1996)
 Dark Horse Extra #1–7 (1998–1999)
The Big Book of Urban Legends: "The Spider in the Hairdo" (with Robert Boyd, Jan Harold Brunvald and Robert Loren Fleming, Paradox Press, 1994)
Negative Burn #18: "Alan Moore's Songbook: Trampling Tokyo" (with Alan Moore, Caliber Press, 1994)
Asylum #1: "Warchild" (with Eric Stephenson, Extreme Comics, 1995)
Aliens: Havoc #1 (with Mark Schultz, among other artists, Dark Horse, 1997)
Gen¹³ (Wildstorm, 1997–1998):
 Gen¹³/Generation X: "Generation Gap" (with Brandon Choi, one-shot, 1997)
 Gen¹³ 3D Special: "Mauling" (one-shot, 1997)
 Gen¹³/Monkeyman and O'Brien #1–2 (1998)
 Gen¹³ #34: "I Want My Mommaaaaa!!" (with John Arcudi, 1998)
Starship Troopers #1–2 (with Bruce Jones and Mitch Byrd, Dark Horse, 1997)
Legends of the DC Universe 80-Page Giant #2: "The Great Unknown!" (with Karl Kesel, DC Comics, 1998)
Danger Girl Special: "Delusions of Grandeur" (with J. Scott Campbell and Andy Hartnell, Cliffhanger, 2000)
Superman vol. 2 #165: "Help!" (with Jeph Loeb, DC Comics, 2001)
Orion #10, 12: "Legends of Apokolips" (with Walter Simonson, DC Comics, 2001)
The Authority #27–28: "Brave New World, Parts Two and Three" (with Mark Millar and Grant Morrison (uncredited), Wildstorm, 2002)
Tom Strong's Terrific Tales #1–4, 6–10: "Jonni Future" (with Steve Moore, America's Best Comics, 2002–2004)
The Many Worlds of Tesla Strong (with Alan Moore and Peter K. Hogan, among other artists, one-shot, Wildstorm, 2003)
Action Comics Annual #10 : "The Many Deaths of Superman" (DC Comics, 2007)
 Countdown to Final Crisis #14: "The Origin of Gorilla Grodd" (with Scott Beatty, co-feature, DC Comics, 2008)
King-Size Hulk: "Where Monsters Dwell" (with Jeph Loeb, Marvel, 2008)
Hulk #7–9 (with Jeph Loeb, Marvel, 2008)
Ultimate Comics: X (with Jeph Loeb, Marvel, 2010–2011)
AvX: VS #6 (with Jeph Loeb, Marvel, 2012, pg 18)
All-New X-Men #25 (Marvel, 2014)

Cover work
Marvel Fanfare #13 (Marvel Comics, 1984)
Marvel Team-Up #141 (Marvel, 1984)
Micronauts: The New Voyages #2 (Marvel, 1984)
The Defenders #142 (Marvel, 1985)
The New Mutants Special Edition (Marvel, 1985)
X-Men Annual #9 (Marvel, 1985)
The New Mutants #38–39 (Marvel, 1986)
Firestar #3 (Marvel, 1986)
Classic X-Men #1–23 (Marvel, 1986–1988)
Daredevil #238–239 (Marvel, 1987)
Uncanny X-Men #214, 218 (Marvel, 1987)
The Spectre Annual #1 (DC Comics, 1988)
Marvel Age Annual #4 (Marvel, 1988)
The Last of the Viking Heroes #7 (Genesis West Comics, 1989)
Tommy and the Monsters #1 (New Comics Group, 1989)
Appleseed Book Two #1–5 (Eclipse Comics, 1989)
The Impossible Man Summer Vacation Spectacular (Marvel, 1990)
Marvel Super-Heroes #6 (1991)
Conan the Barbarian #247–249 (Marvel, 1991)
Animal Confidential (Dark Horse Comics, 1992)
Vampirella: Summer Nights #1 (Harris Comics, 1992)
Marvel Holiday Special '92 (Marvel, 1993)
Showcase '93 #1 (DC Comics, 1993)
Superman: Legacy of Superman #1 (DC Comics, 1993)
Dark Horse Comics #11 (Dark Horse, 1993)
Comics' Greatest World: Vortex #2 (Comics' Greatest World, 1993)
Out of the Vortex #7 (Dark Horse, 1994)
Classic Star Wars: A New Hope #1 (Dark Horse, 1994)
Division 13 #1 (Comics' Greatest World, 1994)
Medal of Honor #2 (Dark Horse, 1994)
Gen¹³ #1 (Wildstorm, 1995)
New Men #12 (Extreme Studios, 1995)
Godzilla #1-7 (Dark Horse, 1995)
Avengelyne #3 (Maximum Press, 1995)
Badrock Annual #1 (Image, 1995)
Godzilla vs. Hero Zero #1 (Dark Horse, 1995)
Leonard Nimoy's Primortals: Origins #1-2 (Tekno Comix, 1995)
Oblivion #1 (Comico, 1995)
Leonard Nimoy's Primortals #13-14 (Tekno Comix, 1996)
Untold Tales of Spider-Man #17 (Marvel, 1996)
The Real Adventures of Jonny Quest #9 (Dark Horse, 1997)
Star Kid #1 (Dark Horse, 1998)
Crimson #2 (Cliffhanger, 1998)
Buffy the Vampire Slayer #1, 6 (Dark Horse, 1998–1999)
Daring Escapes #1 (Image, 1998)
Clerks: Holiday Special #1 (Oni Press, 1998)
Darkchylde: The Legacy #2-3 (Image, 1998)
Nathan Never #1-4 (Dark Horse, 1999)
Wildcats #1 (Wildstorm, 1999)
Lady Death: The Rapture #1 (Chaos!, 1999)
Purgatori: Goddess Rising #1 (Chaos!, 1999)
JLA Annual #3 (DC Comics, 1999)
Batman Annual #23 (DC Comics, 1999)
Aquaman Annual #5 (DC Comics, 1999)
Wonder Woman Annual #8 (DC Comics, 1999)
The Flash Annual #12 (DC Comics, 1999)
Superman Annual #11 (DC Comics, 1999)
Green Lantern Annual #8 (DC Comics, 1999)
Martian Manhunter Annual #2 (DC Comics, 1999)
Tellos #4 (Image, 1999)
Tom Strong #4 (America's Best Comics, 1999)
Lionheart #2 (Awesome, 1999)
X-Men #100 (Marvel, 2000)
X-Men: The Movie Special Edition #1 (Marvel, 2000)
Generation X #67-72 (Marvel, 2000–2001)
Kin #6 (Top Cow, 2000)
Gatecrasher #5 (Black Bull, 2000)
X-Men Annual '00 (Marvel, 2000)
Deadpool #50 (Marvel, 2001)
Defenders #2 (Marvel, 2001)
Cavewoman: Pangaean Sea #0 (Basement, 2001)
Angel and the Ape #1-4 (Vertigo, 2001–2002)
The Authority #29 (Wildstorm, 2002)
Thundercats #1 (Wildstorm, 2002)
Tom Strong's Terrific Tales #5, 12 (America's Best Comics, 2003–2005)
JLA: Scary Monsters #1-6 (DC Comics, 2003)
Magdalena/ Vampirella #1 (Top Cow, 2003)
Wildguard: Casting Call #3 (Image, 2003)
Witchblade /Magdalena/ Vampirella #1 (Top Cow, 2004)
Alter Nation #1 (Image, 2004)
Action Comics #814-821 (DC Comics, 2004–2005)
Red Sonja #1-2, 25, 50 (Dynamite, 2005–2010)
Worldstorm #1 (Wildstorm, 2006)
The Authority #1 (Wildstorm, 2006)
Justice League of America #5 (DC Comics, 2007)
Manhunter #26 (DC Comics, 2007)
Midnighter #2 (Wildstorm, 2007)
Tales of the Unexpected #7 (DC Comics, 2007)
Avengers Classic #1-12 (Marvel, 2007–2008)
Booster Gold #1-2 (DC Comics, 2007)
Countdown Presents: The Search for Ray Palmer — Wildstorm #1 (DC Comics, 2007)
Fantastic Four #551, 583–584, 600 (Marvel, 2008–2011)
The Incredible Hulk #112 (Marvel, 2008)
The Incredible Hercules #113-115 (Marvel, 2008)
Thor vol. 3 #6 (Marvel, 2008)
The Perhapanauts #1 (Image, 2008)
Invincible #50 (Image, 2008)
Brit #7 (Image, 2008)
Marvel Apes #0, 4 (2008–2009)
Agents of Atlas #1 (Marvel, 2009)
Hulk #10-12 (Marvel, 2009)
Jurassic Park #2 (IDW Publishing, 2010)
New Mutants #15, 25 (Marvel, 2010–2011)
New Mutants Forever #2, 4 (Marvel, 2010–2011)
Wolverine #2 (Marvel, 2010)
Carnage #1-2 (Marvel, 2010–2011)
Warlord of Mars: Dejah Thoris #1-5 (Dynamite, 2011)
Avengers: The Children's Crusade #3 (Marvel, 2011)
Captain America: Man Out of Time #1 (Marvel, 2011)
Young Allies #6 (Marvel, 2011)
Avengers Prime #5 (Marvel, 2011)
Thunderbolts #154 (Marvel, 2011)
Journey into Mystery #622 (Marvel, 2011)
Astonishing X-Men #43 (Marvel, 2011)
Godzilla: Legends #1-5 (IDW Publishing, 2011)
The Fearless #1-12 (Marvel, 2011–2012)
Godzilla #1 (IDW Publishing, 2012)
Secret Avengers #22-25, 29-37 (Marvel, 2012–2013)
Battle of the Atom #1-5 (Marvel, 2013)
Uncanny Avengers Annual #1 (Marvel, 2014)
Immortal X-Men #9 (Marvel, 2023)

References

External links

Arthur Adams at Mike's Amazing World of Comics
Arthur Adams at the Unofficial Handbook of Marvel Comics Creators
Art Adams Image Gallery at Comic Art Community

Sarahtika, Dhania (September 12, 2017). "Fan-Favorite Arthur Adams Talks About His Journey as Comic Book Artist". Jakarta Globe

1963 births
20th-century American male artists
21st-century American male artists
American comics artists
American comics writers
DC Comics people
Eisner Award winners
Living people
Marvel Comics people
People from Holyoke, Massachusetts
People from Vacaville, California
Inkpot Award winners

Arthur Adams (comics)