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Adam WHO?A brief bio of The ManAdam WARREN. The guy that is responsible for the American version of the Dirty Pair comic. (Technically not Manga, since it's not Japanese...) 
Born in New Hampshire in 1967, an experemental serum promised Adam incredible powers at the cost of his humanity. Seeing no drawback to the plan, Adam was shocked to discover that the drug left him mentaly deficient, surly, and unsuitable for any decent ocupation. Forced to choose between the only two professions that he was capable of; glorified cemetary gardener and comic (or "funny-book") artist, Adam chose the latter, and bidding a tear stained goodbye to the neatly mowed plots, enrolled in the Joe Kubert School of Cartoon and Graphic Art in Jersey. Whilst doing cartoony comic stuff and studying anatomy..ah heh...Adam was exposed to the strange radiation emitted from an alien artifact later identifed as one of the many anime versions of The Dirty Pair. The strange beams altered the budding artist's mind to such a point that..well.. let's hear it from the man himself.
"I was initially attracted to the DP concept, circa 1985 (!), for several reasons . . . First and foremost, the premise was FUN, full of high energy and humor. This was in distinct opposition to my previous work, which was adolescently angst-ridden, tortured and painfully earnest--and worse, LAME. Second, this seemed an ideal opportunity to utilize, within the American comics idiom (pardon the pretentious phrase), character designs and storytelling devices derived from manga, which I had recently discovered. Third, I knew that drawing cartoons about bikini-clad crimefighters was CERTAIN to gain me acclaim as a serious artist." All this twisted creativity would have led to naught, had it not been for Toren Smith, a man whos mind had long since been unhinged by his dealings with stubborn corporate anime/manga tycoons. Here's what he had to say. "...About that time, I had seen the work of Adam Warren over at Jim Hudnall's place. I don't know if Jim has ever forgiven me for stealing Adam, because I think Jim was interested in doing some work with him. [laughs] But as soon as I looked at his work...in fact, the sample thing that I had was a Dirty Pair story that Adam had done while at the Kubert School. It was so great I was immediately inspired and I started trying to make arrangements to get the Dirty Pair so we could do an American version of it. There'd never been a Dirty Pair manga so I knew we'd have to do something original and I was interested in writing it. Since I'd been so busy doing all these other things and working on the translations and also I was still involved in trying to get the animation stuff going before I realized that it was a futile waste of time, I'd been neglecting my original writing. I'd done some work before for Epic and for Eclipse and for some other people before that. I felt here's a chance for me to get back into the writing again. So I contacted Adam and, of course, he was just dying to do it. When I went back to Japan, I began laying out the groundwork. It turned out to be a real nightmare because I started by contacting Nippon Sunrise who owned the rights to the animation characters. Negotiating with them was not a productive exercise. This went on for months until I finally realized I was simply being run around in circles. At that point, I went off to the original writer who owned the copyright of the characters--Haruka Takachino. I met him at Daicon and had gone out drinking with him a couple of times in Tokyo. He looked at Adam's work, liked it and liked a couple of ideas I had and said, "Go for it." I said, "What about Nippon Sunrise?" He said, "As long as you change the character designs, it's none of their business." And the rest 'tis history. Save for the fact that Adam wasn't really satisfied with the first Dirty Pair story - he was actually quite embarresed by the art-work.. and only grudgingly let it be re-released as an "aniversary edition thingy". He's also writing his own material again - and its damn good (read "fatal but not serious" - it kicks ass) Adam Warren now lives in a sacred cave somewhere, with only his drawing board, coffee, Sony Playstation™, and rabid hordes of wild animals to keep him company. His passtimes include cultivating a sense of elitism about being an otaku before anyone knew the word existed, talking about himself in the third-person in biographies, and fending off questions from fans as to when the now legendary Dirty Pair/Superman crossover is coming out. Oh, he draws stuff too. Back to top |