Neal Adam, a legendary comic book artist who depicted superheroes such as Batman, Green Arrow, Green Lantern, the Avengers, and many others, has died at the age of 80.

His death was confirmed by his daughter, who told Variety. In 1998, Adams was inducted into the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame, one of the industry’s top accolades.

A year later, he was inducted into the Harvey Awards’ Jack Kirby Hall of Fame, and in 2019, he was inducted into the Inkwell Awards’ Joe Sinnott Hall of Fame.

He began his professional career in comic books by sketching for Archie Comics in 1959 after being refused by DC Comics. He was born in New York City on June 15, 1941.

In early 1968, Adams sketched Batman and the supernatural hero the Spectre, two of the most famous characters in his long and successful career, during the Silver Age of Comics.

In 1969, Adams began freelance work for both DC and Marvel, when he created the X-Men and the popular Kree-Skrull War plotline in the Avengers comic.

After working on a ‘X-Men’ run with writer Dennis O’Neil, the two collaborated on the ‘Batman’ series, where they revived the Caped Crusader and returned him to his darker, broodier beginnings.

He also co-created Ra’s Al Ghul and Man-Bat, as well as assisting in the creation of some of Batman’s most memorable villains in new tales, such as the Joker and Two-Face.

What Exactly Happened To Adams?

As per his wife, Marilyn Adams, who notified The Hollywood Reporter, Neal Adams passed on Thursday in New York from sepsis complications. His daughter confirmed this to Variety as well.

Adams is survived by his wife Marilyn, five children, six granddaughters, and a great-grandson, according to Variety.

Neal announced in a video posted on his Facebook page on June 6 that he had been battling sepsis, a life-threatening blood infection that put him in the NYU ICU for 11 days. “I’m quite sure I should be dead,” he said. He lost 40 pounds and half his muscular tone as a result of the sickness, which also caused him to become insane (“I went to hell”) and confine him to a walker, which he has since abandoned.

The doctors told Marilyn Adams, Neal’s wife and a long-time Continuity colleague, that they anticipated Neal to die because 40 to 60 percent of sepsis patients die. Marilyn sat by her husband’s bedside for hours, disoriented but unaffected, until he suddenly recovered, exactly like in a comic book!

On June 12, a photo posted to Facebook showed Neal and Marilyn beaming as they stood high above the Rockaways surf at Bar Marseille in Queens, accompanied by their family. As in vintage photographs of FDR, the wheelchair is hardly visible.