Adam Kadmon

Sean Cloran asked if there was "an actor that provided the spark of inspiration for Adam in Midnight, Mass. (like Famke Janssen for Julia)?"

Midnight, Mass. was my Vertigo comic about a glamorous, famous, married couple of paranormal investigators, Adam and Julia Kadmon who operated out of a mansion in the coastal town of Midnight, Massachusetts. The comic book was published in the early 2000s but went through a number of incarnations going back to about 1988. The earliest versions did not really use any one as models for the characters, but I found as I worked on other projects that using actors, or other known people as approximate stand-ins for characters gave a better sense of what you a writer was looking for from an artist.

When I got to thinking about Midnight, Mass. again shortly before it finally became a reality I had an epiphany of Julia being Famke Janssen which really brought together all of the loose threads and ideas I had for the series and definitely cemented the character of Julia for me.

Her husband, Adam took a bit longer to arrive at.

My initial thoughts were that he should be someone like Peter Weller in his early to mid-thirties. I didn't think he was exactly what I was looking for, but he was close.

I tried a few other people including Bauhaus front man, Peter Murphy, who was also in the ballpark area, but not as close as Peter Weller. He also had some personal style baggage I didn't want imposed on the character. I wanted to stay away from anything Goth, or with any kind of edge that would soon become dated. I wanted a couple that was more akin to Cary Grant and Grace Kelly, but would also be convincing as a couple that could kick the crap out of ghosts and monsters. Peter Murphy was not it.

Then the day came that I was leafing through an issue of TV Guide and came across this page...

I'd never seen Angel (and still haven't) and have never seen Glen Quinn in anything, but this photograph jumped out at me and announced itself as Adama Kadmon. Subsequent photos I've found of Glen Quinn  did not all exude Adam Kadmon like this one did, and I had no idea that in some photos he would seem short, scrawny and kind of weasel-like, which were qualities I definitely did not want Adam to have. This is the photo I passed along as reference.

Below are the initial sketches of Adam Kadmon by Jesus Saiz.

I really like his version of Adam even though it strays from an exact likeness. Because of Jesus's design I would later associate two other actors with Adam Kadmon simply because of the uncanny resemblance, and in imaginary movie casting they'd be my first choices to go to. They would be Jonathan Rhys-Meyers and Cillian Murphy.

Here's Paul Lee's initial sketches for the character which definitely are based on Glen Quinn.