"Wuxtry, Boy Commandos!" - June 2o25

Previously, in Wuxtry...

[ Welcome to the Continuity Comics Incoherence Crusade! ]

Echo of FuturePast #1-9 (1982-84) - written & illustrated by Various + Neal Adams

Y'know what I've never noticed in a comix anthology before?  Excess language in the indicia to the effect that "Any similarities to real people and places in fiction AND SEMI-FICTION is purely co-incidental."

I have a wealth of questions.  Like:  Semi-fiction?  Is that like semi-erect?

Also:  Am I going to regret this?  Or only semi-regret it?

Yeah, this is a weird way to open up criticisms of an anthology comic.  Who reads an indicia?  

Us 80s babies, that's who.  In the 80s, almost every publisher who wasn't DC or Marvel would stuff some tiny print gag into the publisher's legalese-- if it was an indy or underground work, and you were the sort of nerd who reads ingredients lists on cereal boxes, there was a wealth of dopey jokes to be discovered.  Rip-Off Press, Strawberry Jam Comics, even Fantagraphics loved to make tiny snark in their tiny legal text.  

Now I'm not suggesting Neal Adams knew how to make jokes...  But it seemed like there were maybe two too many words in the indicia, so I gave it a scan.  Whereupon I hit the wholly needless qualifier, "AND SEMI-FICTION" and was like, doubleyou tee eff, Neal.  Like, dude had to pay a typesetter to lay out the indicia, every issue.  He could have shaved Nths of a penny off every ish if he'd just trimmed that sub-clause.  But he made his people put it in.  It's on every issue of Echoes-- and having verified that lunacy, I had to doublecheck Megalith™, Ms. Mystic™, Armor™ & Silver Streak™, etc.

Every book, every box of legal text, that meaningless, superfluous modifier:  "AND SEMI-FICTION".

Colour me semi-incredulous.  Surely a lawyer didn't tell Adams he would be in a hot cauldron of hot lawsuits if he didn't CYA each & every issue of Continuity Comics.  Surely that was Neal Adams' own insistence.  But why...?  I haven't the foggiest as to why.  Like did Neal think, "At some point my hollow earth obsession will be revealed, exposing Neal 'Man-Bat' Adams as a secret curator of The Truly Truthiest Truths, so let's dub this Serialized Graphic Entertainment for the Mature Readers crowd a piece of SEMI-FICTION!  After all, I'm going to make a wild pitch to school systems & parents & sketchy educators everywhere to provide kids with Continuity Comics™, with my boy Megalith™ perched astride a weight bench, hawking Continuity Comics™ as an aid to literacy!"  Possibly maybe.

Like the typesetting bill for the house ads in these books must have been some national debt shit, already.  Every character had a ™ hanging off their name like the metafictional equivalent of a skin-tag.  What's an extra two words in the indicia?

Hey, kids, comics!  This anthology is notable for, let's be charitable, two items.

First is Larry Hama & Michael Golden's 'Bucky O'Hare', the best funny-animal breakout of genre-blending violence in the 80s since Eastman & Laird.  Some of the first few pages of art are maybe too busy, but past that first instalment Michael Golden is on goddamned fire.  There's not one single part of one single page that feels phoned-in.  This is committed comix.  I'm not precisely sure how this piece of quality wound up in Continuity's shop, but I'm guessing Hama & Adams had a mutually beneficial agreement.  So, a Get all around.  Bucky O'Hare™ had more longevity in licensing terms than Captain Power™, that's for goddamned certain...

Did I get a single Bucky O'Hare toy for christmas?  Hells naw.  Did I ever see the cartoon?  Never.  Did I receive every poorly-articulated Captain Power figure, and accessory, and VHS cassette?  Confoundingly, yes.  My parents were poor anti-war hippy-dippy refugees from the 60s, stranded in Reagan's america, so they braved the malls and bought the latest military-entertainment fad in its entirety for their addled, barely-literate crotchspawn.

So the only time I saw Bucky O'Hare was in the spinny rack, if I could reach high enough to pluck Echo of Futurepast.  These comix were weirdly reactionary in a way that only makes sense if you knew Larry Hama was the kind of Marvel employee who'd bring an uzi to work in his suitcase.  Like, Bucky O'Hare isn't written for kids in the slightest.  It's all down to Michael Golden's lines & design, then as now.  That's the glory, that's the gold.  So it's good to finally get to read this stuff, forty-odd years late.  I mean, it's really good.  For a kid's comic not-for-kids.

But--  you may ask, though I'll never know, interactivity online being what it is  --what's the SECOND notable item in this anthology, of which I have already said several small mountains of nothing?

Why, it's Neal Adams.  Anybody who knows Continuity knows it's all the Neal Adams show.  Neal's the humble household name behind Man-Bat, and Ra's Ah Ghul, and Deadman, and Green Arrow's teenage sidekick Speedy's dramatic drug addiction, and Superman versus Muhammad Ali!  Neal's the ad hack/genius whose character design skills are renowned throughout the industry, and whose pyrotechnic reputation is only slightly dampened by his fragmentary & inscrutably leaden touch with dialogue!  If you don't know who Neal Adams is, you're just not paying attention to Neal Adams!!!

So:  the second notable item is...  some recycled Neal Adams.  Sometime in the late 70s / early 80s, Neal made a comic to go with a record.  It was a thing everybody did back then:  make a book to go with a record.  In this instance, it was a Frankenstein / Dracula / Wolfman cash-in.  Neal being Neal, he never threw anything aside, so when his Frankenstein / Dracula / Wolfman comic didn't make it to the masses--  I think the publisher, Power Records, either dropped the project, or it folded  --he opted to palette-swap some details in his Universal Monsters rip-off to prevent being sued.  Dracula ends up blonde with mutton chops & wears a bright orange suit with a skyblue cape.  Frankenstein's monster is balding and... Frankenstein's simp nephew inherited him?  And the wolfman, in a delicious twist, is a standard model hammer horror victim, a pneumatically buxom blonde chick who faints a lot.

None of this is played for laughs, exactly.  It's all played as straight as anything in a Neal Adams comic-- which is to say, as dialed up and tweaked out as any piece of exploitation cinema.

Bucky O'Hare & Neal Adams' Frankenstein are the twin pillars of Echo of Futurepast, appearing in half the issues of the anthology's too-brief run.  There are other draws:  Alex "godmode" Toth & Jordi Bernet doing 'Torpedo' in Full Colour (swoon); and some fashionably dystopian euro-comix like 'The Damned City'.  But these late-in-the-day side acts don't draw a crowd, presumably due to the anthology's other headliners.  Readers never wanted Arthur Suydam doing grossout sex comedy riffs with warty giants-- I mean, ugh! --or Jean Teulé's 'Virus', or Lindley Farley's 'Tippy-Toe Jones'.  Look 'em up for yourself.  Tell me I'm wrong.

Nine issues in two years, annnnd curtain.  Neal opts out of the anthology game in favour of Continuity going fulltime superhero drek.

Echo... is never quite as interesting an anthology as Marvel's Epic mag was, and it's never as entertainingly scattershot as Metal Hurlant-- even though Echoes is thirstier'n either one!  Ultimately Echo is unabashedly Neal, humblebragging his personal tastes & swingin' dick industry connections, straining and failing to compete with reputable, sexier anthologies.

It's a goddamned mess, and it ended too soon, and I'm still trying to figure it out.  Like childhood, rilly.

Cinco por Infinito! a.k.a. Neal Adams' Esteban Maroto's The Zero Patrol #1-5 (1968-70/1984-89) - created & written & illustrated by Esteban Maroto; remixed by Neal Adams; coloured by Polly Law, Sherri Wolfgang, Paul Mounts & Eva Grindberg

These are really great.  Neal doesn't fuck with the art much on the first couple issues.  In the main his contributions are in the re-editing / dialogue and the covers--  the covers are ALL great examples of Adams own skills as an action illustrator.  Overall he doesn't even manage to dumb the story down much, aside from the humour, which is probably best described as used car dealer wit.

Of course there's your usual groovy barbarian space princess stuff, Flash Gordon flavoured romps on worlds that look impatient for Barbarella.  That Adams picked this to translate is indicative of his tastes & personality on multiple levels.  It's a strikingly horny comic full of swinging chicks who don't believe in bras, and square-jawed men of action (with the token scruffy longhair), and it's very, very Op Art / Visual Appeal.  I'm sure the original strip is sexist as hell:  it was the 60s.  Being recycled sci-fi from the 60s meant the retro aesthetic only enhanced the psychedelic, chiaroscuro inkstyle, which owes no small debt to Alberto Breccia.  I mean it's Good Shit:  Neal knows it's good shit, and he can't do much to fuck it up, so he doesn't!  The colourists he selected are all damned fine; a particular standout who I've never heard of before is Polly Law, who does some sublime watercolour & airbrush work that ranks with the palette of Jordie Bellaire.

As I continue with this thing I'd sincerely like to learn more about the women working in the colouring dept of Continuity Comics.  During research I stumbled across an assertion from Trevor von Eeden (who did a little time on most of the major titles:  Megalith, Toyboy, Ms. Mystic, Urth 4) to the effect that Lynn Varley started her colouring career at Continuity, as one of their staff.  Being a colourist at Continuity in the earliest days meant the individual was a girlfriend of some poor schmuck stuck drawing Neal's capeshit.  That was the relationship between von Eeden & Varley, until Frank Miller skulked in, twirling his weasel mustache, to spirit Varley away to slave over cels of Ronin & The Dark Knight Returns.  The fink!  I guess Miller felt mighty white about it because later he offered Eeden a job drawing some stuff, but Eeden was like "I'm good."

Not a lick of the above says anything about the WORK these women were accomplishing, keeping Continuity coloured-- one of the principle reasons I'm pursuing this project is to study the hand colouring on these books, as Continuity was producing some of the best-looking books on the racks,  starting here & carrying on throughout Echo of Futurepast.  It's a damned shame there's so little written about the production end of these comix, beyond the catty mockery Continuity received at the hands of Brian Hibbs & The Comics Journal.  There's got to be a ton of good backstage chatter about who inked what when, and under what deadline conditions...!

Anyhoo:  Zero Patrol was a cool book, and I didn't expect it.  I think Neal was using it to prove colour printing tech for furture books, like Megalith & Shaman, both of which were being pimped with backup comix drawn by crazyman Adams hisself.  Groovy all around.

Revengers™ featuring Megalith,™ Armor™ & the Silver Streak™ #1-4 (1984-85) - written & illustrated by Neal Adams & probably two or three of his flying monkeys

It hits different, this book, this year.

Not because there's any substantive difference between now & the last time I browsed--  last year.

As my husband will cheerily confirm, it's still an ugly book.  The art is ugly.  The lettering is kludge incarnate.  And the syntax of the dialogue could splode the tread on a halftrack like a landmine, if you leaned a smidge too hard.  These are comix that are hard to love.

For instance:  issue one of 'Revengers™ featuring Megalith™' is, near as I can figure, 100% Megalith™ #1.  It's actually your meat & potatoes issue number one origin ish.  About the only things that don't get explained are:  (1) where Joe Majurac's stylin'-ass costume came from, between panels, and (2) why the Canadian military looks exactly like the United States military.  My answer to both?  Cutbacks.

Revengers™ featuring Megalith™ #2 gets re-titled Revengers™ featuring Megalith,™ Armor™ & the Silver Streak™', because Neal is a pressure cooker of marketable ideas which must be fussily established and huffily hustled past-- unless you're talking about the secret origins of Armor™ and the Silver Streak™, in which case be prepared to spend 7 grimly distracted issues learning about the ins-and-outs (mostly outs) of gladitorial space slavery, educational betterment torture & superheroic bodily mutilation body modification.  That little publishing epic-- which never saw completion, by the byeeeee --precedes both Megalith™ & the Revengers™ doing their saucy little strut down the catwalk of Hot Titles.

But am I reading this shit strictly chronologically?  Fuck to the naw, I like it raw.  Of all Continuity's dumbass books, the only one I actually dug was Megalith.  It's a good name, both for the character & the comic.  Nothing to improve upon.  I like the Megalith name so much, I'm going to cold stop the ™ schtick, because it's a cheap, pointless shot to take.  Like, Megalith is simply Flex Mentallo, minus Grant Morrison's metatextual wit.  He's so strong he bends reality & physics, and he does it for his mom & dad, whose first names I'm not sure we ever learned before their sorrowful but essential disappearance from continuity.

That is to say, Continuity Comics continuity.

Let me explain some Continuity Comics continuity:

Technically Megalith's parents aren't in issue #2.  A space alien pretends to be his mom, only to be revealed & swiftly vanquished by the arrival of Jack & Jacques, those unlucky Canadian-born alien abductees turned space gladiators, who somehow returned to earth between issue #7 of Armor™ & issue #2 of Revengers™-not-Megalith's-official-solo-title.  Which only sounds confusing, if you're paying attention to publication dates, since Armor #7 was published in 1990, and Revengers #2 was 1985.  And really, what could be confusing about that?  Especially with issue #3 opening in media res with some toyetic villainy that takes a third of the ish to establish, before cutting back to the scene of the cliffhanger that concluded last ish-- a cut which, helpfully, reminds the reader that the carnage Megalith & his fresh besties are standing in was the remains of an alien invasion from... the previous year?

Why it's important to know that Joe Majurac's parents' farm was destroyed by an alien invasion is never quite made clear, since young Megalith left the farm at 13, and didn't return until he was 17, by which time our glorious Growing Boy looks an extremely non-GMO hormone-fed thirty-two.

All this hand-waving mystery is even further undercut by the fact that, for all the shapeshifting, mind-controlling aliens flitting the fuck around the Canadian border, extraterrestrials aren't actually big players in the Continuity realm.  Nuclear-powered wizards, vile capitalist stooges and prehistoric monsters from the hollow core of the expanding earth:  that's where all the actual accursed dick energy in Continuity's continuity stems from.  I'm sure it's all perfectly comprehensible if one reads the 'Deathwatch 2,000™' and 'The Rise of Magic™' crossovers chronologically.  Right, Neal Adams' impoverished ghost?

"...."

Don't answer too fast, you ectoplasmic crank.

Annnnnnyway, yeah.  Megalith has a bitching costume, and a positive attitude, and barely any tragic backstory.  He can catch bullets barehanded and HURL THEM BACK WITH PENETRATING FORCE, he can flex so hard his muscles can stop projectiles from completely rupturing organs (but they'll still break skin), he's so strong he can deadlift himself free of gravity, and he really loves his poor farmer parents who gave him great investment advice while he was being prison-trained by sneaky krauts & commies to compete in an olympics.  He has a secret mountain base, he wears white pants, and they never get dirty!  He's basically the best, and I'm really hoping one day he'll figure out where his parents went or at least why that busty zip-a-tone whore Ms. Mystic™ gaslit him into thinking they were dead in issue 0 of 'Megalith-just-Megalith' vol. 2 (a.k.a. 'Deathwatch 2,000™' chapter 1).

Like I say.  Megalith hits different.  Especially when you've found enough issues to read a proper chunk, which wasn't a thing that happened where I grew up.  These books published on such an inconsistent schedule that you couldn't FIND four sequential issues, let alone piece out that there's no story.  Shit just happens in these books.  If you're a fan of cause-and-effect, then reading Continuity is like falling down a manhole only to wake up in the mushroom kingdom with a turtle twerking on your face.

Hey.  Kid.  Comics!

Samuree: Year One #1-9 (1987-91) - written by Neal Adams, Elliot Maggin, and Peter Stone (mostly Peter Stone); illustrated by (deep breath!) Neal Adams, Mark Beachum, Rodney Ramos, Mark Texeria, Dave Hoover, and Steve Geiger (who you must remember as the talent who brought the classic Marvel graphic novella Sectaurs® to four-coloured life)

I want to know why Tom Savini is featured so prominently in these.

The Revengers™ crossover is whatever.  I guess Samuree is an honorary Revenger™?  I mean, The Revengers™ needed a chick to round things out, and it wasn't like Jacqueline had her own book.  She didn't even have a superhero name, much less a ™ to attach to one.  She barely had a costume!  She had some sorta, uh, space armor, and some punky disco clothes, whenever she wasn't just lounging around the house with her step-brothers in violet lingerie.  It looked like more of a pain to draw than Armor's armor-- Jacqueline's space armor, not her violet onesie.  Shee had these Krull-style swastika-shaped blades, as well, which can't have been even remotely weird for any Crusty Bunker working on these books...

Point is, move over Jack & Jacques' sister: Samuree is the onesie fans remember!  She had a good old fashioned all-american katana, and a sai, and a headband, and thigh-high leather boots with stilleto heels, and no room for underwear.  Like she is vacu-sealed into those jazzercise togs, you don't even know.

So.  There's Tom Savini in four issues of this, mostly one-panel cameos, heavily photoreferenced-- except for the one panel that's clearly a touched-up xerox  --and Neal, as we've already established, is really anal about legal text.  Like there's a whole "resemblance to persons fictional & semi-fictional" thing in the indicia, remember?  Since Tom Savini is a wholly non-fictional entity, I have to assume Neal, at some sci-fantasy convention just dripping with nioctine, made contact with the man.

Which elicits a vivid skit in my mind of Savini reeling back from a frothy Neal, jabbering a mile-a-minute in his syntactically-challenged runon way:  "Heyja evah read 'Superman versus Muhammad Ali'?  Nobody was doing photorealism in comix before me!  I could make you a household name.  Y'like ninjitsu?  Those turtle boys are making a killing!  Only problem is, Eastman & Laird, there's no SEX in that book!  Now lookit," [shoving a hardcover, spiral-bound, black leather portfolio into Savini's hands, the Continuity Comics logo glinting silver & gunmetal blue; Neal promptly yanks the portfolio out of Savini's hands before he can look inside] "Lookit, a lady ninja!  Nobody's ever done that!  Right?  Samuree:  Mistress of the Martial Arts, trademark, what a humdinger, hanh?  Truly!  A title that zips!  You're in movies, right?  Sure!  Kids love zombies.  Who doesn't love movies?  I'm alllll about the kids.  Just between you me and the open bar, Samuree has cameltoe like you only see in magazines held with one hand!  Tom, earnestly, I think you'd be great in this book, sincerely:  Samuree, co-starring Tom Savini, god of grossout!  All you've gotta do's sign this release says you're semi-fictional and we could print tomorrow..."

What, the story?  I think Tom Savini is at this dinner, and then zombies in gimp suits show up and ruin the evening, and then the Revengers bop in right as Samuree is doing some ninja splits, subduing armed guards with her vagina, how all-american superheroic masters of the martial arts do.  Then Samuree has a flashback to being a blonde orphan on Epstein's an island, and I guess some PTSD really flips her shit out because then she fights the Revengers?

Hold on, I got to hit this blunt.  FFFFFFFFPPPPPPpppppp shiiiiiiiiiiit yes.  Comix, bruh.

Anyway.  Tom Savini is in these.  I wonder if Adams cut him a cheque.

The Rise of Magic™: Shaman™ #O (1993) - written by Neal Adams (with a 5 page intro) & illustrated by artgod Alex Niño

It's 16 pages, I hear.  A promotional only piece.

The deadass-end of Continuity Comics, this book was.  Shaman was introduced in Neal's legendary Continuity Portfolio®.  [ed. note:  Last observed in Tom Savini's corn syrup & spirit gum spackled hands, above, in 1978.]  Shaman™ made his official entry into print with Zero Patrol #3, in 1984.  He'd show up anytime Neal wanted a Doctor Strange analogue to do some wiggy, gimmicky, fourth-wall-breaking shit on the page.  There was absolutely nada demand for him, except from his creator.

Now, it seems, there is.  Or at least Alex Niño's fully-painted art.  I've tried to order this book twice already, and both sellers flaked.  One couldn't find it in their stock-- at which point I'm like cool listing, bro.  The second seller was some n00b with a storefront of wack trading cards & a meagre handful of comix they bought back when they thought they were "into" comic books; that scenester has apparently forgotten they even HAVE an ebay booth, so they haven't gotten back to me about cancelling my order, three days later.

Third time's the charm!  Maybe!  I've ordered it again, alongside the non-Revengers Megalith™ #1 by Mark Texeria, and a couple issues for filling in holes in my run of Armor™ & the Silver Streak™ (& their oft-forgotten foster sister, Scarlet™).  So who knows, maybe I'll re-write this "review" and fill in some vital details regarding Shaman™'s role in fighting off (em kcuf) Cigam K'Calb™, dog ot reaws i, in The Rise of Magic™--

But fuck me backwards, I still don't understand Shaman™'s role in CyberRad™'s entry to The Deathwatch 2,000™ because of how Shaman talks about it:  "Strewth, the Deathwatch 2,000 is launched upon us, like flaming gobbets of semen fired from the ululating urethra of Dagon.  Today we feast upon meteor bukkake, my brothers!"

Seriously, that's how he talks.  I'm not making fun.  I don't have to read this book to know that.  Zero Patrol #3, his first words are BY THE BALLS OF DAGON.  When he opens CyberRad vol. 2 #2, guess what he's saying?  BY THE BALLS OF DAGON.  Neal has a hard-on for the balls of Dagon, he's not letting an appearance of Shaman go past without his probably-actually-trademarked catchphrase.

CyberRad™ wasn't exactly the title to introduce a magickal-mystical badass of Shaman™'s stature, and that's actually where the Big Push to promote this z-tier apocalyptiwizard with his biker 'stache began-- but hell if I understand the first thing about either of these sprawling line-wide "crossovers".  Because our three-body-problematized Shaman is simultaneously giving astral mouth-to-mouth to Ms. Mystic--  who seems to need a hell of a lot of rescuing in her own book, if you'll pardon the editorial aside  --at the same time as he's literally tearing CyberRad loose from his own storyline, where everybody's favourite 80s teenage cyborg is in the middle of being dissected in a lab...!! 

All I actually know is those two crossovers ATE THE ENTIRE PUBLISHING LINE, and the print runs were so stupidly vast that either Deathwatch 2,000™ or The Rise of Magic™ are usually the very first thing one finds in back issue cheapo bins.  But you never find ALL of them in quarter boxes.  Leaving the weird collector with what feels like the Schrodinger's catbox of comix: this vast litter of not-dead, not-alive, half-collapsed waveforms of i.p.s, flailing as their entire printrun ends in bankruptcy.  It's a Pompeii in print form, and I'm looking at it.

At some point in this dumb fuckin' project I will have enough of either Deathwatch, 2,000 or The Rise of Magic, or both, to be able to sit down & take notes--  a businessman who cosplays as a Dragon™ from the expanding hollow earth® tries to dick Megalith™ down, but the Revengers break it up, then some demon crap happens, like who gives a shit what the reasons are, this is a universe where nuclear power is the exact same thing as witchcraft, i am NOT kidding

...But! For now the crossovers loom at the shallowest topmost ridge of this archeological dig, whereas I've dug straight down [to 1982, Pacific Comics ((requiescat in pace)) & the dodgy origins of Ms. Mystic™] and am now working a broad spiral back up, like some sort of mole with a lesion on its temporal lobe in Minecraft--  a game I have never played, only studied, over my sexy husband's shoulder, much as I have never read Shaman #0, having only discovered it on The eBays, on The Interwebz.

Which overall says a fuck of a lot more about Neal Adams' marketing prowess than I could ever possibly document with my feeble bloggery-pokery.

Have I mentioned Peter Stone, the "writer", credited throughout these books as a sort of pigeonshit-streaked bulletproof windshield for Neal Adams' ego, has been recently promoting the Continuity Character stable?  Like he was doing a lot of hype & press for Neal, in memorium, supposedly, but from an armchair perspective it sure sounded like promotion for his substack.

My vapourwave sense is tingling.  Is Shaman, somewhere, yet alive?

BY THE BALLS OF DAGON, MORE BUKKAKE!!!

[ next up, Jason Kriter: Toyboy™, guest-starring Trevor von Eeden, & the ever-popular CyberRad™, introducing the hyperpenciled stylings of one Richard Bennett, badass latecomer to the Image Comics stable & later, Wildstorm Studios.  But first I have to ignore the dosages on this bottle of sleeping pills... ]