It’s a rabbit hole that seems to never end. In fact, it’s not a rabbit hole, it’s an entire warren, the likes of which you’ve never seen before. And with good reason. Only an insane person would attempt to make any sense out of Neal Adam’s Continuity Comics.
But, heck, nobody ever accused me of being sane. So, here I am.
This series of folders that I shared last week caught the attention of a few people.
One message I got was, ‘What the bloody hell are you doing there?’ Frankly, I have no idea. Continuity Comics should have been a no-brainer really. Neal Adams, the most famous of all comic book artists of his time, running his own comic book line with his own creations. Neal drawing multiple comic books each month, and working in tandem with the likes of Michael Golden, Larry Hama, Esteban Maroto, Bruce Jones, Bernie Wrightson, Michael Netzer, Trevor Von Eeden and, well, you name them, Neal could get them. What could possibly go wrong?
Neal Adams. That’s what could possibly go wrong. For a start, Neal hated deadlines. he was meticulous and precise and he wasn’t about to foist bad artwork onto the public, especially under his own name. So he took his time. Fair enough too. The public wanted to see Neal at his best, and these were his peak years. Trouble is, Neal had committed to producing at least four books per month and was writing them, in order to maintain a sense of, ahem, continuity.
It was always doomed to fail.
Neal missed deadlines right from the start and it only got worse. I’m in the process of mapping when each comic that Continuity published appeared, when it was solicited and how many times it was advertised as being late, as per The Comic Buyer’s Guide and Amazing Heroes. Plus a few other sources. I can count very few titles that appeared on time.
A classic example of Neal shipping is Armor. Advertised as starting in June 1985. It was eventually solicited in August 1985 and finally appeared on 25 November 1985.
Armor was late from the start, but at least it got published.
Freak Show was hyped up big. It was to be a hardcover, limited to 1,500 copies, all signed by Bruce Jones and Bernie Wrightson. A softcover version was also advertised and solicited in September 1986 for a December release. Don’t bother looking for it, it was one of many titles that Neal advertised and solicited but never published. More on those titles in a future post.
And then there were the grand announcements which amounted to very little. Like this advertisement from June 1988.
There’s eight distinct claims in this one ad. I’ll address each claim, in brief, in order:
Yes, for one issue and two covers. He might have drawn another cover, but it was never published.
No. Trevor Von Eeden drew that title. As far as I can tell, Gene Colan never did any published comic book work for Continuity Comics.
We don’t know as The New Heroes was never published.
See above.
Yes, for one issue.
Yes, for one issue.
P.S. Neal published two issues of that book. The remaining two issues were never published
P.P.S. That was never going to happen.
Eventually the industry magazines got fed up with Neal and Continuity and just took his claims with the proverbial salt grain. It was a shame really, as the art looked good.
Which brings us to the next phase. The writing. Oh, LORDY!!
Neal and his son-in-law Peter Stone wrote the bulk of the Continuity line. I’m not going to get into that right now, suffice to say that in a future post (sooner than you think) I’ll cover some of the writing. In the meantime, I’ll leave you with this panel from the first issue of Toyboy, published September 1986.
Ah yes, prose that is purple indeed. More to come.
Cheers and Happy Monday!
Danny (who doesn’t feel so bad about missing the occasional deadline because, well, Continuity Comics and all!)