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John Wickett
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Posted: 06 June 2023 at 8:09pm | IP Logged | 1 post reply

Recently I won a $25 Walmart gift card as a door prize at a luncheon. The card can be used to order from third party sellers on Walmart.com, so I decided to browse trade paperbacks, and came across a seller with a bunch of individual issues from Continuity Comics.  

I was tempted to buy these when they came out in the mid 80s, but I never did.  Did anybody like them?
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Mark Waldman
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Posted: 06 June 2023 at 9:53pm | IP Logged | 2 post reply

At the time, it was a way to see Neal back in action so I was excited. I bought the comics and the art portfolios and so forth put out. But even young me realized the books themselves were not very good, nor the characters. I enjoyed rereading classic Neal stuff from the early days and even looking at his work on the Tarzan paperback covers instead.
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John Wickett
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Posted: 06 June 2023 at 10:14pm | IP Logged | 3 post reply

That's kind of what I heard at the time, which is why I never bought them (in addition to my limited adolescent budget).  But the covers sure are gorgeous.
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Eric Smearman
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Posted: 07 June 2023 at 1:48am | IP Logged | 4 post reply

I think I bought a couple MEGALITHs. Looked pretty cool but
was damn near unreadable.

The only other Continuity things I bought were the two
(that I know of) issues of MS. MYSTIC from Pacific Comics.
That one I remember liking but it never went anywhere after
the aforementioned pair of issues. And there was a year or
more between those two issues!
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Peter Hicks
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Posted: 07 June 2023 at 2:15am | IP Logged | 5 post reply

Agree with everything stated above.  Even if Neal didn’t work on an issue, all the artists he hired drew just like him, with the exception of Michael Golden.   So the artwork is always good, but also repetitive.  

You don’t really notice pacing until you read how badly it gets mangled in Continuity Comics.  Without giving the reader a “Meanwhile, back at HQ…” caption, one turns the page to find totally different characters, settings, and events from what they were just reading.  Many issues just end as if someone cutoff the story at a random point, with no caption of “To be continued.”

But I do have a soft spot for them, and for a long time it was the only way to see new Adams.
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Kevin Brown
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Posted: 07 June 2023 at 9:53am | IP Logged | 6 post reply

They're pretty to look at, but impossible to read. 
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John Byrne
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Posted: 07 June 2023 at 1:45pm | IP Logged | 7 post reply

Sadly true. It’s like reading SUPERMAN vs MUHAMMED ALI, and spotting the point that Denny left and Neal took over the scripting.
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Mark Waldman
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Posted: 07 June 2023 at 2:53pm | IP Logged | 8 post reply

Sadly Neal's career for me was the early stuff. I loved his DC covers for seemingly every title, and of course his popular runs with Batman, Spectre, Deadman, GL/GA, and his X-Men work. What an amazing artist. Once all that passed it was things like appreciation for his aforementioned Tarzan book covers, and occasional covers on the Continuity stuff. His own writing was bad and that took away from a lot of what could have been in latter years imo.
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Brian Floyd
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Posted: 08 June 2023 at 1:35am | IP Logged | 9 post reply

Back when I was a kid, I often saw various Continuity Comics on the spinner racks and stands, and sometimes flipped through them. But I was never actually tempted to buy any. Never even gave them a look when I went to comics shops.
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Eric Jansen
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Posted: 08 June 2023 at 6:02pm | IP Logged | 10 post reply

I have most of them and I still buy the missing ones if I come across them for cheap.  I like the early issues of each series that were written (for better or worse) and illustrated by Adams--MS. MYSTIC's first three issues are really beautiful, REVENGERS/MEGALITH had a weird story start but some amazing pages, VALERIA seemed to be a favorite of Neal's, TOYBOY and CRAZYMAN and SAMUREE were trying something new, ARMOR (with Tom Grindberg pencils) looked great, CYBERRAD has ridiculously good art (with Richard Bennett and Neal Adams both pouring a LOT of effort into it) and maybe the most cohesive storyline, and BUCKY O'HARE was fun (with fantastic Michael Golden art).  This company really could have been something.

The problem with Continuity was exactly what happened with Image Comics.  Too many watered down copycat artists taking over for the artist we really wanted to see; most of the stories were written by an unknown/friend(?) (Peter Stone); instead of a foundation of solid single-issue stories they tried long arcs that were confusing; the covers often outshined the interiors; they played with the issue numbers and restarted series that weren't finished, causing confusion; and they forced too many company-wide crossovers into the company's relatively short life.

It could have been great.  And I was still hoping that Neal might try one last mini-series (with a solid writer) teaming all the heroes he so fantastically designed.



Edited by Eric Jansen on 08 June 2023 at 6:04pm
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Eric Ladd
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Posted: 08 June 2023 at 9:09pm | IP Logged | 11 post reply

I had several xerox pages of pencils for Valeria and Hybrids way back when these books were being done. Fun to ink. I tried to find them 6 months ago and couldn’t. I’ll have to give it another shot. I very much enjoyed the art on both books.
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Tim Cousar
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Posted: 08 June 2023 at 10:15pm | IP Logged | 12 post reply

ZERO PATROL looked really good, but I had seen some of it somewhere before.
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