Echo of Futurepast (1984) #1-3

So what’s this then? Isn’t this a blog about Pacific Comics?

It is. It turns out that Pacific were really the publishers of the first two issues of this book. They’re listed as doing “circulation”, but reading news stories at the time, it seems like they were doing the publishing, really.

Anyway, I thought it might be interesting to have a look at this book. Especially since it has so many editors and art directors and coordinators.

Adams explains his cunning editorial plan: To publish dreck. I mean, to publish the good stuff, not that high-falutin’ stuff. If I interpret him correctly.

So you get mostly mainstreamish sci-fi stories, which makes sense. Here’s Larry Hama and Michael Golden… and it’s been drawn in a different form factor, so it was probably meant for something else (Epic Illustrated?) before it ended up here instead.

Having all those art directors pays off, because this is a quite stylish package. It’s 48 pages and looks and feels quite nice.

Also drawn for a different form factor… Louis Mitchell’s artwork looks like a pornier version of Neal Adams.

Adams (if I understand correctly) reprints a story he did in the 70s. Is everything here a reprint? Or meant for something else?

It’s pretty dull.

Jean Teulé, a French artist, contributes the most striking series here. Oh, I forgot to mention: Almost all of the comics here are serials: To be continued.

Is Teulé colouring photostats of pictures? It kinda looks like it, but it works well as comics…

A lot of pages in these three issues are taken up with reprinting Arthur Suydam Mudwogs stories from Heavy Metal. I mean, I don’t mind, but it’s odd.

Look at all these concepts you can licence from Neal Adams! Bigfoots! Canimls! Li’l Dragls! Why didn’t everybody jump at the chance to license these freshest, most charming characters to hit the marketplace in a millenium! (sic) It’s a mystery! I guess we just don’t understand anything! How could you not want Canimls! How!

HOW!

Anyway, the second issue is printed on shiny, slick paper… probably due to Pacific trying to get stuff printed while going bankrupt and shifting things to another printer.

We get more reprints; this time by Carlos Gimenez (of Spain). He adapts a short story (?) by Brian Aldiss. It’s pretty tedious.

We get some Italian nonsense, too, and at least it’s complete in one installation.

And finally, Pacific is bankrupt and Continuity publishes themselves.

And we revert back to the non-shiny paper, which works better for some pieces…

… than others.

This is a pretty odd anthology. I think the editorial vision is basically “reprint a bunch of stuff we got our hands on cheaply, but recolour it nicely”.

That’s a very Neal Adams approach, right?