Here is an interesting bit of comic history, the popular character Spawn was supposed to crossover into Continuity Comics Valeria The She-Bat back in 1993. This would have seen Spawn drawn by comic legend Neal Adams. Spawn was to appear in issues 3 and 4 of the Valeria series. This would have been one of the earliest Spawn Crossovers and perhaps the first time Spawn appeared in a comic by another company (barring the ad that appeared in Rust #1). So if you are a Spawn fan, you would want to get your hands on these, right? Unfortunately the cross over never happened. Read on for the full history.
Spawn, who made his debut in 1992, was white hot out of the gate. So it is no surprise other companies would want to use the character to boost sales for one of their books. Continuity Comics had just that plan and solicited a cross-over with Spawn and their character, Valeria The She-Bat. Spawn was to appear in issues 3 and 4 of the series. This was solicited in Previews and other distributors magazines (there was a time when there were more distributors than just Diamond), you can see the ad below.
Neal Adams was writing and drawing the books. Adams was also doing cover art for the books. The cover art shown above is a jam piece between McFarlane and Adams. Valeria The She-Bat #1 hit the shelves, and that is when things get weird.
Issue #2 never made it to the stands, nor did issues #3 or #4. Production delays ended up killing the book before the crossover could occur. As a result, only the promotional art for the previews were ever released. Issues 2-4 never made it out.
Issue #5 of the series was released. It contained re-worked art from issues #3 and 4 which ended up removing Spawn from the series.
As a result of all the production delays only the following books came out in the series:
Valeria The She-Bat #1 – Regular Acetate Overlay Cover
Valeria The She-Bat #1B – White Variant of Cover A
Valeria The She-Bat #1 Gold Foil – Offered to retailers as a promotional item, came signed by Neal Adams
Valeria The She-Bat #1 Red Foil – Offered to retailers as a promotional Item, Came signed by Neal Adams
Valeria The She-Bat #5– Contains artwork from the failed issues 3 and 4 which were supposed to contain the Spawn cross-over. Spawn has been removed.
A second series came out from Acclaim (formerly Valiant) under their Windjammer Imprint, two issues came out in this series.
The books were heavily ordered and made the Canadian Styx Distributors chart you can see on my article at my website about Canadian comic sales in the 1990s. One of the highest ordered products that never existed !!!
I love it. The highest ordered comic that never existed.
in what issue of previews and or scoreboard witch was heroes world ‘s catalog or the other distrubitor catalogs would this ad be in?love ya all blind adam out
I will have to go back to the store I found it in and look.
Yeah .. still have a good number of those #1’s in all variations somewhere ..
So they canned issues 2 to 4 but released issue 5? AND they call themselves ‘continuity’ comics??? Strange indeed!
You picked up on the irony of it. Lol.
So why didn’t it happen? Let me guess, Todd pulled a McFarlane and thought himself too great for Neal Adams or his “second-rate” character…. ever the douche ?
Continuity (and Neal Adams) had a bad reputation for being late with their books. Todd and the Image guys were just beginning to overcome their scheduling problems at that time (or they were certainly trying to do so) and Todd told Adams he couldn’t allow Spawn to be part of another late-running book.
What’s ironic is McFarlane also at one time started a reputation of.. not staying on schedule from what I recall. The only reason he could keep Spawn on schedule was all the guest writers and artists.