This story is a continuation of… firstcomicsnews.com/we-all-know-what-youve-done-neal/
Neal Adams’ response to the Ms. Mystic post in Bleeding Cool is disappointing.
https://www.bleedingcool.com/…/mike-netzer-vs-neal-adams-m…/
No, I did not expect an admission of what he’d done. Not so soon. But I expected a more coherent and defensible statement, not the shoddy piece of work, full of transparent lies and smears, with little, if any, substance.
His entire case rests upon “his” creation of Ms. Mystic for the New Heroes Portfolio, produced by Sal Quartuccio, according to his statement.
In his desperation to misrepresent the evidence I’ve shown in the past, including the Starspawn portfolio (which he mistakenly called Starchilde, another sign of shoddiness), the character that was the springboard for the design of Ms. Mystic – Neal said that after creating Ms. Mystic for the New Heroes Portfolio, he saw me working on a Starchilde character that looked “exactly like Ms Mystic,..super long hair and all!”
So while some elements of this dispute are of the he-said-she-said variety, there also exists documented evidence that would tip the balance of ambiguity. All we need to do is find a copy of my Starspawn portfolio and see what its publication date was.
If The New Heroes Portfolio preceded Starspawn, then Neal’s case would be strengthened.
If, however, Starspawn’s first appearance significantly precedes New Heroes, then we’ll have a better idea as to the lengths Neal would go to; the extent of the lies he will tell, in order to cover up his terrible deed.
The attached image provides the answer. My Starspawn design preceded The New Heroes Ms. Mystic by 2 years. That pretty much shuts the case on where the design for Ms. Mystic came from.
Neal might try to say that he created Ms. Mystic years before the New Heroes Portfolio, but I don’t believe even he thinks everyone is stupid enough to accept such a reckless backtrack from his earlier versions.
This piece of evidence alone reveals Neal’s strategy to cover up his heist of my property for 40 years. Dice up the history between us and toss it all together into a salad. Doesn’t matter what came first and what followed. The main thing is to take incidents that happened much earlier or later and confound the reader with chaos. All he has to say is that I’m crazy, went behind his back, became a messiah – and he thinks he’s off the hook.
Neal Adams puts his darkest side forward with this response. I understand he might not have much of a choice right now.
There’s too much at stake for him. His entire life and career have been geared towards propping up his name and reputation. Drudging up this story is a great threat to his life-work.
So what can he do? Not much except continue to tell lies, mix up the history so as to confuse the issue…and just remind everyone that I’m crazy. This is a big folly.
We are living in a different time than the past we knew. In today’s world, it is no longer possible to hide behind one’s stature and reputation, while performing, and covering up, deplorable and heinous acts.
If Neal continues to misrepresent this story, he will fail – and fall.
Harvey Weinstein’s demise will look like a climb to Mount Everest next to Neal’s. No one wants to see that. All that’s needed is for Neal to step up like a man and tell the truth. He can explain it in such a way that he would come out of it a hero.
Let’s consider, for example, that after saying Frank Miller was “white trash” in The Guardian, he managed to come out of it smelling like a rose.
He can even do much better with this story. All that’s needed for him to do it, is to simply tell the truth.
And there is also the messiah element in the background. Neal says it’s problematic. I don’t really know what he bases that on.
When Richard Johnston spearheaded comic book commentary in Lying in the Gutters, he seemed to feel it was at least comic-book-worthy to look into.
It really should all come out into the open, I agree, especially if it impacts Ms. Mystic’s creation. But it doesn’t. Ms. Mystic was created, and the first issue written and penciled nearly half a year before I had any inclination of the messiah to come. There was no “crazy” in the Ms. Mystic story.
Neal’s confounding of the timeline of events is a shabby sinister ploy, not based in any reality we all experienced.
It is not yet the time for a full disclosure of whether, and why, people thought I thought I was a messiah (or whichever way anyone would like to phrase it).
It might come about sometime soon, but it is presently irrelevant to Neal’s response.
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