COMIC LEGEND : There is a GEN13 comic by Adam Hughes that was finished but never printed.
STATUS : False.
There is a GEN13 short story done by Adam Hughes but it was published ONCE and it was even reprinted.
The reason why it´s believed to never have been printed is that, like THE SECRET GOSPEL OF MAXWELL LORD nobody has ever seen it. Myself included most people have only seen some penciled pages or the inked pages on the internet. It was by sheer luck that I discovered otherwise.
Of course everybody knows that Adam Hughes did the 2 issue miniseries GEN13 ORDINARY HEROES of which the second was delayed almost indefinitely - like always. Back then the book was one of the bestsellers that attracted the best of the best. Nowadays it´s not even a shadow of it´s former glory. Like the copy of a copy of a copy that looses quality each time it´s copied GEN13 is only the shadow of a shadow of a shadow of what it used to be. In each incarnation not only the quality of the art suffered but also the writing. Till nothing except the name remained.
But like always comic readers who buy it today don´t even know how good it was ( or else they wouldn´t keep buying that drivel ) or if they buy the ORDINARY HEROES comics they have no idea that the second part was delayed. I myself bought it as it came out - the original version as well as the spanish version which is back in Spain and which was one of the few comics I had in Spain.
Aside from that Adam Hughes did the covers for the GEN13 / SUPERMAN crossover as well as lots of covers pin ups or cards. I don´t know if Adam Hughes was also supposed to do the art on the SUPERMAN crossover but in any case it fell through and somebody else did the art ( I think Lee Bermejo ).
Apart from this GEN13 stuff there were some GEN13 pages floating around the internet that seemed to belong to a third GEN13 comic but those were only inked pages so I dismissed the idea. I mean you would have heard if a superstar artist like Adam Hughes had done another GEN13 story, right ? Now, the first hints of the possibility that this comic was more than a comic book legend was when I bought a sketchbook in Spain that had all the pages of the comic. And although they were just the inked pages they had the full dialogue and word ballons.
Somehow there seemed to be more to this. But all my searches on the internet were fruitless. No chance of finding anything about it - besides the pages I already had. And the name tags weren´t helping either since most of them were just labeled GEN13 ot TBP. But my luck changed two weeks ago when I found - I can´t remember for the life of me were I found it - a picture of one of the pages labeled THUNDERBOOK.
Now what the hell was a thunderbook ? Searching for a few days revealed that IMAGE did an anthology book called WILDSTORM THUNDERBOOK that indeed included this long sought after GEN13 story by Adam Hughes. Now the problem was to find it.
Just before Christmas I was doing my usual comic order at blackdog when I found that they had ONE COPY of it. Against better judgement I ordered it and gave it away as a Christmas present. Lo and behold. The great mystery had been solved. Now to write a post about it on my blog. The end.
Wait. It´s not so easy. Which kind of help is that for my readers ? Am I really going to tell them that there exists another GEN13 story by Adam Hughes only to tell them that it was printed in a thing called WILDSTORM THUNDERBOOK which they won´t find at any comic shop ? That´s a dilemma.
Just in my last post I posed the question if PANINI really wants to sell comics. Now the question seems to be if IMAGE falls into the same behaviour. Was it really never reprinted anywhere ? Another couple of days of research brought the answer.
There exists a collection of the GEN13 ORDINARY HEROES story. And there was a reprint of that trade that has a new cover and includes the Alan Davis GEN13 bootleg issues as well as the GEN13 short story called WHAM form the WILDSTORM THUNDERBOOK.
As I already had the ORDINARY HEROES comics as well as the Alan Davis issues I never looked at the trade so I never discovered the story. Since I don´t know the original trade I have no idea if it also includes the short story but I know the new collection does.
Now I have checked my usual sources. My comicshop does have one copy but since there is no picture I don´t know if it is the new printing with the new cover. I will have to check that out the next time I´m there. I looked at blackdog but they don´t have it. At amazon there are three available and although it seems to be the right one ( they have the right ISBN number which is 1401204279 ) the price is waaay to high. And since you can´t get it directly from amazon you never know in which condition they will arrive. I really can´t recommend it.
I also found that they have it at ANDYS COMIC EXPRESS but without the ISBN number I can´t confirm it. So you will have to wait or you can get it now if you want to take the chance.
Here´s the black and white version :
So, mystery solved. I hope this was new for some readers and that I´m not the only one who didn´t know this comic existed. Happy hunting no matter if you want to try your luck with the thunderbook or the collection.
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