WRITER: ALF WALLACE | ART: LUIS BERMEJO | PUBLISHER: REBELLION | FORMAT: HARDCOVER | RELEASE DATE: APRIL 30TH

Rebellion Publishing has made it a mission of sorts to republish long-forgotten gems from Britain’s comic book past. The British Treasury of Comics is a delightful range of books that keep unearthing all sorts of weird and wacky things. Johnny Future is a rather splendid example of this. First published in ‘60s era comic book Fantastic, our black and white adventure story starts out as a remix of both King Kong and The Incredible Hulk called The Missing Link. This premise quickly runs out of steam, and the plot contrives instead to enthuse the ‘link’ with atomic powers. The book flirts briefly with the idea of being some sort of super-spy crime drama before diving straight into superhero cliché.

It’s actually pretty shameless, and this adds to the charm of the book. Johnny Future finds a cape from somewhere, and there’s no real logic to the transition from mild-horror to crime drama to superhero, except that clearly, the writer thought it would make a more entertaining read. Johnny goes on to fight aliens, robots, and a disturbing amount of bad guys with mind-control powers.

The real star here is Luis Bermejo’s artwork. Bermejo would go on to be the artist behind Vampirella, and it really is fascinating to compare this earlier example of his art with the later horror-inspired comics. The book is mostly black and white, and it’s quite a striking and engaging style. Despite all this, we wouldn’t recommend you read Johnny Future in one sitting. Even though it changes styles so often you may get narrative whiplash, the stories aren’t very deep, and the novelty wears off over time. Still, this is a charming and entertaining bit of history and definitely worth a look if you’re a hardcore superhero fan.