Toyboy #2 (August 1987)

Huh, you're right, guess I assumed he used the muscle shirt earlier.

Toyboy #3 (November, 1987).

Revengers featuring Megalith #4 (March, 1988).

Samuree #3 (May, 1988)

If anything, Megalith is a rip-off of Charlton's Mr Muscles......



The basic premise, though, is taken from the legend of Milo of Croton.  He was a Greek athlete and wrestler, who competed in the Ancient Olympics, who supposedly carried a calf, every day, on his shoulders and continued to do so as it grew into its adult size.  Milo became progressively stronger as he carried the increased weight.  That is pretty much the origin story of Megalith....



He is already a strong youth, with a brain to match, when he is recruited to join a special training camp, dedicated to turning out the world's greatest athletes.  His father had mortgaged the farm, to get him into college, but the bank foreclosed, and this is Joe Majurac's out.  He accepts and trains intensely, day after day, but is isolated and Russian language seems a part of things.  he tries to go home, to visit his parents and they shoot a dog that he was given, as a warning about what will happen to his parents.  He continues training and taps into a mental link between mind and body (the supposed unused portion of the brain, which people get wrong) and then has fantastic growth.  He eventually rebels and escapes and is eventually repatriated, with the help of the US Army (flying home on a 1950s C-119 Flying Boxcar, which were retired by the early 70s) and becomes Megalith.  His given name was a variation on the Pennsylvania-Croatian legend of the steelworker, Joe Magarac, who was so strong that he could squeeze out steel, from raw iron ore.

Like most of Continuity's output, it's pretty gonzo.  The whole mind-body mental link is straight out of the pulps.  The athletes were being trained to be sold to the Soviet Olympic Team.

Armor and Silver Streak were operated on by aliens and escape their control and wreak havoc on them.  Armor got pretty bloody, for the period.  Toyboy is a tortured kid, Crazyman is just plain nuts and the whole line makes you question Neal Adams' sanity, at points long before he started spouting bizarre theories about geologic goo and the true nature of the Earth.

Samuree probably had more crotch shots than anything this side of Japanese porn comics or a gynecology textbook.  Zero Patrol was Neal redrawing Esteban Maroto's classic Cinco Por Infinito (5 For Infinity), over the original art and then rewriting it into a mess.  All to make it look like his work.  Most of the artists who worked for him purposely tried to make it look like Neal and it sat on his desk, waiting for his approval, until he had the time....and he would then make adjustments.  They also had the strangest coloring on the comic stands, in my opinion.  Just lots of strange hues, with a lot of purple and orange.  Most of the writers involved were Bronze Age DC guys, like Elliot Maggin.