Welcome to Friday’s Mega Comics Group Updates!

Happy Labor Day weekend, everyone! It’s a 3 day weekend, Football Season is underway, and Autumn is in the air! The dreaded deadline doom has struck again and  we’re caught shorthanded. But rather than go blog-less we decided to re-post one of our most popular blogs from the past year. Hope you enjoy it and we’ll catch ya next week!

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Do you have ComicZeal? No, no, that’s not what we mean. Sure we know you’re a comic fanatic, that’s why you are here now! ComicZeal is an iPhone/iPod Touch App for comic book reading. It’s loaded with features. You can download .cbr (comic book reader) format files and use ComicZeal Sync to prep a copy for your iPhone or iPod Touch.

Designed by renowned graphics firm Elixir, ComicZeal shows comics gliding over a luxurious wooden background. Bookmarks and bags show you which comics you’ve started reading and which you’ve finished. Boxes let you know there’s a whole series just a tap away.

ComicZeal has been optimized for HOW and WHEN you read comics. We know sometimes you’re reading while standing on a train, so the interface can be operated one-handed. We know sometimes you’re reading in bed, so you can lock the screen orientation.

How it works: Reading comics is a breeze, ComicZeal has got the best zoom implementation of any reader. Use pinching to set the zoom level and ComicZeal remembers it for the rest of the comic, page to page. To read text or examine artwork simply single-tap anywhere on the comic to bring up our full-screen magnifying glass. Press the arrow watermark to bring up the reading panel, quickly scroll through the comic using the scroller, lock the orientation or take a screenshot of the comic to use as your iPhone wallpaper. Don’t like the arrow watermark? No problem. Turn it off in the Settings app. A double-tap will bring up the reading panel instead. Talking of settings, you can select if you’re left or right handed and choose between western and manga modes.

You can use a Wi-Fi connection to download hundreds of Golden Age Comics and Jim Shelley’s Flashback Universe for free from the their servers. We’re talking about downloading LEGAL Public Domain books available from many sites around the internet. Don’t forget the hundreds of comic books available at www.goldenagecomics.co.uk and several hundred more at www.comicbooksarchive.com!

It’s not all Super-Heroes either! In addition to the Golden Age Heroes there are horror, romance, westerns science-fiction, pirate, crime comics and more. Check it out!

ComicsZeal is available free from www.bitolithic.com.

Below is a sampling of thousands of comic books available free and legal for download from some of the sites mentioned above and many other sites across the web.  Please download responsibly! Make sure the books you download are free and in the Public Domain or else there is clear permission from the copyright holder. Any questions or comments? All are welcome.

Welcome to Friday’s Mega Comics Group Updates!

Back from the beyond!

Yes, we’ve been gone longer than intended! We’ve really missed our tri-weekly reports to you! Even so we’ve kept busy prepping the new projects we’ve got coming up.  In addition we’ve been working on business plans, management, taking care of legalities and such. As usually the best plans of mice and men seldom come off as envisioned, so we’ve run into a few rough spots along the way. Of course that always takes more time which is the biggest reason we have not returned to the regular blogging schedule.  We are going to hold off a bit longer on returning to the tri-weekly format as well. We’ll start out by doing a weekly blog and work our way back up to where we were. Fair enough? Great! Thanks for being such a good sport!

One of those unexpected obstacles we encountered was the work we do every year helping a local printer with the putting together of High School Football Program Books which came a little earlier this year. 4 of the teams had home games the first week, so they needed those books early. The smallest was 80 pages and the largest was 172 pages. This work requires a lot of scanning of photos and art, typesetting, design and layout, proofing and printer plate making, all of which has to be done in about a week’s time. Then the actual printing, collating, binding, trimming, packing and delivery has to be done. Whew! We got it done, for the most part, only the books due the second or third week remain to be completed. But it seems every year we wonder just how we can cram a months worth of  work into a week! It takes  lot of hours and a lot of caffeine, to say the least!

We have a few things to show you…. actually more than we can preview in this one blog, but we’ll save some for next week.

Epoch 2012 A.D. – The Precession of the Equinoxes! The color cover is pretty much done as you can see. There may be a few more tweaks to do on it. This is Mega Comics Group’s First Graphic Novel so we want it to look as nice as possible. Of course we also wanted it to look a little less like a comic book so the packaging is a little different than what we do with the comics. You note the main differences is the more subtle use of the logo banner and pricing information. All in all we think it came out well from Freazie White, Jr.’s concept to Shawn Decker’s pencil and inks to Mark Poe’s color and typography.  But we Mega Minion’s tend to be rather bias so we’d like to know what you think. Leave us a comment here on the blog or log in  to our Facebook Fan or FBCC Group page and sound off.  You can find links along the sidebars of this blog.

Our last treat for the day is a page of art from the much anticipated and somewhat delayed Cy-Boar Jam Book which our pal Lou Graziani over at Cy-boar.com has been orchestrating. Mark Poe, our esteemed Publisher-In-Training and part time Animal Trainer, has 7 pages on the book and Lou agreed we could give you a sneak peak at one of those. There are other artists doing the work on the book also and we’re not sure just how many pages it will be but all that info will be forthcoming soon. Mark still has 2 or 3 more pages to do on that.

That’s NOT all the art that’s been done lately but, as we said, we’ll save some for next week. Have a great weekend! Pro Football is getting under way and the College games are about a week away! Yes!

Any questions or comments? All are welcome.

CU Next Week!

Welcome to Friday’s Mega Comics Group Updates!

TGIF! The weekend is upon us!

Yes! It’s Official!… Again!

Yes, we told you Mega Tales #1, the 32 page full color, printed addition is available online at IndyPlanet.com and for Comic Shops at ComicsMonkey.com! Sure we know! We’re not that senile …yet. But we also told you we would report when you can get the OTHER POD ADDITION! Yep! We have copies available from ComiXpress.com! If you enjoy this 10 page preview, which you can go to right now by clicking on the cover image to your right, certainly you’ll want the printed addition or 2, or 12, right? Of course you would! Well,  here’s your chance to get your own printed copy for your hot little comics collection! After the preview you will see the above links again, so just click and go!

WHAT? You say you don’t need the book because it has no collectible value being a POD (Print On Demand) book. Well now, we certainly see your point but here’s ours: Certainly we understand that what makes a book a collectible in part is the length of the initial print run. And since POD books are always on sale  then the print run is near infinite, as long as their is a demand. But we’re tossing a new wrinkle in. Using variant covers and other special features to mark when one Print Run ends and another begin! So then! You will want to get your hands on the 1st print run as you see to the left before they are all gone and our next variant is available! Sure you do, that’s what we thought!

All kidding aside… if you enjoyed this preview or if you were one of the ones who got to read the whole 1st issue in it’s entiriety,  in it’s world wide web premier right on this very site when we released it a few pages a week, please consider purchasing the issue. We’re a young independent company and can only survive with the help of our fans. These first offerings, we’ll admit, are not as great as we would like but we think they show great promise in where we’re going. It may be an old, tierd cliche’ but we really do believe the best is yet to come.

Now for the obligatory recap/intro for Mega Tales #1 : This first story does not start at the beginning. We join an established cast with Tess, Theo, Nostradamus, the 4D Cocker Spaniel, Anamanda, General Bohannon and many more we’ll clue you in about as we go along. There is a lot of mystery surrounding these characters and how they all came to be friends and what the is mission which they share with Tess and Nosey. Some of the answers will be in this first 32 page story. Tess lives on her 4D Star Ship which orbits and monitors the earth for any extraterrestrial and extra dimensional activity. As we join the story another star ship bursts into earth orbit which begins this adventure. Tess and her friends encounter a threat, which is at first glace is very disarming, however before the end of this issue we will see how very dangerous these aliens can be.

Tess, is short for tesseract. If you don’t know what a tesseract is Wikipedia defines it as: In four dimensional geometry, the tesseract, also called an 8-cell or regular octachoron, is the four-dimensional analog of the cube, which is in turn the three dimensional analog of the square. Tess is a young lady who is a living tesseract. She comes from another dimension and in our dimension she can teleport herself or just about anything else just about any where. She manifests the power in a number of ways other than teleportation and she has a cute little 4th dimensional dog with a very high I.Q. named Nostradamus. In short: we are 3D beings, Tess and Nostradamus are 4D beings.

So what have we been up too? As promised, the doctor ordered, a little rest and relaxation. Well, we’ve taken the “little” too literally it seems. We’ve been working on some of the comics as promised. Also we’ve been working on a few web sites which we’ll announce soon. And of course we had to fix the MT site yesterday after we  broke it.

We’ll keep the sabbatical going  few more days before we get back to our regular 3 blog a week schedule. We are continuing to work on preparing the release of  Epoch 2012 A.D., The Precession of the Equinox, in the color stages now,  as well as the NEW  A-1 Comics Spectacular #1  Featuring: The Amalgam Agents! Ghost Owl, The Guard, Ghost Woman, Blackout, The Conqueror, Amazona, ArchAgent, Atomaster, Medicine Man , Black Fury , Lady Patriot, Madame Strange, Black Lion, Atlas the Titan, Iron Lady, and Atomoro! And of course  Mega Tales #2 featuring Tess, the Living Tesseract. Also we’ll be adding Humants to our Archive Spotlight along with Project: New Man as soon as we resume our regular schedule.

Just in case you missed it or have just joined us… A Little History taken from our “About Us” page:

Mark Poe, your friendly neighborhood Mega Comics Group Publisher here again… The image you see below is from 1986 for the title ElfTrek, a two issue mini- series I did with Marcus Lusk and Greg Legat at Marcus’s Dimension Graphics.

This was during the Black & White Boom brought on by Eastman and Laird’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles initial success. Marcus had already had success with his one-shot Secret Doors. Both of those titles sold several thousand copies before the Black & White Boom went bust. I have a lot of fond memories from doing these two issues and I just got permission from both Marcus and Greg to post those two issues on MegaComicsGroup.com. That’s one for the forth coming Mega Tales!

The next image you see below is a cover I did back in 1987 for a title by the name of Tess, which is short for tesseract. If you don’t know what a tesseract is well, you aren’t alone, neither do I! Actually Wikipedia defines it as:

In four dimensional geometry, the tesseract, also called an 8-cell or regular octachoron, is the four-dimensional analog of the cube, which is in turn the three dimensional analog of the square.

Farther down this page is an artifact from Wikipedia, a neat little gif animation released into the public domain by its author, Jason Hise which gives us a little better understanding of the concept…I think.

Anyway, Tess is a young lady who is a living tesseract. She comes from another dimension and in our dimension she can teleport herself or just about anything else just about any where. She manifests the power in a number of ways other than teleportation and she has a cute little 4th dimensional dog with a very high I.Q. named Nostradamus. The book was originally to be published by Dimension Graphics but unfortunately never saw print. Soon it will make it’s debut in Mega Tales. Greg Legat created and wrote Tess while I and J. Adam Walters did the art

So here we are 16 years later representing the tales and with the 3rd part you will see the never before published 3rd issue of Humants with both the Humants story and Project New Man. We’ve divided the titles back up into two books for the web as they were originally intended. Hope you enjoy both.

Please post your comments with your likes and dislikes on the web pages. Who knows, maybe we’ll do a fourth installment and finish the story line. It’s up to you readers!

Thanks,
Mark
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Mark Poe, Publisher
Mega Comics Group
www.megacomicsgroup.com

Any questions or comments? All are welcome.

Click the images for today’s web comics updates.

Have a great weekend! CU Next Week!

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Ghost Owl, The Guard, Ghost Woman, Blackout, The Conqueror, Amazona, ArchAgent, Atomaster, Medicine Man , Black Fury , Lady Patriot, Madame Strange, Black Lion, Atlas the Titan, Iron Lady, Atomoro, Mega Tales, A-1 Comics Spectacular, and the Amalgam Agents and all contents ™ and © 2010 Mega Graphics LLC, unless otherwise noted herein. Epoch 2012 A.D., The Precession of the Equinox ™ and © Freazie White, Jr. and Shawn Decker.  Project: New Man™ and  Humants™ and © 2010 Freazie White, Jr. D.B.A. Legacy Comics. Tess, the Living Tesseract™ and © Stephen Greg Legat and Mark Poe. All rights reserved. Mega Graphics LLC, licensor. Images and information for conventions and signings, see convention sites for copyright and trademark owners information. Fair Use reference to intellectual property of other companies are intended for historical and informational accuracy only. Mega Comics Group™ or Mega Graphics, LLC™ does not represent or have any relationship to any other company or entity or their intellectual property unless otherwise clearly noted.

Welcome to Monday’s Mega Comics Group Updates!

Not a lot of blogging to do today. As we clued you in on Monday, we’ll be taking a few days off from the blog chores for a little  rest but mainly to get caught up on a few things and specifically to prep for the upcoming release of our new titles, first here on the web and later as a POD Comics. Before we do that we do want to show off the color cover for our new A-1 Comics Spectacular #1 which  Mark Poe, Publisher-In-Training and resident painter, colored up. There are still a few touch-ups and clean ups to do but it’s 97.5% complete.

First off you may notice a few character changes from the black and white version we showed you last Friday. Why the changes? Well, we blew it! We thought we had checked everywhere for the status on these characters to see if anyone else was using them, as you know, these are mostly from the Public Domain, so anyone can use them, so far as Copyright goes. However, where Trademark is concerned, if another publisher is using the character, it could potentially cause problems. What’s embarrassing about this situation is the characters we changed were some a friend and fellow publisher  on Facebook is using. So we checked everywhere except our own blame neighborhood! Being the generous sort, this fellow didn’t mind us sharing the characters in question, but we really want to do our own thing with characters no one else are using so we made the change. We won’t mention his name here since we did not clear it with him before hand, but maybe later we’ll reveal his secret identity and give him a review and plug his publishing projects as well.

So… RE-Introducing the Amalgam Agents! Featuring: Ghost Owl, The Guard, Ghost Woman, Blackout, The Conqueror, Amazona, ArchAgent, Atomaster, Medicine Man , Black Fury , Lady Patriot, Madame Strange, Black Lion, Atlas the Titan, Iron Lady, and Atomoro! Click the image above for a larger view in a new window.

We may have at least one blog sometime next week! So you never know when we may pop up ! But we’ll only do it as time and need demands. In the meanwhile we’ll be hard at work on preparing the release of  Epoch 2012 A.D., The Precession of the Equinox as well as A-1 Comics Spectacular #1 featuring the Amalgam Agents, and Mega Tales #2 featuring Tess, the Living Tesseract. Also we’ll be adding Humants to our Archive Spotlight in July along with Project: New Man.

When will resume the regular 3 blogs a week schedule? We won’t set a date but rest assured we’ll shout it from the roof tops once we do! We don’t expect the semi-hiatus to be more than 1 month. Fair enough? Thanks, we greatly appreciate your patience and support!

Any questions or comments? All are welcome.

Have a great weekend! CU Next Week!

Ghost Owl, The Guard, Ghost Woman, Blackout, The Conqueror, Amazona, ArchAgent, Atomaster, Medicine Man , Black Fury , Lady Patriot, Madame Strange, Black Lion, Atlas the Titan, Iron Lady, Atomoro, Mega Tales, A-1 Comics Spectacular, and the Amalgam Agents and all contents ™ and © 2010 Mega Graphics LLC, unless otherwise noted herein. Epoch 2012 A.D., The Precession of the Equinox ™ and © Freazie White, Jr. and Shawn Decker.  Project: New Man™ and  Humants™ and © 2010 Freazie White, Jr. D.B.A. Legacy Comics. Tess, the Living Tesseract™ and © Stephen Greg Legat and Mark Poe. All rights reserved. Mega Graphics LLC, licensor. Images and information for conventions and signings, see convention sites for copyright and trademark owners information. Fair Use reference to intellectual property of other companies are intended for historical and informational accuracy only. Mega Comics Group™ or Mega Graphics, LLC™ does not represent or have any relationship to any other company or entity or their intellectual property unless otherwise clearly noted.

Welcome to Monday’s Mega Comics Group Updates!

We’re going to take a few days off from Blogging! Yep, we need a little downtime not just to rest but to get caught up on a few things. We have Epoch 2012 A.D., The Precession of the Equinox™ starting up next month as well as A-1 Comics Spectacular™ #1 featuring the Amalgam Agents™, a special project to finish up as well as Mega Tales #2 to work on. Also we’ll be adding Humants™ to our Archive Spotlight in July along with Project: New Man™. We will do one more blog this week, either Wednesday or Friday, showing the color preview of A-1 Comics Spectacular™ #1. We have a few changes on which we’ll clue you in on when we show it off.

Current Conventions & Events!

Don’t miss out these conventions & signings in your area! Please let us know of a convention or event you know of or are a part of and want to announce! As always, check with your local listings to verify dates, times and locations. We may not have room to list all of ‘em so see more here.

06/23/10 Signings or Appearance | Indianapolis, IN | Roger Stern @ Downtown Comics

06/23/10 Signings or Appearance | New York, NY | Stephane Roux, Dennis O’Neil & more @ Jim Hanley’s

06/25/10 Signings or Appearance | Charlotte, NC | Adam Hughes & Allison Sohn @ Heroes Aren’t Hard To Find

06/25/10 Comic Book Convention in  Indian Trail, NC      The Return of Mini-Con (Indian Trail)
Address: Indian Trail Library, 123 Unionville Indian Trail Road.

06/26/10 – 06/27/10 Comic Book Convention in Knoxville, TN     Knoxville Comic & Anime Con US
Address: Knoxville Expo Center, 5441 Clinton Hwy. | Event Profile.

06/27/10 Comic Book Convention in Akron, OH     Akron-Canton Comic Con US
Address: Chapparell’s Community Center, 2418 Arlington Road. | Event Profile.

06/27/10 Comic Book Convention in Boston, MA     North East Comic-Con US
Address: Radisson Hotel, 200 Stuart Street.

06/27/10 Comic Book Convention in East Hanover, NJ     East Hanover NJ Comic Book Expo US
Address: Ramada Inn Conference Center Hotel, 130 Rt. 10 West. | Event Profile.

That’s not all! We didn’t have time or space to list all of ‘em so see the rest HERE!

Any questions or comments? All are welcome.

Have a great week!

All contents ™ and © 2010 Mega Graphics LLC, unless otherwise noted herein. Images and information for conventions and signings, see convention sites for copyright and trademark owners information. All rights reserved. Epoch 2012 A.D., The Precession of the Equinox ™ and © Freazie White, Jr. and Shawn Decker. All rights reserved. Project: New Man™ and  Humants™ and © 2010 Freazie White, Jr. D.B.A. Legacy Comics. All rights reserved. Mega Graphics LLC, licensor. Fair Use reference to intellectual property of other companies are intended for historical and informational accuracy only. Mega Comics Group™ or Mega Graphics, LLC™ does not represent or has any relationship to any other company or entity or their intellectual property unless otherwise clearly noted.

Welcome to Friday’s Mega Comics Group Updates!

TGIF! The preview for the cover of the A-1 Comics Spectacular™!

Introducing the Amalgam Agents™! Well, we don’t have the color yet but we’ll give you a peak at the line art before Mark adds the color detail. Right to left we have: Bald Eagle™, Blue Blazer™, Ghost Woman™, Blackout™, the Conqueror™, Amazona™, ArchAgent™, Atomaster™, The Bronze Terror™ on his horse, Black Fury™ on her motorcycle, Lady Patriot™, Madame Strange™, Black Lion™, Atlas the Titan™, Iron Lady™, and Mekano™. These characters we have taken from the Public Domain as we have been talking about for the past few months. Why these and not some of the more popular ones? True some of these characters did not have much history, but Mark Poe, our Publisher-In-Training and creative force behind the Amalgam Agents™, liked them! More importantly, they fit the story Mark wants to tell and no one else is using them.

You may have noticed, some of the names are new. Some of these characters have long life spans for various reasons we won’t go into here but will be addressed in the storyline. Some are children or grandchildren of the originals, so we have allowed some differences. Further more, some of the characters names have been trademarked by another publisher for completely different characters. So in place of Manowar, the White Streak we have ArchAgent™, whose name change is a main part and natural evolution of the character in the storyline. In place of Black Cat we have Black Fury™, who is the Golden Age Black Cat’s granddaughter and niece of the original Black Fury. So you see, we have reasons in the story line for the changes. Bald Eagle™ , Atomaster™, Blue Blazer™ and Lady Patriot™ have similar back stories.

This is shaping up to look like a really fun project. There has been a lot of foot work to get to this point, that is to say, a lot of research and planning. We went through hundreds of characters, their backgrounds and their trademark status. Also since the idea of part of this project is to reprint some of these characters original adventures within the framework of he story line, we had to find out what we have access to and the condition of those copies. Sad to say a lot of these Golden Age tales were only saved on microfilm some of which are not in the best shape. Some we think we can restore to one degree or another.

So that’s where we are now with the Golden Age Project. We’ll have more in the days to come including the full color version of this cover.

This is Father’s Day weekend. So a Mega, hardy “Happy Father’s Day!” to all the dads! Enjoy the weekend!

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Archives Spotlight

We continue our look back at our previously posted web comics. We’ll be looking at all that’s come before with this feature and adding new comments as well. This month we are reviewing Project: New Man! Stay tuned to this section Monday, Wednesday and Fridays for more news on our archived titles.

Project: New Man #1 – Back Cover - You’ve never seen anyone like… Bearcat™! And you sure didn’t see much of him in this issue either! But that will change in the upcoming pages so stay tuned, reader! But he did make for a good back cover pin-up, didn’t he!

Mark’s Remarks: I hope you enjoyed our look at the first issue of Project: New Man. Next up is the cover to the second issue.

Any questions or comments? All are welcome.

CUMonday!

All contents ™ and © 2010 Mega Graphics LLC, unless otherwise noted herein. All rights reserved.

Project: New Man™ and  Bearcat™ and © 2010 Freazie White, Jr. D.B.A. Legacy Comics. All rights reserved. Black Cat™ and © 2010 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved. Fair Use reference to intellectual property of other companies are intended for historical and informational accuracy only. No one should assume Mega Comics Group or Mega Graphics, LLC represents or has any relationship to any other company or entity or their intellectual property unless otherwise clearly noted.

Welcome to Wednesday’s Mega Comics Group Updates!

If you have not seen Project Superpowers™ from Dynamite Entertainment here’s a little sampler!  Bob Benton is better known in his superhero guise as the “Fighting Nemesis of Crime,” the Black Terror. He debuted back in the Golden Age of  Comics in the Nedor Comics title Exciting Comics #9. The character went on to have his own title and has since appeared in publications by AC Comics, America’s Best Comics, Eclipse Comics, TLW Comics, and now in the Dynamite Entertainment’s comics series Project Superpowers™ and back in his own Black Terror™ book. Benton, a pharmacist, created a serum, the essence of which was extracted from red ants, called the “Formic Ethers.” After taking the serum he gained super agility, strength, and invulnerability. He later gave the serum to Tim Roland, who became his sidekick, Kid Terror™. This YouTube video features covers, alternate covers and art from the Dynamite Entertainment series Black Terror™. Enjoy!

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Archives Spotlight

We continue our look back at our previously posted web comics. We’ll be looking at all that’s come before with this feature and adding new comments as well. This month we are reviewing Project: New Man! Stay tuned to this section Monday, Wednesday and Fridays for more news on our archived titles.

Project: New Man #1 -- Inside Back Cover - The Adventures Continue… This inside back cover gives more insght into where we were back in 1991.

Mark’s Remarks: Still very green in the business, we canceled Project: New Man™ #2 and rescheduled Humants #1 as well as increased it’s size to accomodate both the Humants story and the second story of Project: New Man™.

This did not endear us to the distributors as we and many other independents were to find out. Canceling and rescheduling was a mistake which played a key role in Distributors further cutting back promoting Independents. At the time we felt we had no choice because of the low order numbers for P:NM #1. We had little operating capital and a double size single issue saved us a lot of money at the printers.

In the long run it did not matter anyway, the so called Direct Market became a bigger joke than the old Newstand Market. Even for the bigger companies it did not work all the time. If you ever wondered why a title by a giant in the industry like Jack Kirby or Neal Adams got canceled it’s real simple, LIMITED OR NO DISTRIBUTION. That’s right, the books never made it to a lot of stands and did not get into the hands of the fans. It still happens today. The World Wide Web is a much better Direct Market for comic books.

Any questions or comments? All are welcome.

CUFriday!

All contents ™ and © 2010 Mega Graphics LLC, unless otherwise noted herein. All rights reserved. Project Superpowers™ and the Black Terror ™ and © 2010 Super Power Heroes, LLC. All rights reserved.