Comic Books were introduced to the American public in the early 20th century. Since then they have been reinvented countless times. Now they have evolved once more, but this instance, it’s a quantum leap! We have arrived on new shores, the new world of the Information Age has just gotten underway. The Industrial Age is over. Comic books, magazines, and news papers are being replaced by web sites at an astonishing rate as we enter into the 21st century. Manual distribution and limited supply are no longer an issue, digital content is available to anyone with a computer and a connection to the World Wide Web. No need to worry about missing an issue of your favorite comic book anymore. No chance of being turned down by the manager of the local comic shop who won’t order that obscure title you been anxious to snag onto. Now you can get it online right on your personal computer.

Many comics can not only be browsed with your favorite web browser, many are available to be downloaded in pdf files to be opened with a pdf reader program such as Adobe Acrobat Reader and even printed in full color on your very own Ink Jet printer. Other online comics have limited run old style printed companion issues or collected Trade Paperback volumes for sale OR print on demand digital printed copies available for ordering. T-shirts, mouse pads, calendars and all manner of merchandise are often also available directly from the comic creators.

Now comes Mega Comics Group! In the next 30 days we will build this site. First with comics from our past publishing venture: Legacy Comics, and even some earlier stuff. Then we’ll launch our new comics designed specifically for this new era!

Yes, the time is here and we have arrived! What’s not to love about this age we live in! Enjoy!

The New Mega Comics Group web site is almost a month old. For almost a month we have been re-presenting the Legacy Comics Black & White Independent title Project: New Man originally published in 1991. Now we have for your reading and viewing pleasure the first isssue of Project: New Man’s sister book Humants! Freazie and I are really excited at the prospects of bringing these titles out of mothballs and publishing them in a larger market than they have ever been in, the World Wide Web. We hope you will enjoy your daily dose of Humants and will take the opportunity to let us know what you think of the book and this site overall. Your feedback will determine where we go from here. So fire up those keyboards and let us have it! 😉

Also don’t forget to browse the Mighty Mega Comics Group Checklist to see what else we have up our sleeves for the near future.

Check out the cover for Humants number one, penciled by Freazie White, Jr., inked by me, Mark Poe and colored by none other than Nathan Massengill! 🙂 Yes, THAT Nathan Massengill!

Enjoy!

We have concluded the first Project: New Man story which was originally published in 1991 as a one shot independent black & white comic book. Instead of a second published issue we made the second PNM story a back up in Humants #1, which by the way is live on the web right now. The cover was done for PNM #2 but only saw publication on the back cover of Humants #1 and only in black & white. Why it was only in black & white when the front cover was full color is beyond my memory! But for this web debut I got the old b&w cover out and digitally colored it up just for you! It may not be as good as Nathan Massengill did on #1 but maybe it will do. You tell me.

Project: New Man #2 The Haunted Man debuts appropriately tonight at midnight.

Enjoy!

My ol’ buddy just sent me yet another batch of old art! A lot of it was Small Press stuff with a few of our Independent pieces mixed in. Here’s one of them. This little promo was one Freazie wrote, penciled, inked and lettered all by himself from 1989.

Now, neither Freazie nor I were all that great at hand lettering. That’s why we always had our ace letterer Billy Leavell handling the job on every Legacy book. So I’m looking at this scan in PhotoShop and I’m thinking, “Ya know I’ve got those Blambot fonts I’ve been wanting to try out…and while I’m at it why not use some of those new coloring techniques I’ve been working on?” So one thing lead to another and… voila! Something old is now something new!

Remember to click the image to see a larger view.

Be sure to check out Sunday’s comic book posts for Project: New Man and Humants’! Rest Up! CU2morrow 😉

Welcome to Thursday’s tireless, technological, T-formation which makes up the Daily Mega Comics Group Updates!

New Years Day! 😀 WOW! 2008 is over! Geeze! It seems like it was only 6 months ago we started publishing web comics and… eh? Oh, yeah! It was only 6 month ago. 😉 But seriously, this year has seemingly gone by fast! As we did at Thanksgiving and Christmas we take our hats off to you, dear reader! Thanks for making our venture back into publishing comics such fun and successful! We know it will only get better from here!

Okay now, you know it’s the Football Bowl Season, and the NFL Playoff’s are about to begin which will end in the 2009 Super Bowl in February. But did you know that there is a Robotic Football Super Bowl? Hah!  Check this out from YouTube. This sure as heck ain’t those old Electric Football sets we played with as kids! 🙂

Now let’s check out Legacy Comics’ Humants’ offerings for today!

Humants # 5:

Chaosta is up! And yes she is dazed. She instinctively attacks Man Ark and Sojourner thinking they are part of the Humant Renegades she last fought before the explosion.

So how do they react? Do they back off? Well, Sojourner is in favor of that but Man Ark has other plans. Maybe he figures they might as well make this a training exercise or maybe he just likes to fight. Maybe he thinks the best way to snap Chaosta out of this daze is to let her blow off some steam. Maybe it’s all of the above!

Man Ark isn’t your run of the mill super-team strong guy. He’s not just brawny he has some brains as well. He likes to use a little psychology as he moves in on his opponent. Like most athletes know, a little trash talk can help gain an advantage over the competition. But will it work on someone like Chaosta? Seems to be, so far!

Any questions or comments? All are welcome.

Click the images for today’s web comics updates.

Check out Thursday‘s posts for Humants’! CU2morrow!

Welcome to Thursday’s t-squared, tip filled, tenacious Daily Mega Comics Group Updates!

Tonight is the night! 😀 WOW! The 2008 College Football National Champions Will be determined! It’s the SEC’s Best Florida Gators verses the  Big 12’s Champ Oklahoma Sooners!

Sure we know, regardless of what the BCS guys want us to believe we still won’t know who the real National Champion would be since there is no real Playoff for College Football but this is all we have right now. They can talk up those formulas, polls and computers all they want but the ONLY way to determine a true National Champion is by giving he teams the opportunity to play each other like every other sporting event in the land does. It’s that simple. End of discussion. ’nuff said. So we wait, but mark these words well, there will be a playoff for National Champions in College Football. We don’t know when or how but it will come to be. Count on it.

Here’s a treat! Dave Kellett is the cartoonist behind the hit web comic Sheldon.  In his own words, “Sheldon is a sarcastic, nerdy family strip filled with pop-culture references and fun, random story lines. At its center is this weird, wonderful little family: a boy, his duck, and the grandfather that raises them both. It’s a strip of geeks, for geeks, drawn by a geek. You’ll dig it: trust us.” And we do dig it so we wanted to share it with our readers. Check this out from Vimeo. It’s a neat little clip of how Dave creates a typical Sheldon daily comic. Dave does most of his old school method, but hey! If it’s not broke… 🙂 You’ll glean all kinds of great tips from this if you are a cartoonist but if not it’s still interesting and Dave’s humorous approach to everything he does is entertaining.

Now let’s check out Legacy Comics’ Humants’ offerings for today!

Humants # 5:

Ouch! That had to hurt! But then with Mageddon’s powers, maybe not so much.

Shyster has second thoughts of attacking his new master. He had been subservient to Johnathon Towers as you recall, but ever the one to worship power, he has switched his allegiance. He seriously thought of changing it again but his psionic powers, more so than any pretense of wisdom, gave him nagging warning that Mageddon was far from done yet.

Having neither, Smasher Quinn charges ahead like a maddened bull and pays for his folly!

Then if there be any doubt as to what he meant in his speech in Humants #3, page 27 panel 1, Mageddon spells it out plainly for the Renegades. They are hopelessly tied to Mageddon and they sustain their very life, such as it now is, from the Dark Lord! While he in turn siphons off the largest percentage of the energy they produce from them, allowing them just enough to do his bidding but no more.

The reality of their situation begins to sink in. They feel they have no chance of escape and certainly the lease has just grown shorter after this attempt at mutiny. They have indeed become slaves of the worse possible sort! Imagine, dear reader, the utter despair of having no means, no hope of obtaining anything better. They have indeed lost their lives, and are in every sense walking dead men! Is there truly no help for them?

Any questions or comments? All are welcome.

Click the images for today’s web comics updates.

Check out Thursday‘s posts for Humants’! CU2morrow!

Welcome to Thursday’s tinkering, technological, Transylvanian Daily Mega Comics Group Updates!

WOW! 🙂 Thursday?! Where has this week gone? Today we want to review another web comic which we have found we enjoy here at MCG.

Girl Genius is an ongoing “gaslamp fantasy” webcomic available at girlgeniusonline.com .  Girl Genius follows the life of Transylvania Polygnostic University student Agatha Heterodyne as she discovers that she is not as hapless as she, and others, thinks she is. The series is written and drawn by Phil and Kaja Foglio, Professors in residence at TPU. 😉

“Girl Genius is an ongoing adventure story in which the characters grow, change, run around the landscape quite a bit, and occasionally even die.” The Professors Foglio proclaim on the New Reader Page first. It’s followed by an admonishment to start reading with the first story, it all makes more sense that way.  The entire Girl Genius comics archive is available online so it’s easy to access this tales right on your home computer. If you have a lot of downtime, and we emphasize A LOT, on your job you might be able to read them there too, but don’t tell your boss we said you could, okay? We can get in enough trouble on our own, thank you very much! 😉

The authors claim influences which include Jules Verne and H. Rider Haggard. If you want a more modern point of reference think the movie, inspired buy the TV series of the same name, Wild, Wild West. You will find big, clanking Victorian-style tech, old-fashioned clothes, Frankenstein monsters and Zeppelin style airships. It could be magic or science or a little of both or what the Professors Folio refer to as it’s Mad Science.

Girl Genius began in the year 2000 as a quarterly comic book then the Professors decided to take the curriculum online. They faced a dilemma: How to present the story from the beginning to a new webcomics audience without making the established audience of the printed comic book series wait for the web comics to catch up. The  anser was simple: Two Webcomics! So they made the earlier chapters a three-times a week webcomic while simultaneously continuing the adventures from the point where the regular printed comic series was, in the new webcomic version. The two strips were titled The 101 Class and The Advanced Class but the two caught up to each other in July 2007, and now the two have been merged into one archive.

Even though the original comic is not published any more, you can also order the Trade Paperback and Hardcover Collections online from their store link or as PDF downloads from Drive-Thru Comics.

The Professors recommend Girl Genius for an audience of 13 and up. Even though by today’s TV standards there is nothing offensive there is lots of running around in Victorian underwear, occasional innuendo, a certain amount of violence and the occasional “damn!” But a lot of their readers still say they read Girl Genius to their kids and the Foglio’s own kids like it and read it.

The Art: Girl Genius is influenced by the Manga style but more like the original Robotech series. It’s very well done, and very detailed. The art in the Volume One is all black and white but beautiful line work! Color begins with Volume Two.

To get an idea of what you will be reading we present The Girl Genius Story So Far exactly as it is on their web site:

Spoiler Alert! By its very nature, the following synopsis will give away the plot.

BASIC BACKSTORY
Girl Genius has been being written for some time now, and there have been a lot of twists and turns in the story. Not all of that is covered here, because really, beyond a certain point it’s just easier to read the story itself, but this should be enough to get you up to speed:

The setting: In a time when the Industrial Revolution escalated into a full-on war, rival mad scientists, (“Sparks” to be polite), are the ruling powers in most of Europe. Keeping them all in line is Baron Wulfenbach, a particularly powerful and cranky Spark who, when someone starts causing trouble, simply steps in and makes them stop. His captial is the gigantic airship fortress Castle Wulfenbach.

The main character: Agatha Clay was a student at Transylvania Polygnositc University, who had truly rotten luck until she was revealed as a Spark. (Some might argue that this, also, was rotten luck.) She has also recently discovered that she is the last of the famous Heterodyne family—beloved heroes who disappeared under mysterious circumstances many years ago. Folk legend claims that they will someday return, but so far they haven’t managed it.

And as requested by Transylvania Polygnostic University Legal Department: This site is not approved by, sponsored by or affiliated with Studio Foglio LLC or Airship Entertainment.

Now let’s check out Legacy Comics’ Humants’ offerings for today!

Humants # 5:

As you recall in Project: New Man # 4, Bearcat suffered some physical abuse to his face at the end of a cattle prod from the villainous Ebenezer Baal.

Now here’s a trivia question for you sharp eyed readers. Why would Baal focus his attack on Bearcats face? Hmmm…? Come on read the stories. What? Yep, that’s right! Bearcats uniform is made from Micro-Mail woven from another of Emanuel’s inventions: Plastanium, the light weight, flexible material which is nearly impenetrable.

Baal would have attempted to cause Bearcat harm the usual ways of direct attacks on his body but once he discovered Bearcat’s padded Micro-Mail uniform protects him from the worst of the assaults, he revised his plan. It was also not possible for him to remove Bearcats uniform because of the special Static Seals which Emanuel built into the seems and openings.

So after figuring all that out, Baal realized the only course of action remaining was to torture Bearcat’s exposed face to get the information he needed.

Having survived the torture and being restored by New Man via his new found mastery of the Unified Field he wields, and even being free of the scars that normally would have occurred, Emanuel decides he will do something about his exposed face so that he is fully protected from any assault.

Any questions or comments? All are welcome.

Click the images for today’s web comics updates.

Check out Thursday‘s posts for Humants’! CU2morrow!