Page 16 is here! We have reached the halfway point of this first issue.  Nostradamus and Theo are now on the scene. It seems Nosy has seen these guys before. Remember, Nosy is actually not a dog at all, but another fourth dimensional creature somewhat like Tess. He was a “gun-runner” in his home dimension, and came to this universe to escape clients. He is capable of transporting objects as Tess does, and is able to communicate telepathically. So it’s likely Nosy has had problems with these alien Teddy Bear Pirates before or at least heard of them.

Next: Page 17 will introduce another character into the story line, one who seems to always be a thorn in our hero’s sides. Stay tuned to find out who.

Yes, we were late updating this morning. This page required some art modifications where the Auto Gyro is concerned and was a little tricky to re-letter also, so it required more time to finish. There were a lot of interuptions also, which is not unusuall at this time of year. Our workload increases do to Spring/Summer activities such as yard work and garden work, the kids are out of school and special events like Comic Convention Art Jams require more attention. All this and much more has caused us to get behind our already stressful schedule, so much so this week, that we will not be able to have a new page Friday as we had intended. We’ll try to get back on schedule next week. Please bear with us. Thanks for your patience and support!

And now…Page 21. The first thing you will probably notice is the lack of word balloons and text on this page. It’s just part of our Friday In-A-Hurry Summer Special !  That’s right as part of our customer service we have withheld the  script for this page until a later date when your schedule is less hectic. Of course we are just kidding.

Stephen Greg Legat in his role as both Editor and Writer of our tale discerned that this page needed no dialog. Now, keep in mind that his story was plotted, penciled, inked and scripted 22 years ago before there was a MegaComicGroup.com or any web sites for that matter. This page was designed, as was the entire comic book, to be read in one sitting, one page after the other not one or two pages a week! So to get the effect you need the perspective of the rest of the pages. This might be a good day to take advantage of our Archives to review the pages up to this point to get the flow of the story line. Click on the Archives button on the Menu Bar of the Calendar to the right.

This illustrates one of the failing points of  web comics. One which we are taking into consideration for future web comics releases. It may be more reader friendly to release all the pages of  our book on one day, just as the comic book you buy in the store comes with all the pages at the time of release and purchase. The humor strips don’t have this problem, but in an adventure story the continuity from page to page is different than a 4 panel gag strip. What do you think? Had you rather have the pages of the story weekly as we complete the production of each page or would it be better to finish all the pages and release the whole story on one day? Let us know your preference, it will help us as we consider how to proceed with publishing on the web.

Meanwhile, we will stick to the one or two page schedule for the duration. Be with us Monday and Wednesday for our Blog updates and then back here next Friday for Mega Tales #1, page 22, which has plenty of panels and text!

Finally! Page 23 has been a month coming. We apologize for the delays. August is just to busy for us mainly because of the High School Football Programs Books we do. We just finished up 8 of those babies! 5 were due in one week! Whew! We’ll tell you a little more about that Monday and even show you parts of one of the books. Then we had the Facebook Comic Con Summer Gala. Next year there is talk of moving that to September, which would help out considerably.

Today’s page was complicated both on lettering and coloring. Too many characters with all the bears and trying to keep the continuity. But that’s part of the business, and it’s fun even though it is time consuming. Hope you enjoy our efforts.

We hope to get back on schedule in September and maybe even get back to 2 pages a week to finish up this first issue of Mega Tales #1.  Epoch 2012 A.D. is coming up as well as Mega Tales #2 and our pods books will soon be on sale. Lots to do in the remaining months of this year. WOW! Can you believe there are only 4 months left in 2009! It’s really gone by fast! Too fast!

Have a good weekend and we’ll see you on the blog page Monday. Peace.

Page 25! Tess continues to confront the alien bears but with her 4-D powers neutralized by their force screens it would seem she has few options for stopping them. She resorts to using a makeshift weapon never before seen used in a super-hero fight, at least not like this! Well, at least she doesn’t have any ego! She will use whatever means necessary to deal with the enemy. HA! What a woman!

The production on this page was much like the last one. It was not really that difficult and really did not take that long to do, but interruptions made it take 4 times as long! Mark reported really enjoying doing the color and special effects on this one. He said the lettering was very easy. He does the lettering on separate layers in PhotoShop just like the color. Each page may have as many as 25 layers and be 30-45 megabytes in size. But on these modern computers that’s nothing to deal with! We certainly could not have done it like this  back in the ’90′s even if we had the latest tech offerings of that day. Yep! Once we get to doing these comics on a full time basis we’ll be whipping these pages out right and left!

Page 29 reveals the Alien Pirate Teddy Bears are far from cute and cuddly. They mean business! They have a deadly plan to set off atomic bombs at both of earth’s poles and not only melt the polar ice, which alone really wouldn’t be enough to flood much since most of the ice volume is already underwater, but also start tidal waves to flood the continents! All this to secure their savings accounts! And we thought Wall Street was a bunch of cut throat pirates! Geeze! Can the disguised Nosy warn Tess in time?

Production on this page was about like the last but it required a little more time. Only because Mark Poe had a bad back all week. Never fear, our friendly net- neighborhood publisher in training and colorist at large, went to the Doctor and got some help. He reports much improvement but he does have to go back for some tests and another visit for the results.

We made some progress on the findings of whether the Original Captain Marvel’s copyright is actually in the Public Domain. We found records where there was an attempt by Fawcett Publishing to renew the copyrights for a few of these Golden Age books. There is still some question about the trademark. It is our understanding once a copyright falls into Public Domain there is no reversing it. We don’t know if that also applies to trademarks. It’s unclear how Marvel Comics secured the trademark. The other big question is: How can the Captain Marvel comics from the 40′s and 50′s be in the Public Domain and not the characters themselves? Our research continues and we have contacted some copyright and trademark attorneys for help. Once we have more facts we’ll fill you in.

Another big weekend of football is here! Cheer for your favorite team and have fun. Hope your team wins, unless they happen to be playing our team.

We’re on page 31, and Nostradamus, Tess’ 4th dimensional friend who usually appears as a dog has disguised himself as one of the Alien Pirate Bears using his 4-D, living tesseract powers. His plan was to take the place of one of the bears to get aboard their star ship and find out what exactly they had in mind for our fair planet. He found out alright: a plan to explode both polar icecaps with Nuclear Bombs to flood the continents. After the waters receded they would then bury their treasure in Peru, as they had for more than 200 years, then take off to plunder the space ways once again.

Nice, eh? What did we ever do to these guys? Maybe they were offended at our Teddy Bear marking success of the past 100 years. It probably gave them some sort of deep, traumatic, psychological complex. Maybe Tess should call in Dr. Phil or Oprah.

Mark reports this page was a little more complicated on the color end of it but fun to do nonetheless. Be with us next Friday for page 31 and the fate of Nosy.

Well, we made it to another weekend! It’s Halloween! Fall is in full swing and the leaves are changing. Don’t forget to set your clocks back an hour Saturday night as Daylight Savings Time ends.

The World Series is under way and the Phillies are tied with the Yankees two games into it. The next game is Saturday night. We are 2 thirds through the College Football season and the NFL‘s winners and losers this year are coming into focus. Only 3 undefeated teams now, Denver, New Orleans, and Indianapolis. Lot’s of fun right now on the weekends! Enjoy!

Finally the back cover to Mega Tales #1. It’s hard to believe we started this issue in March. We certainly did not mean to string it out this long, but somethings don’t always go as fast as planned. Originally we wanted to have 2 pages a week for this one and we did do that for several pages but soon the weekly & daily demands limited us 1 per week. In spite of the delays we hope you have enjoyed our first color outfitting of one of our comics titles.

But wait, there’s more! With this page we have over 300 comic book pages on this site. 320 to be precise. That doesn’t include all our pin-ups, sketches and other assorted artwork nor does it include all the art we’ve previewed of other publishers. Neither does it include an even larger amount of blogs! So, as slow as we might be we’ve actually posted a lot in a one and a half years! And we’re not stopping here.  As we have said before we still have the conclusion to Tess to do which will be Mega Tales #2, as well as the soon to begin Epoch 2012 A.D. And also the, as yet titled, Golden Age Project we’ve been plugging lately which will get us back to posting a t least 1 comic page a day, 5 days a week. So never fear Mega Maniacs! The best is yet to come! Hey! We have not even gotten to our new work yet! We’ve just been showcasing our old stuff to whet your appetite! So hang around, effendi, and see what we pull out of our collective hats next!

Well, today’s a special day. It’s the bosses birthday. No, not Springstein. It’s the day some 48 years ago that our Publisher In  Training and middle-aged cartoonist at large, Mark Poe was born. It’s not something we make a big deal out of because he doesn’t and seldom even remembers it at his age, until someone reminds him. This year is his second year on Facebook and there was no way he was going to forget it this year! If you are on Facebook you know what we mean. Birthdays are not forgotten there! Mark has really been touched by all his Facebook friends that stopped by and posted a Happy Birthday comment on his FB Wall. He asked us to convey his “Thanks!” to everyone.

Have a good weekend! Cheer your team on to victory, rest, relax and re-charge. You deserve it!