Thanks Tom. It was because of this series that I decided to have a life long career in comics. I was about nine years old when it came out. I have been drawing at the board ever since.
I was 12 or 13 when I discovered the Micronauts comics. They became some of my favorite comics at the time! And I had a few of the Micronauts toys - Astro Station, Hydro Copter, Microtron as well as several of the smaller figures (I remember I broke my Acroyear figure's arm the first day I got it. Ugh.) Talk about a walk down memory lane - I remember for my birthday my friend took me to see Star Wars for the first time and he also gave me a Micronauts toy (I think it was the Galactic Cruiser). It was great seeing Mike Golden's drawings of the toys in the comics! And I loved Rubenstein's inking on the first few issues.
Blew my mind when you pronounced Acroyear to rhyme with "Destroyer". All these years I've been reading/saying it as rhyming with "Macro Deer". Which sounds like one of their C-tier bad guys. Anyways, awesome nostalgia trip...the in house promo ads for this series were ever-present in my first batch of garage sale acquired comics! Looking forward to the rest!
Bug was referred to very rarely as a “galactic “warrior which was a Micronauts toy that came out in a few colours and Green was one of them , Galactic defender was another toy that was shown in the comics later briefly , Akroyear was based on the toy and his brother was based on Akroyear 2 .. and then there was giant Akroyear which was the killing machine tank in the gladiator ring . Baron Karza in the comics was exactly like the Karza toy as was Force Commander one black one white in the Mego versions shooting fists and upper chest cannons . Rann as based on the toy “Space Glider “with Helmet and wings , microton toy was much larger as a toy and the other characters could ride on him he took Batteries and could be changed into different versions they shrink him down to be a sidekick for Mari .like R2 .. the Time traveller toys would glow in the dark if held under a lamp first and then you shut the lights off, which was really cool and is kind of mimicked in the comics as they always glow ..
first comic i ever got into as a little kid. i had no idea how rarely i’d encounter artwork and plotting of this quality again. the first 12 issues deserve cinematic treatment!
Thanks for the Fantastic flash back my friend! I had forgotten how incredible the artwork (inside the comic) was. Okay, the cover didn't suck either. Don't know Kirby's Forth World but that's what I'm going to be reading the next time I hit Free Comic Online or Comics Free online, what ever it's called. Thanks again Tom!
Really glad to hear someone else point out the similarities to Kirby's Fourth World. In later issues, after Golden leaves, Mantlo does back-up stories to expand the history of Micronauts in the same way that Kirby did Tales of Asgard to expand Thor's history.
If you showed me a few pages of this comic without me knowing what it was and asked me when I thought it came out, I would probably have guessed no earlier than 1984 and possibly as late as 1988. It's been a couple of decades since I read it, but this reminds me of DCs Invasion series. And while that chapter font is definitely in the "inspired by Star Wars" family, I still wouldn't expect to see anything like that until 1980 at the very earliest. For the font alone, i wouldn't have guessed any earlier than 82 or 83. You're right that it's very Atari-like. This comic is blowing my mind a little bit.
I really like Micronauts, Golden’s art is amazing. My first issues I had when I was a kid is # 7 fighting Man-Thing and #12 in this Acroyear was wrapping up his story on his planet.
Marvel’s press release for the Omnibus collection mentions they will release a Facsimile Edition of 'Micronauts' #1 in September! I wonder if it sells well enough, if they’ll consider doing the whole Golden run! That would be rad.
Great analysis. I recently read just about everything Marvel produced before this point, and you're absolutely right about Golden's art, it was like nothing else Marvel had done before. They had some great artists working there over the years, but this comic felt like it had fallen through a time warp from some time in the mid-80s or so. There's about a hundred parallels to Star Wars, Fourth World and several other things in this series (is it just me or is the panel where Rann exits his Falcon-esque spaceship also rather reminiscent of Close Encounters, which was big at the time?), I also noticed that New Gods #1 opens with an attack by Darkseid's "Dog Cavalry" and this issue with Karza's "Dog Soldiers". The rebel Acroyears kind of fill the role of Kirby's Para-Demons in this story too. Apparently (I think this is even discussed in the letters) the resemblance of Baron Karza to Darth Vader was the one thing that wasn't really Mantlo/Golden's doing, as far as I can tell the 1977 Micronauts toyline is the one that recoloured the Steel Jeeg figure to black, gave him the distinctly Vadery head and released him as "Karza" (I assume the toymakers saw the upcoming film's designs and knew a good thing when they saw it) and so they were just following the toys (of course the #1 cover certainly seems to make the most of the similarity). The comic's Karza borrows more from Darkseid than Vader I think, he's even standing in that famous "Darkseid pose" in the second issue.
I remember picking these up as they came out, amazed that Marvel was putting out something so different and daring (Mantlo’s PARADOX comes to mind, in the more “adult “ Bizarre Adventures run.) Following the series through its shift into the new Direct Market system, added to its allure and growing legend, along with ROM, that Bill Mantlo contributed to the Marvel Pantheon.🖖♾
Bill Mantlo is the most underappreciated writer of Marvel's bronze age. And possibly their most underappreciated writer ever. I still fucking hate the name Marionette though. The Micronauts toys ruled! And one year the Easter Bunny put Akroyer at the bottom of my Easter Basket! Which was clearly the best Easter ever.
The word "cinematic" is the only real and concise way to describe Golden's art for the first few issues. Eventually his style settles out and gets a little more pedantic.
I've got a bunch of these from back in the day - I think I have all of the Golden issues. My own preference is for Josef Rubinstein as inker as opposed to the other inkers used after #7 - but any Golden is great anyway. I love things like his use of silhouettes and his expert handling of underlight on characters faces/bodies. He's a big influence on my drawing style.
This was definitely one ;of my holy of holies when it came out; I was stunned by the whole style; so precise and brief & yet rich tones, designs, incredible shadow balance. It was immediately the new future of comix. ( for a grade 9er) - the perfection of Ditko (who I detested at that time but was just starting to come around) - had Micronauts too - time traveler already fascinated me. I couple of years ago I re-fell in love with finding some of the original 17 ; looked at Mariko , and a woman beside me i swear was wearing a nearly identical shirt - except long sleeved. she immediately started talking about how her dead husband loved comics!! some hvy Mojo around these books, they are prophetic, I call the Baron Karza scenario is when all healthcare is fascistic corporate ctrl ed & a dictator doles out immortality & prothestics. its already incredibly cyberpunk for its time - miss all that hard hitting countercultur blast in comics these days. *Shaitan lol - nvr noticed, must be from Dune! & the city tank, its obviously designed for domestic violence in cities, which is why its humanoid & lrg enough to fill a city block. weapons r for show (like the Gua'uld in STARGATE ) - in theory a gigantic robot violence down would be the perfect crowd suppressor. sonic weapons.
If I were some other company besides Marvel Comics, I'd just do an end-run around Hasbro and go back to Takara (or whomever now owns the rights to MICROMAN) in Japan. If you ever saw the line of MICROMAN figures they made in the late 1990s/early 2000s, they looked 100 times better than the original Micronauts toys. I'd license MICROMAN (which had plenty of figures and at least some level of backstory in Japan) and make a new American comic book from *that*. Forget trying to re-invent Bill Mantlo's Micronauts without having the rights to the the Marvel characters Arcturus Rann, Marionette, and Bug.
Always a fan how of you pull out the original floppies. It is crazy how much paper choice matters - and affects the artwork. The older I get, the more I appreciate it (or gripe about). Fingers crossed that collected editions will someday start steering towards paper with more tooth and less gloss
Wikipedia says, "Byron Preiss Visual Publications also published three paperback novels based on the Micronauts." But I can't find any evidence of this. If these exist, I'd love to track them down. Do you know anything about this novel series?
A really beautiful comic, though inkers tended to lag behind what Golden was giving them. I was never that fond of Mantlo's writing, but he tended to create characters that ended up being visually striking. The White Tiger, Jack of Hearts and Cloak and Dagger made for great comic book images, which to me is the hard part of generating comics characters.
I really enjoyed the micronauts. They were always a cool group of characters really different and strange. Love all this scifi sort of star wars like characters and it's can't wait till the omnibus comes out maybe you should do rom
I could go on at infinite lengths about the importance of this series on my development as a storyteller. I started collecting Micronauts as it was being published, after Golden had already left. When I went back and picked up the early issues, his art really turned me off. I remember being around ten, looking at that panel with the close up of Arcturus Rann's face with disgust. Thinking wtf is wrong with this guy!? Drawing these stringy bodies and rubbery heads? Then about two years later I started accepting it as cool and weird. I reread the series when I was about twenty and decided he was a visionary.
Hasbro today February 7th/ 2024 might go bankrupt and may sell more rights of different properties. Marvel might eventually own the rights for ROM and Micronauts. Maybe G.I. Joe and the Transformers as well. Depending if Marvel itself does not go under also.
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Thanks Tom. It was because of this series that I decided to have a life long career in comics. I was about nine years old when it came out. I have been drawing at the board ever since.
I was 12 or 13 when I discovered the Micronauts comics. They became some of my favorite comics at the time! And I had a few of the Micronauts toys - Astro Station, Hydro Copter, Microtron as well as several of the smaller figures (I remember I broke my Acroyear figure's arm the first day I got it. Ugh.) Talk about a walk down memory lane - I remember for my birthday my friend took me to see Star Wars for the first time and he also gave me a Micronauts toy (I think it was the Galactic Cruiser). It was great seeing Mike Golden's drawings of the toys in the comics! And I loved Rubenstein's inking on the first few issues.
Baron Karza has an awesome design. "Heavy Metal Darth Vader" is a very funny (yet 100% correct) way to describe him.
Thanks for teaching the kids about the Micronauts. I read the entire run. Still inspiring artistically to this day. ✌️
I’ve waited for you to do a video like this about Micronauts for a LONG time, man. Your pitch sounds amazing.
Loved these when I was a kid, they were like a mashup of Close Encounters and Star Wars. So much fun and Michael Golden's art blew my mind.
Love these comics! MIchael Golden killed it.
A movie based on the original comic could be cool if they did it right. Make it rated R and really give it the grit that the first comic series had.
Blew my mind when you pronounced Acroyear to rhyme with "Destroyer". All these years I've been reading/saying it as rhyming with "Macro Deer". Which sounds like one of their C-tier bad guys. Anyways, awesome nostalgia trip...the in house promo ads for this series were ever-present in my first batch of garage sale acquired comics! Looking forward to the rest!
Bug was referred to very rarely as a “galactic “warrior which was a Micronauts toy that came out in a few colours and Green was one of them , Galactic defender was another toy that was shown in the comics later briefly , Akroyear was based on the toy and his brother was based on Akroyear 2 .. and then there was giant Akroyear which was the killing machine tank in the gladiator ring . Baron Karza in the comics was exactly like the Karza toy as was Force Commander one black one white in the Mego versions shooting fists and upper chest cannons . Rann as based on the toy “Space Glider “with Helmet and wings , microton toy was much larger as a toy and the other characters could ride on him he took
Batteries and could be changed into different versions they shrink him down to be a sidekick for Mari .like R2 .. the Time traveller toys would glow in the dark if held under a lamp first and then you shut the lights off, which was really cool and is kind of mimicked in the comics as they always glow ..
I love how Karza on the cover invokes a Darth Vader mixed with Doom and Galactus.Sort of an updated Fantastic Four 49 cover. "If This Be Doomsday! "
first comic i ever got into as a little kid. i had no idea how rarely i’d encounter artwork and plotting of this quality again. the first 12 issues deserve cinematic treatment!
They really do ..
Micronauts and Shogun Warriors were 2 of my favourite comics back then.
Thanks for the Fantastic flash back my friend! I had forgotten how incredible the artwork (inside the comic) was. Okay, the cover didn't suck either. Don't know Kirby's Forth World but that's what I'm going to be reading the next time I hit Free Comic Online or Comics Free online, what ever it's called. Thanks again Tom!
I really like your micronauts idea.
Really glad to hear someone else point out the similarities to Kirby's Fourth World. In later issues, after Golden leaves, Mantlo does back-up stories to expand the history of Micronauts in the same way that Kirby did Tales of Asgard to expand Thor's history.
Golden said something along the lines of that editorial kept telling him to draw more like Kirby.
If you showed me a few pages of this comic without me knowing what it was and asked me when I thought it came out, I would probably have guessed no earlier than 1984 and possibly as late as 1988. It's been a couple of decades since I read it, but this reminds me of DCs Invasion series.
And while that chapter font is definitely in the "inspired by Star Wars" family, I still wouldn't expect to see anything like that until 1980 at the very earliest. For the font alone, i wouldn't have guessed any earlier than 82 or 83. You're right that it's very Atari-like.
This comic is blowing my mind a little bit.
I really like Micronauts, Golden’s art is amazing. My first issues I had when I was a kid is # 7 fighting Man-Thing and #12 in this Acroyear was wrapping up his story on his planet.
Marvel’s press release for the Omnibus collection mentions they will release a Facsimile Edition of 'Micronauts' #1 in September! I wonder if it sells well enough, if they’ll consider doing the whole Golden run! That would be rad.
This was fun. Will you be going over the rest of the issues?
At least the first 12 issues and the Ditko annuals, but maybe more than that.
Great analysis. I recently read just about everything Marvel produced before this point, and you're absolutely right about Golden's art, it was like nothing else Marvel had done before. They had some great artists working there over the years, but this comic felt like it had fallen through a time warp from some time in the mid-80s or so.
There's about a hundred parallels to Star Wars, Fourth World and several other things in this series (is it just me or is the panel where Rann exits his Falcon-esque spaceship also rather reminiscent of Close Encounters, which was big at the time?), I also noticed that New Gods #1 opens with an attack by Darkseid's "Dog Cavalry" and this issue with Karza's "Dog Soldiers". The rebel Acroyears kind of fill the role of Kirby's Para-Demons in this story too. Apparently (I think this is even discussed in the letters) the resemblance of Baron Karza to Darth Vader was the one thing that wasn't really Mantlo/Golden's doing, as far as I can tell the 1977 Micronauts toyline is the one that recoloured the Steel Jeeg figure to black, gave him the distinctly Vadery head and released him as "Karza" (I assume the toymakers saw the upcoming film's designs and knew a good thing when they saw it) and so they were just following the toys (of course the #1 cover certainly seems to make the most of the similarity). The comic's Karza borrows more from Darkseid than Vader I think, he's even standing in that famous "Darkseid pose" in the second issue.
That will be a worthwhile collection! i used to have a huge run of those as a kid and enjoyed the hell out of 'em
I remember picking these up as they came out, amazed that Marvel was putting out something so different and daring (Mantlo’s PARADOX comes to mind, in the more “adult “ Bizarre Adventures run.) Following the series through its shift into the new Direct Market system, added to its allure and growing legend, along with ROM, that Bill Mantlo contributed to the Marvel Pantheon.🖖♾
Bill Mantlo is the most underappreciated writer of Marvel's bronze age. And possibly their most underappreciated writer ever. I still fucking hate the name Marionette though.
The Micronauts toys ruled! And one year the Easter Bunny put Akroyer at the bottom of my Easter Basket! Which was clearly the best Easter ever.
The word "cinematic" is the only real and concise way to describe Golden's art for the first few issues. Eventually his style settles out and gets a little more pedantic.
I've got a bunch of these from back in the day - I think I have all of the Golden issues. My own preference is for Josef Rubinstein as inker as opposed to the other inkers used after #7 - but any Golden is great anyway. I love things like his use of silhouettes and his expert handling of underlight on characters faces/bodies. He's a big influence on my drawing style.
I’d love to see all of this rescanned for digital comics. These books were my childhood.
Your pitch for Micronauts reminds me of that Airboy book that came out a few years back
Had had a bunch of the toys as a kid, so of course I was into the comics. I wish Bug had been a figure!
It was always great whenever I could find back issues in the bargain boxes.
This was definitely one ;of my holy of holies when it came out; I was stunned by the whole style; so precise and brief & yet rich tones, designs, incredible shadow balance. It was immediately the new future of comix. ( for a grade 9er) - the perfection of Ditko (who I detested at that time but was just starting to come around) - had Micronauts too - time traveler already fascinated me. I couple of years ago I re-fell in love with finding some of the original 17 ; looked at Mariko , and a woman beside me i swear was wearing a nearly identical shirt - except long sleeved. she immediately started talking about how her dead husband loved comics!! some hvy Mojo around these books, they are prophetic, I call the Baron Karza scenario is when all healthcare is fascistic corporate ctrl ed & a dictator doles out immortality & prothestics. its already incredibly cyberpunk for its time - miss all that hard hitting countercultur blast in comics these days. *Shaitan lol - nvr noticed, must be from Dune! & the city tank, its obviously designed for domestic violence in cities, which is why its humanoid & lrg enough to fill a city block. weapons r for show (like the Gua'uld in STARGATE ) - in theory a gigantic robot violence down would be the perfect crowd suppressor. sonic weapons.
I think Shaitan might be Arabic for Satan.
If I were some other company besides Marvel Comics, I'd just do an end-run around Hasbro and go back to Takara (or whomever now owns the rights to MICROMAN) in Japan. If you ever saw the line of MICROMAN figures they made in the late 1990s/early 2000s, they looked 100 times better than the original Micronauts toys. I'd license MICROMAN (which had plenty of figures and at least some level of backstory in Japan) and make a new American comic book from *that*. Forget trying to re-invent Bill Mantlo's Micronauts without having the rights to the the Marvel characters Arcturus Rann, Marionette, and Bug.
Michael Golden is the perfect action comic artist....wish he did more titles with big profiles
Always a fan how of you pull out the original floppies. It is crazy how much paper choice matters - and affects the artwork. The older I get, the more I appreciate it (or gripe about). Fingers crossed that collected editions will someday start steering towards paper with more tooth and less gloss
I’d love to get some micronauts in Gallery Edition size
Wikipedia says, "Byron Preiss Visual Publications also published three paperback novels based on the Micronauts." But I can't find any evidence of this. If these exist, I'd love to track them down. Do you know anything about this novel series?
A really beautiful comic, though inkers tended to lag behind what Golden was giving them. I was never that fond of Mantlo's writing, but he tended to create characters that ended up being visually striking. The White Tiger, Jack of Hearts and Cloak and Dagger made for great comic book images, which to me is the hard part of generating comics characters.
I really enjoyed the micronauts. They were always a cool group of characters really different and strange. Love all this scifi sort of star wars like characters and it's can't wait till the omnibus comes out maybe you should do rom
What has Hasbro done with the properties that interfered with sharing them with Marvel?
I could go on at infinite lengths about the importance of this series on my development as a storyteller. I started collecting Micronauts as it was being published, after Golden had already left. When I went back and picked up the early issues, his art really turned me off. I remember being around ten, looking at that panel with the close up of Arcturus Rann's face with disgust. Thinking wtf is wrong with this guy!? Drawing these stringy bodies and rubbery heads? Then about two years later I started accepting it as cool and weird. I reread the series when I was about twenty and decided he was a visionary.
Making a comic about you trying to make a comic is a lot like that Charlie Kaufman movie Adaptation, sounds pretty interesting.
In my Micronauts pitch I mentioned Kaufman’s Adaptation and Wes Craven’s New Nightmare.
@@totalrecallshow Certainly sounds like it would be worth revisiting.
@@totalrecallshow I would read the fuck out of that book!
First time that I can honestly say that I have watched an entire video of a guy's hand while he talks.
If you read the comic there a lot of references to both Star Wars and Star Trek.
Hasbro today February 7th/ 2024 might go bankrupt and may sell more rights of different properties. Marvel might eventually own the rights for ROM and Micronauts. Maybe G.I. Joe and the Transformers as well. Depending if Marvel itself does not go under also.