In 1976 I was on vacation to see my grandparents. It's hard to keep a ten year old entertained and so, first thing, we went to the mall. Into K-mart (or Kresgee's). I ran to the toy section. There was the flying model Enterprise I wanted. It was next to the Klingon battle cruiser. I wanted those bad. I was about to say "This is what I want!" when, turning the corner I saw them. Bright, metallic, gleaming, things... Micronauts to be more precise. They shot darts, they had swords, they had jet packs... What more could a kid want? That's what I wanted. I wanted them all. Space glider, Acroyear, Galactic Warrior, Time Traveler the list went on and on.

Although my grandparents wanted to keep me busy, they would only buy me one. (Besides "They looked dreadful") Which one? I contemplated forever. It was worse than trying to pick which cereal had the best prize. This one had a jet pack, this one had a sword and a jet pack, and this one, this one had a jet pack that shot and a big gold crown. I wanted the one with the gold crown.

Well, before we made it to the car I had it open. O.K. The crown wasn't a crown. It was a chest plate. The jet pack did shoot a big dart and it also could snap in place of the chest piece in front. Red, gold, and silver gleaming in the sun, my first Micronaut...Galactic Warrior.

There were more, many more, and I still have them. In storage, in the basement, waiting for the day my daughter is old enough to play with them, but not destroy them...

Two years later...

I was on lunch break at junior high. Downtown Terre Haute, wandering around, buying junk food and comics while my friends peaked at copies of "Easy Rider" around the corner. There on the rack, third slot down, MICRONAUTS #1. I had been eyeing it for a couple of weeks. If I bought it at lunch I would have to sacrifice lunch money. This was not unusual, I had bought almost all of my Star Wars figures this way, and a few Micronauts. It had been staring at me every time I came into the store. I knew they were the best toys ever (even better than my Star Wars figures or Shogun Warriors) but how could they make it into a good comic. They did. The best comic, ever! I bought it. Took it back to math class and read it. (I don't know why my math teacher hated me.)The best comic, ever! If ever given the chance to do my own comic, I would love to resurrect this one. I still miss it.

This page will be devoted mostly to the comic, not the toy. There are boards out there doing a great job on MICROMAN and MICRONAUTS the toys. They know more about the toys than I do. With their help I know more now too. To be more specific, I will primarily be covering issues 1-12; these are the best and were really all that there was supposed to be.

The thing that I loved about Micronauts was that it was such a great story with fantastic art. I had the pleasure of meeting Michael Golden (Micronauts artist) in '82 and he was very interesting. A great artist! I learned a great deal about drawing comics during that short encounter.

Micronauts was originally intended to be a fifty issue mini-series. Mini-series are common now, but I don't remember any at that time. Fifty issues, already planned out and ready to go. Until the powers that be got to it. They turned it into "Land Of The Giants" the comic. It pushed the book in a different direction than intended by issue 2, and the creative team wasn't happy already. Due to threats like we can replace you with George Perez, or Joe Shmoe, Golden and Mantlo decided to wrap up their originally fifty issue story in twelve. Mantlo stayed on after that but from then on Golden only did the occasional cover (and what wonderful covers they were). I picked up many another comic book simply because Golden did the cover or inside (preferably both). I picked up every Micronauts issue regardless. Bill Mantlo created a great mythos.





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