About Page
Use these links to get to different parts of the about page.
About the comic About the story About the Author About languages About the characters
The comic itself has an interesting origin, sort of. I had been reading other sprite and internet comics for most of the fall semester of 2001, but hadn't given any thought to make one of my own. My roommate at the time had, however, and decided to make his own sprite comic. We talked about it a lot, and eventually I set out to customize a sprite so he could represent me in his comic (then tentatively titled "Pi are squared.") Eventually, I kind of figured that since my roommate was as lazy as sin, than if he could make a comic, so could I. So I started making the first few episodes of "Welcome to 20XX" to be a spinoff.
Anyway, what ended up happening was that my comic, "Welcome to 20XX", went up in January 2002, like I had planned. "Pi are squared", however, never got off the ground. Not one to be discouraged, I decided to keep going. I love to write stories, and the comic ended up being a great way for me to regularly practice my creativity. And so "Welcome to 20XX" is going strong.
Like I said, this was first intended to be a spinoff of "Pi are squared", hence the reference in episodes 1 and 2 to something that happens in Intermission 2. The major difference between the two comics was that my roommate only wanted to use custom characters, while I wanted to mix original characters with the standard Mega Man characters.
Intro Storyline: This is the storyline that consists of episodes #1 through #14. This was me getting started. Originally, I was going to tie mine and my roommate's comics together, but I ended up having to redo a lot of scripts. Since his comic never went up, I had to completely remove all references to it and try to quickly find a way for "Welcome to 20XX" to stand on its own. Here, I basically introduced the base characters and began setting up the next to storylines.
Chris Cleans/Fungal Genesis: This first official storyline was set up in Ep. #6 where Chris was introduced, but officially runs from Ep. #15 through #25. This storyline was a chance for me to fully establich Chris as a character, and to fill time while I more fully planned the next storyline. The Toilet Mushrooms were created to serve as an adversary for Chris, and as random comic relief.
The Attack of Charwoman: This is the first major story arc, beginning at Ep. #26. While there are several smaller storylines within this one, most of it basically leads to the end of this one. Charwoman, a genius weapons designer, has forced Wily to build her female robot masters, and now Mega Man and company have to stop her.
Future Storylines: Currently I only have two future storylines planned, the first being Bill's history, the second is the attack by the demon that has possessed Dr. Light. Both of these will occur after the current storyline, but not necessarily in that order. I write the stories myself, but things readers have said have interested me enough that they've been written in to the story before.
There's not much to say about me. I am a junior at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, currently majoring in Computer Science. After that I plan to get an Associate's in art from somewhere and possibly my Master's. I have minors in Mathematics and Japanese, and a limited amount of skill in Spanish language. I myself am 21, non-Christian, and I enjoy creative writing, reading, and games. I also like to hang out with friends and to talk to interesting people. Drop me a line sometime at either of the ways I've put on the front page to reach me. I would love to hear comments about the comic, suggestions, or even just something entirely unrelated to this web page.
When Bill and Roll cast spells, you may notice that they do so in a non-English script for at least the incantation. I leave the spell name in English so that the spell that is cast is understood. Also, several character and place names are not English and/or have a special meaning in the language I put them in.
A lot of the names, including Maseiryoku and Kinryu, and the incantations for Roll's spells are in Japanese. This is because it is a language that I speak, so translation is relatively easy and it helps me practice writing in Japanese. Also, since the Mega Man characters are Japanese, I figured it was logical for Roll to speak it. Japanese is a beautiful spoken and written language, hence why I wanted to use it in the story.
Bill's incantations are done in Sindarin Elvish. This is a reference to one of my favorite literary works, The Lord of the Rings. Again, it is a beautiful spoken and written language. The text is in standard Roman characters, righter than actual Elven. This is to allow you to read/pronounce it better. I figure that Japanese Hiragana is easier to look up then Elven. As a note, I do not speak or read Sindarin, the translations are done using a Sindarin dictionary and grammar rules reference, both of which can be found online (go to Yahoo and search for JRR Tolkien, then follow the links to Lord of the Rings, then Languages, then Elven).
The reason I use those different scripts for the incantations is to give an air of mystery to the spellcasting, to help give it that magical feeling. I do leave the spell name in English, however, so readers can easily know what spell is being cast, even if they don't know the incantation.
Just to say a little about the characters. A lot of the basic ones are directly based on Dave Anez's prototypes from "Bob and George". Thus, Mega Man is an idiot, and Proto Man is cool. The exceptions are Dr. Light, who is a kindly and wise alcoholic when not possessed (we have yet to see this), and Dr. Wily, who is a friendly evil genius. The rest of my characters are in general my own creation.
Bill is myself in the comic, sans "Author powers". I did this cause I felt the story would be more fun with no "divine influence". While powerful, his Shinigami powers do not approach the omnipotence that many Authors have. Also keep in mind that Roll has powers to balance his, and is not limited by a biological body. Chris is based off of a friend of mine, while the toilet mushrooms are meant to be pointless. Most important are the female robot masters. I felt that they needed to be created, because there have never been female robot masters before, nor a female villain, hence Charwoman (which is a Monty Python reference). Death was just an interesting character I thought I would throw in for kicks. Really, how often do you see the incarnation of Death in a comic about mostly robots?
All material and characters not already copyrighted to Capcom or Konami are copyright William Kennedy (c) 2002, 2003, 2004. This page is optimized for Netscape at 1024x768 resolution, or at least this is the stuff my computer's on when I build the page.
The Roll sprites are use are copyright to Ran who is the best person in the world for letting me use them.
The Toilet Mushrooms are copyright to Jeff Anderson. Also copyright to him is Pi, who appears in Intermission 2.
This is a work of parody and is not meant to infringe upon, nor compete with any previously created work.