Look Back: Mega Man 01

I've been meaning to share with you guys some of my favorite pages from Mega Man for, like, forever at this point... This has been an amazing series to work on and I'm so grateful for the opportunity. I just about peed myself when they offered me this gig! You’d think after so many issues of Sonic that I’d be sick of the color blue at this point, but every issue is exciting to work on!

So, how about a little retrospective on issue one?

While Mega Man #1 is a straight-up origin story, we jump right into the action and get this great tease of how awesome the Blue Bomber is gonna’ look (penciled – and digitally inked for this ish – by fan favorite Patrick “Spaz” Spaziante).

Uh oh… My laziness is showing! So Patrick puts in tons of “Easter Eggs” into his artwork – nods to other characters in the Mega Man franchise and even other Capcom properties! This panel on the bottom left features characters from Zero, Legends, and even Battle & Chase! So much of this was going to be totally obscured by word balloons, so I left it pretty much flat…

There really are SO many references, though – I did my best to keep up! You’ll see in later issues where backgrounds were totally referenced from games like Power Battle/Fighters and I had no idea. Whoops!

Of all the video game nods to make it in, I am overjoyed and absolutely tickled that we managed to put the stage selection screen into comic book form. It’s been years since I played Mega Man 1 – did we get the positioning on the Robot Masters right??

This first issue is the stand-out in the first arc, I think. Way more decompressed, everything has room to breath. (Felt like the Robot Master fights were too short? You will be pleased-as-punch with some of the fisticuffs coming up in the Mega Man 2 adaptation arc!) I am pumped that this ish is being reprinted as this year's Mega Man FCBD offering. It's such a great intro to the action and heart that this series has!

The transformation sequence is my favorite piece of storytelling in this entire first arc… This is the Mega Man origin in comic book form and it is awesome! As we walk with Rock, Roll, and Dr. Light down that hallway the colors – usually very white and bright in the lab – take on this very dark mood. We’re goin’ down a violent path that there may be no comin’ back from, but it’s the only path we have left to choose. I think everyone really came together to make this scene rock!

Hey, hey! Did you know there was actually a motion-comic “trailer” for this issue? How rad is that?? I had no idea they were putting this together to promote the new series, and it is awesome to see Mega Man get the motion-comic treatment. I really wish they would do more of these!