Under the Microscope: Micronauts #1

Acroyears... puls-cannons... strata-stations... roboids... insectivorids... To the casual reader, nonsense words. To the geek, they're the lexicon of the Micronauts, a japanese toyline (by Mego) that, like Rom, became the basis of a Bill Mantlo comic book series. The story goes that as Mantlo's young son Adam opened a present containing some Micronauts, Bill was struck by inspiration and bugged Marvel's editor-in-chief, Jim Shooter, to aquire the rights and put him to work. Whoops! I'm supposed to format this like I would have if Micronauts had won the "Spaceknight Saturdays is over so suck it" contest (it got 25% of the vote), so here goes: Unlike Rom, I actually HAD Micronauts as a kid. Not many, just the Mobile Exploration Lab, which came with a couple of these guys, dubbed "time travelers", to drive it: They were just the ordinary "crew" characters, with no real identity, but I liked how the Lab could be turned into component vehicles and the little guys' metal heads and clear bodies. "Named" characters like the evil Baron Karza of course eluded me. Bill Mantlo imagines a world that is part of Marvel's already famous Microverse, self-contained, but able to cross over with the Marvel Universe easily enough (as of the second issue, in fact). It's a world that features a classic 1977 struggle between an evil authority and a good rebellion. Stop me if you've heard it. Though some of the characters are pulled from the toyline, Mantlo also creates some original cast members (see below). One thing I find REALLY interesting re: the toys, is that Karza has been ruling for 1000 years thanks to the promise of immortality. When dissidents die, they are recycled into bodies for others to prolong their lives. This isn't unlike how the toys can be disassembled and put back together. (By the way, Karza is a centaur in that sequence, a possible reference to the toyline's "Magno-Horses" and again to Lego-like disassembly.) In this world, flesh and technology are interchangeable, and consequently, most machines have biological components and vice-versa. In our story, Karza (toy) is using a flying army of Acroyears (toys) to keep the rebels down, including the princess Mari AKA Marionette (original) and her servant robot Microtron (toy). Out of the blue, Commander Arctus Rann (original) and his trusty cyborg sidekick Biotron (toy) arrive from a millenia-long expedition to find new life and new civilizations... I'd say something about the ship looking like another (cough cough), but I can't bitch about Michael Golden's gorgeous art. Anyway, he took off before Karza came to power and is still alive because of relativity. He's kind of sore that 1) his planet has gone all fascist and stuff, and 2) they since discovered warp drive and everyone knows there are aliens etc. As soon as he arrives, he's thrown in a cell with other rebels, a good plan on the part of Karza that just makes them get together and flee. The team includes the aforementioned characters and Acroyear, the only one of his race not to turn traitor (toy species), and the insectivorid Bug (original). He's cool. Oh and there's a mysterious guy who calls himself the Time Traveler, so my old toys are covered. How did Mantlo manage to turn the disparate elements of the toyline into a cohesive mythology? And if you've seen some of the original characters hanging around lately, how did they grow and evolve? That's a tale for another time, for when I dust off the old microscope again. 'Til then!