Power-STAR COMICS 1984!

Author's Notes:

My commentator just never met heroes who appealed to the public *and* cared about marketing themselves. I bet Marvel-Earth has Avenger toys...

Anyway, I got challenged to write a toy story. Unfortunately, the Powernauts seem not to have lent themselves to a toy line (aside from the disastrous Sugar Frosted Air Hall of Power Playset in 1979). However, the 1980s had no shortage of comic-book toys and toy-based comic books. I've already considered the effect that will have on the upcoming Powernaut 1985 strip. As such, I was able to launch a toy comic series on short notice. I went from roughest draft to presentable web site in five days, which is even faster than the first Powernaut comics.

This series could easily be a growth category. I bet I can get as many contributions as for 1944 if I ask for volunteers! Who else loves the '80s? (Or at least '80s cartoons?)

You can see Manly-Man in the Superhuman World Wiki. What a concept. Others will join both 1984 and the Wiki soon too... Oh, my, I've got Jill Stern and the Doom Bear lined up.

(signed) Scott Eiler, 5 July 2015.

The "growth category" is on! Manly-Man has become the Powernaut's most popular guest star since Leo the Pirate Vampire King. And people love to see me drawing the Happy Bears in public. I told Facebook I might replace the Powernaut series with "Happy Bears", and included some art. This became the most popular Powernaut Facebook post ever. By fan request, I have already prepared a coloring-book page. I might have to go with Happy Bears coloring-book pages for Free Powernaut Comic Day 2016. Heh, I guess it's a good thing I'm ending the episode with them then. And who knows, if fans aren't fickle, I might have more 1984 series. After all, Manly-Man's gone bear-hunting, and there's all these bears! Plus, hey, the evil enemies of G.I. Gov like bears too.

I would love to be the original creator on some of these concepts. "Queen Evilina" is so obvious it was grabbed by a woman in a Halloween costume, though. But "Queen Dominatra" is not so obvious - and I can at least claim prior usage of the name "Dominatra".

Solar Sail Roboto deserves some design notes... I'm borrowing Andrew Perron's team the Solar Sails, with one important difference: These robots merge, in finest 1980s fashion. This will be important for the 1985 series, just to keep the story from being visually dominated by five giant robots. Andrew and I have established that my robots are different from his. This makes sense, because they're twenty years apart; mine are predecessors to his.

Happy Bears have gone live now. I never meant for them to be taken seriously. But they are inspiring extreme responses. Some are taking them as life-models. Really. One other is saying, maybe the Doom Bear is the real hero. But they are apparently the most popular thing I have done in a long, long time. Heh.

There's a last-minute entry for a challenge: Saved By The Turtle! Michael D. Friedman *won* the challenge for which Power-Star Comics was designed. Which is understandable, given how he came up with Torpy the Torpedo. His duty as a winner was to produce a new challenge. For reasons of his own, he required a story with a specific character name, a specific line of dialog, a baseball field, a turtle, and a rotary telephone. I have edited the character name and the line of dialog to meet Powernaut standards of brevity, but otherwise the plot elements practically wrote a 1984 Power-Star Comic by themselves. The 1984 TV series "Punky Brewster" and "Going Bananas" (featuring the family-fun super-monkey Roxana Banana) took this concept the rest of the way. I declare sandlot baseball, probably in Detroit!

But this Turtle is not going to appear in Powernaut 1985... He's too smart to be sucked into a superhero fight, when his friends' lives need his help. Heh. Indeed, I don't see him fitting in my universe at all. Yes, he *can* fit... but if he stayed, he'd be revealed as an alien experiment or a junior Doom Creature or an envoy from Earth-Draconis or something. And I'm not prepared for the inevitable world-domination battle between Ellipsis, United States special forces, the Doom Bear, *and* Tommy the Turtle. So, since this isn't my concept anyway, I hereby grant *exclusive* publication of "Saved by the Turtle" and its characters back to Michael D. Friedman! (ref: "The Truth About Fiction")

The Turtle does give me a chance to reveal something else about 1980s comics, though... They weren't always cool. For instance, Richie Rich made it onto television then. Harvey Comics was so proud, they didn't just say "NBC", they published the call-letters of every television station which played him - right down to WLW-I (sic), Indianapolis! Heh. Hence, my "Soon on TV" graphic.

As odd as it is to say... Producing these *particular* happy comics is the happiest thing I've done in years. But somehow something is making me more happy than that... It's as if I have actually become like some Powernaut who doesn't really care about what everyone else is doing with the world, as long as I can do some good and say "Hi!" That actually explains a lot about my life right now.

(signed) Scott Eiler, 27 August 2015.