In 1979 the Marvel Comics group introduced one of their coolest titles yet...the Micronauts. Anyone who bought these toys undoubtedly knew of the comic, and vice versa. These 2 walked hand in hand with each other, and it's even where the inspiration for the name of this website came from. Unlike the Microman toys, the Mego Micronauts had no "back story". The comic written by Bill Mantlo and illustrated for the first 12 issues (and numerous covers) by artist extraordinare Michael Golden, filled in this gap for collectors. The comic went onto span 59 issues in volume 1, and volume 2 for 20. The comic far out lived the toyline, and created an incredible new sub-division to the mighty Marvel universe. Almost all of the toys were shown in one way or another in the comic, with the main characters taking on the toys names. Shown here at the left is the un published cover to Micronauts #1, drawn by Michael Golden. The published cover was done by Dave Cockrum of X-men fame.

The leader was Commander Arcturus Rann, who was Space Glider and Time Traveler. The green insect-like Bug was Galactic Warrior, and a few other main characters included Acroyear, his evil brother Prince Shaitan (Acroyear ll), and even Pharoid made a brief appearence. Many of the Aliens did as well, and Biotron and Microtron were a robotic duo similar to a pair that were in some popular movie at the time...

And of course there was the evil scientist Baron Karza, who in the last few issues duked it out with Force Commander (Prince Argon). To read more about the Micronauts comics, visit Erik Larsen's Micro-Outpost for a great rundown of them all, and Willy Jones' Micronet -and download the Micronauts font while you're there!
 
As an interesting side note...the Microverse was indeed created by Marvel, but these tiny travelers weren't the first Micronauts, as evidenced in Fantastic four #76, 1968, page 4, panel 3...
  

all images copyrighted Marvel Comics