Following on the back of Marvel's announcement earlier this week that it had reached a deal with Hasbro to release an ominibus edition of Rom the Spaceknight, Marvel is now announcing that it has struck another deal with Hasbro to release an omnibus edition of the classic 1970s/80s series, The Micronauts!
Coming out in September, MICRONAUTS: THE ORIGINAL MARVEL YEARS OMNIBUS VOL. 1 will collect The Micronauts #1-29 & Annual #1-2 and material from Micronauts Special Edition #1-5. Marvel will also be releasing a special facsimile edition of The Micronauts #1.
What are the Micronauts?
We recently wrote about the origins of the Micronauts comic book, but long story short, the Microanuts were a series of action figures released by the Mego corporation starting in 1976. The son of Marvel writer, Bill Mantlo, received some of the toys for Christmas, and Bill Mantlo was so intrigued by the toys that he asked Marvel's then-Editor-in-Chief, Jim Shooter, to acquire the license to the figures. Shooter did so, and The Micronauts became a surprise hit comic in 1978 by Mantlo and artists Michael Golden and Joe Rubinstein, as a group of heroes who had adventures in the Microverse.
The success of The Micronauts led Parker Brothers to ask Marvel to do a comic book based on its Rom action figure. Marvel agreed to do, with Mantlo writing that comic, as well, and Rom the Spaceknight was also a success. Marvel's back-to-back action figure hits led to the company taking on an even bigger role in the launch of Hasbro's two biggest toylines of the 1980s, G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero and The Transformers (with Marvel helping to create the story structure behind the toylines).
How long has it been since Marvel published the Micronauts?
Since The Micronauts were based on a licensing deal between Marvel and Mego, when the last Micronauts comic book came out from Marvel in 1986 (six years after the toyline ended), Marvel therefore lost the rights to use the Micronauts characters in the Marvel Universe. However, Mantlo and Golden had introduced some original characters, so they were able to continue to appear in comics on occasion, and the Microverse (the microscopic universe where the Micronauts lived) continued to appear in Marvel Comics for decades (the Quantumverse in the Marvel Cinematic Universe is basically the Microverse under a different name). .
While this new licensing deal is just for the collection of the original comic books, it at least gives some hope that perhaps Marvel and Hasbro can work out a future licensing deal for brand-new Micronauts and Rom comic books set within the Marvel Universe.
The omnibus will have a number of variant covers in the direct market, from the main cover, showing Dave Cockrum's cover for The Micronauts #1, as well as covers by Steve Ditko (who drew the superhero Captain Universe, who spun out of The Micronauts), Michael Golden (the original artist on the series) and Jackson Guice (who drew the series after Golden)
Source: Marvel