MEGAZEEN #6

    Cool cover ain't it? That's Jesus Marquez and his faithful sidekick Keith "Inkboy" Betancourt. Jesus had been at my side for Wizard World Philadelphia 2003 and we had just come out with the fifth issue, so I lined him up to do this cover. He nailed it. Oh, and yes, that's Fred crowd surfing on the cover, and you can also see artist Jesse Hamm if you look nice and close.

One of the things that really stood out in this issue, to me, was that Tom Hall was taking a big leap as a writer. He penned an eloquent The Poop and produced GAD, which skillfully quotes Proverbs (I wonder if everyone's caught onto that?). I've known Tom for many years, I've been exposed to his poetry and I've had the opportunity to draw off his scripts since then. I had the feeling that his work on Fred was only scratching the surface of what he's capable of. I'm glad he pushed.

MZ6 took on a rather serious tone for some reason. The opening story, Depression, was an auto-biographical account from Dan Worthington, drawn by Jaems Sutherland. John Hutchinson (artist on Bear King) contributed a one-shot superhero story called Sinsight. AS Kirby and Joel Klambert did a screepy sci-fi conspiracy story called The Day We Killed God. And Jamie Cosley did a one-pager called Here I Am to Worship which dealt with Christian hypocrisy.

We took a step up the celebrity ladder and interviewed Gary Shipman, creator of Pakkins Land. I remember his wife hung up on me thinking I was a telemarketer. We talked mainly about art and his background in the comics field. Gary really wasn't entrenched in the same Christian comics movement we were in, though at the time he was working on Amazing True Life Stories.

And that's about it. Again, no real dirt here that I can remember. We outsourced the cover to some printer in Florida who cropped all the covers before mailing them, which was a mistake but he redid them. This is why occasionally, if you order from christiancomics.net, you get a free "pinup" of the above cover.

And you can buy it here.