MEGAZEEN #10

The color issue. It seemed like a good idea at the time.

This was a good example of how easy it is to get in over your head when you don't know what the heck you're doing. The end result, which took nearly two years to complete, was terrific, but wow, it was rough to get there.

From a production standpoint, color brings a whole new aspect to comics. We could no longer call the local printer to photocopy the master copies and staple them on my living room floor. We could no longer take in low-res jpegs with all their weird jagged edged lines. We could no longer count on every artist to independently produce solo work. Everybody needed help. Especially me.

So yes, for our tenth issue, which I wanted to be spectacular and allow MZ to make its mark, it had to be comic sized, and as long as we were going that far why not color it.

We hand-picked the artists we wanted in the book, which was different from our "send it in" philosophy up till now. It was a Megazeen All-Star Cast. Kneon Transitt was a sure bet, and he turned in The Evangelists, a good sarcastic take on the ignorant and slick. Psycho Ann delivered a powerful watercolored piece called Saint. Dean Rankine made his first Megazeen appearance with A Deaf Man and Jesus (a piece he was ripped for because Jesus was wearing a "No Nukes" t-shirt). Lawrence Samples gave us a Shep and Spook that was more surreal than the last one.

Dean Trippe turned in a wordless, titleless strip. Drew Pocza returned with a "Souled Out" strip. Jamie Cosley produced Extra Cheese the Ministry Mouse.

The big controversey content-wise was Jesus Marquez's piece, Shattered Saint. To be frank, it's a good ol' vampire bloodfest. It's done in greyscale except for the Sin City-esque effects.

Inkboy did a slamming collage that finally appeared in the inside back cover. Matter of fact, if memory serves it almost was the cover, until John Hutchison and Mike Hatfield came through finally with their cover, which played up the theme we'd been carrying since the first issue.

Mark Melton provided the colors on the cover and many of the interior pages. Doug McClain provided a massive amount of technical assistance. Joshua Warren designed the cover logo, which I've heard MANY times should be adopted as our permanent logo (but sorry, not gonna happen).

By the time it was all assembled we were about 4 months behind schedule for the first time ever, which was thoroughly embarassing. We had just started offering subscriptions and also asked for prepays on this issue to help fund it. Then, the printer we were counting on renegged on his offer. We went to another printer, and they backed out, and another. Then we had the problems with the dirtbag at First Wave Printing (thank GOD I didn't prepay him for THIS issue at least) which left us in the hole and without the funds to print the issue in color.

I finally decided, in Fall of 2005, to print the book as a black and white zine, at the same time we printed the zine version of Megazeen 11, the Book of Evil and Nippy Meets Glee. The art was too good to not see the light of day. It got us back off our butts- but by then it had litterally been a year since we printed a new issue of Megazeen.

I was eager to move on and put these nightmares behind me. But, as we wrapped up issue 12, God sent us a reliable printer named Greg Boyd, who finally allowed us to see the Technicolor Issue in all its full size, vibrant color glory. It is one of Megazeen's finest moments and worth the wait- but I hope we never have to wait so long again.

You can buy the color version here, and if you're 'thrifty' the zine version is available here.