Countdown to Archie’s Mega Man, Day 1: Spaz’s First Mega Man

The time is nearly upon us: soon, the very first issue of Archie’s new Mega Man comic book will be making its way to subscribers, with the book reaching comic book shops on May 4th and other newsstands during the week of May 17th.
To help get everyone into the mood for more Mega Man (though if you’re visiting this site, you probably are already), we’ll be spending the rest of the week taking a trip down memory lane, looking at past attempts to adapt the Blue Bomber’s adventures into other media in North America. Along the way, we’ll see what missteps were made in these efforts, and how Archie’s new series will differ from those past attempts.

But before we get into that, we are shining a special spotlight on the artist, Mr. Patrick “Spaz” Spaziante, who we’ve had the pleasure of interviewing before. Though he is best known for his work with Archie’s Sonic the Hedgehog series, this is not Spaz’s first time illustrating the Blue Bomber.

Previous Mega Man works you may have seen from Spaziante include the final issue of Dreamwave‘s comic book series (which we will discuss at greater length later) and the rare cards which were randomly-inserted into packs of Mega Man trading cards from Artbox several years ago. In addition, Spaz illustrated a number of covers for the video game publication Diehard GameFan Magazine (including the Donkey Kong 64 illustration seen through that very link), and one of them happens to bear his first published illustration of Mega Man himself.

However, the cover was not for a Mega Man game, but rather, for a game in which the original Mega Man had a cameo appearance: Cannon Spike. This game was a top-down shooter which featured Mega Man as a secret character and member of a group of Capcom heroes assembled to stop the forces of evil.

Despite being a secret character and not a part of the main roster, that did not stop Spaz from giving Mega Man center stage on the GameFan cover, though. Check it out:

Issue 86 (Volume 8, Issue 10) of Diehard Gamefan from October 2000; courtesy of Retromags 

Be sure to check back in tomorrow as we continue our look back at Mega Man in the media! In the meantime, you can subscribe to the Mega Man comic and make sure you don’t miss any of the action!

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