Micronauts

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

They Came From Innerspace!

The Micronauts originated as a line of Action Figures from Mego (actually a rebranding of Japan's Microman series of toys) in the late 70's and early 80's. The toys were popular, but the Marvel Comics comic book series based on them, written by Bill Mantlo, outlasted the toyline by many years.

The comic told the story of the Micronauts, part of a resistance force that opposed an evil empire in a Subatomic Universe. Team members included Commander Rann, the leader; Marionnette, his lover; the insect-like warrior Bug; the hulking warrior Acroyear; and the robot Biotron.

The series begins with the Micronauts (and their enemy, Baron Karza) accidentally transported to Earth (where they are only as big as action figures) where a young boy is involved in their battle. However the characters soon returned to the Microverse and stayed there for most of the series, as the writer developed its impressive backstory. Eventually they kill Karza (twice) but suffer devastating loses in the process, and some team members died.

Marvel no longer owns the license to the Micronauts, but can still use all elements of the comic series that they invented themselves. That is, Arcturus Rann can still appear, as long as he doesn't call himself Space Glider or wear his Space Glider uniform; Bug can still appear as long as he doesn't call himself Galactic Warrior, etc. Bug is an interesting case, since he bears so little resemblance to his toy that Marvel can apparently use him with complete impunity.

Probably the series' most lasting impact on the wider Marvel Universe was the introduction (or at least the naming) of the Microverse, an Alternate Universe that one enters if shrunk down past subatomic size. It was eventually established that the Microverse is a complete separate universe, and does not literally exist within some particular single atom somewhere; but shrinking down is the standard means of crossing into it. In the Marvel Universe in general, anyone who shrinks below a certain limit (apparantly somewhere between cellular size and molecular size) shifts into a "microverse" - the theory is that a shrinking person is actually displacing their mass extradimensionally, and when 99.99999999999999% is over there, the rest (and consciousness) follows. Among the notable inhabitants of microverses are Fantastic Four enemy Psycho Man, Jarella (a lover of the Hulk for a while), and the Micronauts. To be fair, Stan and Jack and even Harlan Ellison (creator of the above-mentioned Jarella) had done "subatomic world" stories years ago, but The Micronauts finally named the place, and standardized the rules for how it worked.

The team was last seen doing cameos in a couple of Marvel comics under the new alias of "The Microns".

Tropes used in Micronauts include:

The toy line provides examples of:

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