And now, the #140s:

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If one comic can sum up Ultra Matoran and Larry and Tarry's personalities, it's this one. It's amazing how the shortest comics can sometimes be the most effective.

The ad at the top was appearing constantly at the top of BZPower forum pages when I made this comic, so I knew fans would know what I was referring to.

Taifu started posting after being gone for a really long time, so I decided to celebrate his return. Although it seems the guest star room is starting to turn on me...a sign that I was getting bored of it?

After getting my hands on a Wii, I just had to make a comic about it. So I ripped off those awesome Wii commercials, with those two guys who travel from house to house, showing everyone how flippin' awesome it is.

Man, that car is horribly drawn. How I got marginally better at drawing these things I'll never know.

I was in a slump when I made this comic. I wasn't making any headway on the movie, and all around I was feeling rather unmotivated. It was about this time when I also found out that I seemed to be part of a dying breed, what with all the other Razor comic makers not doing much work. A tad depressing.

But like I said in the comic, it was just a generational shift. I knew there were still great comic makers on BZPower, I just wasn't making the effort to get out and discover them yet.

*gasp!* Oh, the Tintin special! Oh, this was a delight! I just adored Tintin as a kid, and I knew I had to do a tribute at some point. I originally had a series in mind, but I didn't actually have a story drawn out in my mind. And instead of taking the time to come up with a story, I really wanted to get out something on the day of Tintin author Herge's birth. Of course, this comic is open-ended enough that I could have likely come up with a decent story, but I was too lazy. And anyway, I think this comic by itself works well enough as a tribute.

Most of the references in this comic are pulled directly from Secret of the Unicorn and Red Rackham's Treasure, the definite Tintin stories.

Ah yes...the Birth of Ultra Matoran series. This was very interesting to work on. Knowing now where this series was going, it's funny to think it started off with an Indiana Jones parody.

Pontikos is the name of an actual small island somewhere off Greece (I chose it pretty much at random), though somehow I don't think it has jungles and a Mayan-style pyramid. I'm also not sure why I settled on calling the central object a vase, because it looks more like one of those double-handle cups, or a trophy of some kind. I guess the "Cup of Iktinos" didn't sound mystical enough...but at least I had Umae point it out. I also tried to work off my knowledge of art history in those panels with the ancient art. The Mesopotamia one is rather off, but I think the other two are a little more faithful.

I recall this comic raised some questions about the setting of the comic series. This hadn't been much of an issue until this comic, given its numerous references to life on Earth. I think Superkid eventually came up with a good answer for how the Bionicle and Earth worlds could interact, but at the time of the comic my reaction was more along the lines of "Just go with it." For me, the comics just shift from the Bionicle world to Earth (and vice versa) as it suits the needs of the comic.

And the hero is born...by the way, does that third panel remind you of the cover of Myst or what? I only just noticed that...

Iktinos was in fact one of the main architects who designed the Parthenon. That's research, baby.

It's funny because it's true.