''Mr. Hero the Newmatic Man'' is a

comic book A comic book, also called comicbook, comic magazine or (in the United Kingdom and Ireland) simply comic, is a publication that consists of comics art in the form of sequential juxtaposed panels that represent individual scenes. Panels are of ...

published by

Tekno Comix Tekno Comix was an American publishing company that produced comic books from 1995 to 1997. History The company was founded by Laurie Silvers and Mitchell Rubenstein as a division of their publicly traded company, Big Entertainment. Tekno Comix ...

from March 1995 to June 1996. The original character concept was created by

Neil Gaiman Neil Richard MacKinnon GaimanBorn as Neil Richard Gaiman, with "MacKinnon" added on the occasion of his marriage to Amanda Palmer. ; ( Neil Richard Gaiman; born 10 November 1960) is an English author of short fiction, novels, comic books, gr ...

, but the books were written by James Vance and penciled mostly by

Ted Slampyak TED may refer to: Economics and finance * TED spread between U.S. Treasuries and Eurodollar Education * ''Türk Eğitim Derneği'', the Turkish Education Association ** TED Ankara College Foundation Schools, Turkey ** Transvaal Education Depart ...

Description

Mr. Hero is a steam-powered

automaton An automaton (; plural: automata or automatons) is a relatively self-operating machine, or control mechanism designed to automatically follow a sequence of operations, or respond to predetermined instructions.Automaton – Definition and More ...

created by the villainous

Henry Phage Henry may refer to: People *Henry (given name) * Henry (surname) * Henry Lau, Canadian singer and musician who performs under the mononym Henry Royalty * Portuguese royalty ** King-Cardinal Henry, King of Portugal ** Henry, Count of Portugal, ...

. Intended to be a force of evil, he proves noble instead. Henry Phage created Mr. Hero as a

sleeper agent A sleeper agent, also called sleeper cell, is a spy who is placed in a target country or organization not to undertake an immediate mission but to act as a potential asset if activated. Even if unactivated, the "sleeper agent" is still an asset ...

to send to Earth until such a time as he wished to conquer Earth. He was discovered in the 1800s by a farmer, who later sold him to a magician. The magician trained Mr. Hero to

box A box (plural: boxes) is a container used for the storage or transportation of its contents. Most boxes have flat, parallel, rectangular sides. Boxes can be very small (like a matchbox) or very large (like a shipping box for furniture), and can ...

and used him as a prop in his act. Using Mr. Hero's second head (the "Ratiocinator"), Mr. Hero would give advice to the audience. Then, his less rational but more physically able head would be fitted to his body and he would engage in Queensbury Rules boxing with a member of the audience. During the boxing, a member of the audience would be challenged to knock out Mr. Hero, while he would not attack. However, at one event he mysteriously lost control of his left hand, and inadvertently attacked an influential participant. This ended his career in shame, and he was crated and put into storage. In the mid-1990s, he was discovered and reconstructed by Jennifer Hale, a struggling street magician.

Publication history

''Mr. Hero, the Newmatic Man'' was originally published by Tekno Comix under the header ''Neil Gaiman's Mr. Hero, The Newmatic Man''. It enjoyed an 18-issue run. Its first 17 issues were published under the logo "Tekno Comix" and were appropriately numbered 1–17. The 18th issue carried the logo "

Big Entertainment Big or BIG may refer to: * Big, of great size or degree Film and television * ''Big'' (film), a 1988 fantasy-comedy film starring Tom Hanks * ''Big!'', a Discovery Channel television show * ''Richard Hammond's Big'', a television show presente ...

". Also, the 18th issue was intended to start volume 2 of the title, and so was numbered "Volume 2, No. 1". The title was then placed on hiatus until Big Entertainment ceased its publication of comic books.

External links

''Mr. Hero the Newmatic Man''
at ComicBookDB.com {{DEFAULTSORT:Hero the Newmatic Man Steampunk comics American comics titles 1995 comics debuts