(Written by fikko3107)
If you have read my previous articles (links at the end of this post) you can probably guess what this one is going to be about; more on collecting LEGO related materials! This time we will look at collecting LEGO comics, in this article specifically focusing on LEGO Heroica, LEGO Legends of Chima and LEGO Pirates. So let’s dive right in! 🙂
Someone has told me that a comic is a unique media; it has both pictures and text, but the part you should really enjoy is the artwork. Comics are popular worldwide, with the most famous ones coming out of Japan and America. These two countries however produce two very different styles of comics – and I don’t just mean in their picture-styles (like cartoon or anime), but also how they are published. As far as I know in America comics are colorful, thin and expensive, whereas Japanese manga are usually monochrome, much thicker and much cheaper. Being a Western company it goes without saying LEGO opted for the American-style. Just take a look at this cover of a LEGO Hero Factory comic:
Since there are way too many LEGO comics to fit in one article, I’ll split them into a few parts based on themes – sometimes covering more then one theme per post. Oh yes, and LEGO Bionicle comics will probably get no coverage, as there are far too many, and they are all available at BiomediaProject.com. Also, I’ll skip the LEGO Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comics as those have been discussed previously. (See: LEGO Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Comics). Here is a screen-shot of my LEGO comics collection. Please note that it was taken just before a massive amount of new ones were uploaded. I have much, much more now. 😀
➡ LEGO HEROICA COMICS – Ah, Heroica! The first subtheme of LEGO games, and sadly, probably the last. If you haven’t heard, LEGO is planning to cancel this theme due to poor sales. That’s sad. I know Heroica games have many fans. I myself had always wanted to play these games, since they remind me of tabletop role-playing games – something I always wanted to try. Well I do have one LEGO Heroica set; the #30170 LEGO Heroica Ganrash. Anyway, back to the LEGO Heroica comics.
LEGO Heroica Comic 1 – Quest for the Secret Relics: This comic book was a Comic-con exclusive, I believe. Thankfully, the digital version can easily be found at the LEGO Heroica microsite. It chronicles the story of the first year of Heroica (2011), and is fairly linear. Oh, and there’s also a digital animated version of this comic at the Official LEGO YouTube Channel. You can download the PDF version of this LEGO comic here: DOWNLOAD
LEGO Heroica Comic 2 – Quest to Free the King: This second comic chronicles only one game (Ilrion) and has half as many pages as the first one. I suppose LEGO wanted to make Heroica continue in 2013, which is why that nasty cliffhanger is there, but I suppose poor sales had stopped that… (But then again, what do I know? Heroica sets aren’t even sold in my country.) You can download this LEGO comic here: DOWNLOAD
➡ LEGO PIRATES COMIC: THE GOLDEN MEDALLION – You didn’t read the title wrong; not LEGO Pirates of the Caribbean, not even the 2009 LEGO Pirates, but let’s go back 20 years to the past to Classic LEGO Pirates! This LEGO comic comes from an era where comics aren’t that short, and aren’t crawling with advertisements. Well, okay, it’s only about 16 pages longer than comics these days, but still. It even came with two minifigs; Bo’Sun Will and Rummy with cutlasses! Oh, by the way, I got them from Peeron, so I suppose it’s okay for me to post them here. Ah, yes, those were good times… You can download this comic here: DOWNLOAD
➡ LEGO LEGENDS OF CHIMA COMIC: PURSUIT! – If you subscribe to the LEGO Club Magazine, you may have seen this LEGO comic before, as it was included in an issue earlier this year. Like the other LEGO Club exclusive comics, I got this one from the Hong Kong Toys’R’Us website, however I converted it myself. It’s a good, quick and friendly story. You can download this LEGO comic here: DOWNLOAD
Also, please note that the first picture in this article is from a LEGO CUUSOO project started by one of the LEGO comics artists mopeydecker. If you would like to support their project to start a LEGO monthly comics series you can do so here: SUPPORT LEGO COMICS PROJECT ON CUUSOO
So that’s all for now. I hope you enjoyed these LEGO comics. Stay tuned for future parts featuring more! In the meantime you can share which is your favorite LEGO comic and why in the comment section below! 😉
Also, I’m a TFOL (Teen-Fan-of-LEGO) and this is my 6th article here at theBrickBlogger, please see the links below to my previous articles on collecting LEGO related materials. Thanks for reading!
Pretty good, the old pirate comic looks fun, I’m not a big collector of LEGO movies and comics, but these are great.
First comment!
very interesting, like that old pirate comic. I’ve always been interested in those old comic books but you never see them anymore. I never got to read one :'( 🙁 but that pirate one stands out to me. :0
does anyone know how old that pirate one is?
Fikko should be able to tell you. But since he lives in Asia, he is probably sleeping right now. We just have to wait until he gets back online. 🙂
It’s from the early 90’s, when the pirate theme was fairly new. I think I bought the set but lost the comic somewhere. It was translated into a bunch of different languages.
Yeah, I probably was. In my laptop, it said you posted that comment at 1:59 PM.
By the way, Hakan was right. it was at 1990. He also explained most of the other stuff.
those look relly cool i like comic books they are relly cool but the only comic books that i have read was a e book wif super hero comics. and its to bad about heroaca i got one set i it was relly fun 😀 .
It is interesting how the characters on the old pirate one do not even look like Lego…wonder what was up with that? Lego people are rather hard to draw. Anyway, this made for another very interesting post Fikko. One of my siblings got the Heroica Waldurk set, and I have to say it was very fun to play 🙂 I never buy them though, just because of all the other choices out there, and all those jumper plates, I couldn’t see myself using them all up unless for another game. You never can tell with Legos though…
I guess the reasoning was that Lego symbolized actual persons, and thus, they made a choice to use more classic cartoony characters. The writer Per Sanderhage has done a lot of work for the Danish market, and I think the artist Vaño is Dutch.
http://www.lambiek.net/artists/o/oudenaarden_hansvan.htm
I know this isn’t a very good spot for this comment but I was wondering how the people who do the Cuscoo projects make their minifigures. Some of them have unique minifigs that Lego does not make. Do they paint them or is there a company which makes custom minifigure torsos, legs, heads, etc.?
Bug, there are several ways to customize minifigures. With the advancement of technology this is becoming easier and easier to do at home. Designing and printing decals (either on paper, sticker paper or waterslides) is one method that many LEGO customizers use. Especially with water-slides you can hardly tell the difference that they are not “real”. Waterslides are a bit delicate though so minifigs with waterslide decals are not for rough play.
In addition more and more customizers are using professional printers to make custom minifigures. These are usually customizers who sell their products as these printers are not cheap. However the end result is exactly the same as what you see with LEGO’s own printing; professional and durable. I own many custom printed LEGO elements and minifigures and I’m very happy with them. Some of these customizers will also take custom jobs according to your specification.
Painting is another option however one has to have very steady hands. I paint minifigures myself and I can tell you it is not easy. I can manage things like painting armor pieces, helmets, etc. but to paint a detailed torso or head that looks good – no way. However some people can do it and produce beautiful minifigs.
And of course another option is digital minifigures – you see many of the CUUSOO projects use this method. In otherwords using software to create the look and feel of the minifigs they want. Also create custom accessories this way.
If you need more details just let me know. I’m friends with practically every LEGO customizer out there. Minifig customization and supporting minifig customizers is a huge passion of mine. 😉
Are there any companies that you would recommend? I want to create an American War for Independence series on Cusscoo but I can’t find any minifigures that I liked. So if you know of any companies doing that time period I would appreciate it if you told about them. Thanks
Maybe send me an image of what you have in mind (you can link it here), because if you are just talking about regular red-coats and blue-coats those can easily be recreated just with regular minifigures. Especially since the release of the Revolutionary Soldier in Series 10. He is a blue-coat with powdered wig and all, and for the red-coats you can just convert a pirate minifig.
I don’t have an actual image yet. It is still all in my head. I didn’t think about using pirate shirts for the British. I will have to look around a bit more and see what I can come up with.
Well, when your plan solidifies and you are still looking for some ideas just let me know. I’m very positive that you can find plenty of minifigs from the official line-up that would work, but if you still looking to customize some of them we can talk later. 😉
You can look through most torsos produced through the ages on this site:
http://www.peeron.com/inv/catpic/973
Hakan, thanks. Bricklink has a better and much more accurate and up-to-date list. And you can buy what you need right there. 😉
https://www.bricklink.com/catalogList.asp?catType=P&catString=485
Btw, Lego has produced commercial comics in a variety of contexts since at least the 60’s in Scandinavia. (I’m quite a serious comics geek, so I’m rather knowledgeable about this.)
https://seriewikin.serieframjandet.se/index.php/Lego
The oldest example I know of is from 1963. The artist Rune Andreasson is most famous for creating the hugely successful Swedish children’s comic Bamse. (Nowadays pretty much the only native children’s comic in Sweden still produced.)
https://seriewikin.serieframjandet.se/index.php/Lasse_och_Lena_fr%c3%a5n_Legoland
(Well, who said collecting would be easy?)
All of the text is in Swedish, alas, but I think you should be able to understand the gist of it by copy/pasting the link or text in a web translator such as Google Translate or Babelfish.
I checked it out. Good stuff. However, they’re not really comics; They’re more like those little strips on Sunday newspapers, which is a comic in it’s own right, but different to this.
I’m going with the “sequential art” definition, and as such, they’e definitely comics.
If your criterion is a longer narrative, there were a few “albums” published in the 80’s, inspired by the Franco-Belgian tradition.
First, Jim Spaceborn. This comic found renewed attention after an AFOL built a copy of the massive ship depicted inside, using only a photo as reference. As I have read, two albums were produced, with a third album and some smaller booklets finished but never produced.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/galaxy53281/3206174909/
Second, Castle Kids. According to an interview, there were two albums and two smaller booklets produced, giving about three albums in total. Not sure on where / how all of it was published.
https://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?/forums/topic/78925-1987-castle-comic-book-the-robber-baron/
I barely have any idea of what’s going on now, though. With Internet, club magazines and all, it seems impossible to follow what’s happening anymore.
I didn’t realize first how to find the Bionicle comics, but I figured out the link after a while.
http://biomediaproject.com/bmp/pictures/
Good that you’ve found it. By the way, I changed my mind. Bionicle is my absolute favorite theme, And I had to write an article about the comics, although I’d probably only talk about the really interesting ones…
Hakan, I should probably update that link. Fikko originally sent me the wrong website to a water-filter company, so it took me a while just to figure out what website he would have meant.
those comics look interesting. just saying, anybody who is a total lego fanatic should join CUUSOO.(that dosn’t look right.) Does anybody need a staw? (Hahahahahaha! 😀 )
can upload the other comics such as pharaoh’s quest too. i enjoyed reading the other comics that you uploaded.
Fikko has been busy with school, but I will mention it to him. 🙂
The Pirates comic The Golden Medallion, unbeknownst to most is actually the first installment in a series comprised of 3 albums, much like Castle Kids and Jim Spaceborn, and in fact, like them, was developed by LEGO Publishing, LEGO’s short-lived publishing division. The second installment is titled “The Island of Mist” and features islanders living on an island shrouded in fog/mist. The title and contents of the third book, however, remain a mystery.
Alright. Any way to get hold of “The Island of Mist”.
The actual Islanders sets appeared several years later, though.
Apologies for the delayed response, I should check my email a lot more often than I tend to. Anyway, the Island of Mist wasn’t actually published, nor was the third Pirates comics, a lot like the fate that befell Jim Spaceborn 3, the series of 3 Jim Spaceborn mini-comics, Castle Kids 2 and 3, and its series of 3 mini-comics.
However, I’ve uploaded scans of reproduced copies of the pages to the Island of Mist here: http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=546459
Additionally, these topics might interest you:
https://www.rockraidersunited.com/topic/5440-retro-lego-comicsstorybooksanimated-cartoons-general-discussion/
https://www.rockraidersunited.com/topic/4820-lego-time-cruisers-comics/