Nick Marino

On Monday, I'm debuting my new Super Haters collaboration with Jared Catherine, creator of Incrediman Comix. It's called Mr. Magnifico Unchained. The most powerful hero in the Super Haters universe has gone nuts, and only Mind's Eye and Destruct-O-Tron can stop him!

Like my past two Super Haters story arcs, I made a trailer for Mr. Magnifico Unchained featuring music by my melodic alter ego, Nik Furious:

Here's an mp3 of the Mr. Magnifico Unchained trailer music:

The songs used in my previous trailers had rich, involved histories with complicated evolutions. Sadly, that's not the case with this tune. The history of this trailer music is short and simple!

Since the trailer begins with a parody of the upcoming Superman Unchained series by Scott Snyder and Jim Lee, I thought it would be fitting to use a bit of the Theme From Superman by John Williams. I played the opening riff on my microKORG.

Then a I used a few noises from Freesound and spliced in the beginning of Destruct-O-Groove. I made Destruct-O-Groove last month to coincide with the debut of the free Super Haters eBooks. I split the song into four parts. You can download each section by visiting the webpage for the corresponding volume of Super Haters.

Mr. Magnifico Unchained a.k.a. Jared Catherine Guest Week begins on Monday, March 25, 2013 at SuperHaters.com. See ya there!

There's a new Super Haters story kicking off on Monday, written by me and featuring fantastic art from Brandon Williams of Dedford Tales.

I made a trailer for our short story, using my Nik Furious music to set the mood:

Here's an mp3 of the Manga Haters trailer music:

This song has an interesting history. It was originally written and recorded in a few hours one afternoon in January 2012. Inspired by the capabilities of my new fretless bass and my excitement for the relaunch of the Glory comic book, I made an impromptu Glory theme song. You can listen to it here.

I emailed the track to artist Ross Campbell. Ross dug the song and shared it with writer Joe Keatinge, but that was it. I didn't do anything else with it until last November, when writer Kelly Thompson contacted me about putting together some music for a book trailer about her novel, The Girl Who Would Be King.

I spent a lot of my November working on songs for both Kelly and Kaylie McDougal's PonyGasm project. And while Kaylie's theme song materialized according to my vision, the guitar riff I'd spent hours writing just didn't gel when it came time to record the song for Kelly. So I decided to remix my Glory track into a theme for The Girl Who Would Be King trailer. You can listen to that here.

Unfortunately, the song didn't capture the sound Kelly wanted and she used different music for her final trailer. But when the time came to make an exciting theme for my Manga Haters story, I knew I wanted to rework the remix into a shorter, tighter blast of energetic music that would accentuate the awesome action in Brandon's art. And the Manga Haters trailer theme was born!

UPDATE: That unused remix I did for Kelly? It's gonna get used. More news soon!

UPDATE 2: An extended, remixed version of this song is available on the Super Wet EP as the track called Brave.

I've got a new Super Haters story debuting next Monday, written by me and arted by E.D. of Peculiar Comics.

E.D. made a trailer for our story and used one of my Nik Furious songs as the background music.

This is currently an in-progress song off of my next album, 7 Star Sky Flash Kick. It doesn't even have a name yet!

There'll be more Super Haters trailers in the future and they'll all have Nik Furious music. In fact, I'll be back with a new Furious trailer track in February.

UPDATE: An extended, remixed version of this music is available on the Super Wet EP as the song Le Fever.

Tomorrow night -- Friday, November 16, 2012 -- I'm doing a reading at The Big Idea Bookstore in Pittsburgh's Bloomfield neighborhood. The event starts at 7:30 p.m. and the reading begins at 8 p.m.

This reading was organized by Brian John Mitchell, a fellow cartoonist and collaborator of mine from North Carolina. He's the Cyberpunk Apocalypse's visiting writer for the month of November.

I'll be reading from my Super Haters story arc, Fast Cash, featuring Destruct-O-Tron's twisted transformation into a fast food clown. And maybe, if the mood is right, I'll bring my guitar along and do an encore performance of Boner Pissin'.

This is my first ever reading (eep!) and my last scheduled appearance in Pittsburgh before I hit the ol' dusty trail for the west coast. So come hang out and watch me crash and burn!!

Today in Super Haters, I introduced a mysterious new character who wants to take Mind's Eye and Destruct-O-Tron's child into the future. This character is an amalgamation of post-apocalyptic superhero tropes.

I put a lot of thought into exactly which tropes I wanted to use to create my character. In the process of synthesizing my ultimate post-apocalyptic superhero from the future, I came up with the following list of rules:

1. The superhero must be missing at least one eye. This means they must have either an eye patch or some kind of weird electric eye implant. EXCEPTION: A missing limb replaced by strange future technology.

2. The superhero must be scarred. The character needs a grizzled appearance to successfully imply that their future is more dangerous than our present.

3. The superhero needs to be mysterious. To create instant suspense it's a must to have the future hero speak with direct-yet-vague phrases.

When it comes to great time-traveling superheroes from the post-apocalyptic future, the X-Men really have the market cornered. Specifically, nobody represents these tropes better than Cable.

He's missing an eye (and an arm!), scarred, and super-mysterious. He's even got some extras that totally seal the deal -- big futuristic weapons, questionable motives, and a desire to save the future by affecting the past.

However, Bishop is an equally captivating hero from the decimated future... and he breaks almost all of the rules! While he's not missing a peeper, he is branded over his right eye. And I mean branded, not scarred. Basically, it's a tattoo. And while his future is mysterious, Bishop tends to be rather wordy about his goals.

But here's the rub -- a few years ago, Marvel decided that Bishop wasn't packed full of enough tropes! They got rid of his right arm and gave him plenty direct-yet-vague quips about his new quasi-mysterious mission.

Though I prefer classic Bishop, I can appreciate the desire to transform him into a bigger and better representation of everything that makes grumpy time-traveling post-apocalyptic superheroes great.

Personally, I'm no slouch when it comes to telling stories with heroes that come from the decimated future. In fact, my webcomic Time Log stars FuturePete, a mysterious and magical curmudgeon from the year 2069.

And I've even drawn myself as a grizzled time traveler with a vendetta in my short lo-fi story I Hate Comics Forever.

But I think my latest future hero from Super Haters takes the cake. Though I'm not ready to reveal the character's identity just yet (check back tomorrow!), I made some desktop wallpaper out of the titular moment when she reveals her intent.

Anyway, I hope these rules help you create your own kickass character on a quest to save their era from a disastrous fate. I mean, what could be more horrible than a future devoid of grizzled anti-heroes with missing eyes and mysterious motives?

UPDATE 1: Here's a perfect example of these rules in action -- Future Twilight:

Thx to Angela Capel for telling me about this awesome segment from My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic!!