Series 3: Planarian Man vs Y2K
September 4th, 2007
Starting next week will be “Planarian Man vs Y2K,” the follow-up to the recently completed series 2.
Set several years after the close of 1996’s “The Power of Uranus” (also known here as Series 2), “Planarian Man vs Y2K” was originally published in the Daily Nebraskan in November and December of 1999.
It was a collaboration with writer Mark Baldridge, who had picked up the Planarian Patrol comics several years before and ended up working as my editor in the fall of 1999. We decided that fate had determined that we produce new Planarian Man material, and the powers that be at the Daily Nebraskan gave us roughly a month and a half to do so. That was all we needed, as the story counts down to Planarian Man’s millennium challenge.
This is the story that was compiled and handed out as the limited-edition San Diego Comic-Con 2002 Ashcan Edition, although I just discovered - when re-digitizing the originals - that I had left one of the strips out of the compiled comic. I had completely forgotten that strip even existed, since I’d only read my copy of the comic since 2002. The events of that day’s strip are referenced later, but I’d since assumed that we must’ve just decided to show that stuff “off-camera.” Turns out we didn’t, and I had just forgotten all about it.
So that means that even if you are one of the few with the Ashcan edition comic, this re-publishing will still have material not seen since 1999. Not only that, but if I get my act together, I’m intending to draw up a brand new prologue and epilogue for the story, helping better set the stage for Series 4.