Comix Zone

Comix Zone is a 1995 arcade-style beat 'em up video game, originally released as a Sega Genesis exclusive. The game's unique feature is that it is set within the panels of a comic book. Each level consists of two pages and secrets are discovered by shredding the paper and revealing items. The dialogue is rendered within talk bubbles. Sprites and backgrounds possess the bright colours and dynamic drawing style favoured by superhero comics.

The game was originally from a concept video animated by Peter Morawiec titled "Joe Pencil Trapped In The Comix Zone". The video was made in 1992, displaying the animation of how the gameplay and the comic book elements would blend in.

Plot

Sketch Turner, a "starving artist" and freelance rock musician living in New York City, is working on his newest comic book, named the "Comix Zone." Comix Zone is the story of the New World Empire's attempt to defend Earth from an invasion of alien renegades, with inspiration coming from Sketch's (oddly vivid) dreams and nightmares. One night, while Sketch is working on Comix Zone during a thunderstorm, a lightning bolt strikes a panel of his comic. In this instant, the main villain of Comix Zone - a powerful mutant named Mortus - manages to escape the comic book's pages, desiring to kill Sketch so he can become flesh and blood and take over the real world. Because he does not possess any power in reality, Mortus sends Sketch into the world of his own comic, freely drawing in enemies attempting to kill him.

Zone

Zone or The Zone or In the Zone may refer to:

Geography

Place names

Zones

Underground comix

Underground comix are small press or self-published comic books which are often socially relevant or satirical in nature. They differ from mainstream comics in depicting content forbidden to mainstream publications by the Comics Code Authority, including explicit drug use, sexuality and violence. They were most popular in the United States between 1968 and 1975, and in the United Kingdom between 1973 and 1974.

Robert Crumb, Gilbert Shelton, and numerous other cartoonists created underground titles that were popular with readers within the counterculture scene. Punk had its own comic artists like Gary Panter. Long after their heyday underground comix gained prominence with films and television shows influenced by the movement and with mainstream comic books, but their legacy is most obvious with alternative comics.

History

Early history (1967-1972)

Between the late 1920s and late 1940s, anonymous artists produced counterfeit pornographic comic books featuring unauthorized depictions of popular comic strip characters engaging in sexual activities. Often referred to as Tijuana bibles, these books are often considered the predecessors of the underground comix scene. Early underground comix appeared sporadically in the early and mid-1960s, but did not begin to appear frequently until after 1967. The first underground comix were personal works produced for friends of the artists, in addition to reprints of comic strip pages which first appeared in underground newspapers.

Sega Genesis

The Sega Genesis, known as the Mega Drive (Japanese: メガドライブ, Hepburn: Mega Doraibu) in most regions outside North America, is a 16-bit home video game console which was developed and sold by Sega Enterprises, Ltd. The Genesis was Sega's third console and the successor to the Master System. Sega first released the console as the Mega Drive in Japan in 1988, followed by a North American debut under the Genesis moniker in 1989. In 1990, the console was distributed as the Mega Drive by Virgin Mastertronic in Europe, by Ozisoft in Australasia, and by Tec Toy in Brazil. In South Korea, the systems were distributed by Samsung and were known as the Super Gam*Boy (Hangul: 수퍼겜보이), and later the Super Aladdin Boy (Hangul: 수퍼알라딘보이).

Designed by an R&D team supervised by Hideki Sato and Masami Ishikawa, the Genesis hardware was adapted from Sega's System 16 arcade board, centered on a Motorola 68000 processor as a primary CPU and a Zilog Z80 as a secondary processor. The system supports a library of more than 900 games created both by Sega and a wide array of third-party publishers and delivered on ROM-based cartridges. It can also play Master System games when the separately sold Power Base Converter is installed. The Genesis has benefited from several peripherals and network services, as well as multiple first-party and third-party variations of the console that focus on extending its functionality.