Marvel Comics writer Bill Mantlo's son Adam opened a new present, a line of the Mego Corporation's Micronauts action figures.

[5][6] Other artists on the series included Howard Chaykin, Steve Ditko, Rich Buckler, Pat Broderick, Val Mayerik, Keith Giffen, Greg LaRocque, Gil Kane, Luke McDonnell, Mike Vosburg, Butch Guice, and Kelley Jones.

[7] Micronauts, along with Moon Knight and Ka-Zar the Savage, became one of Marvel's first ongoing series to be distributed exclusively to comic book stores beginning with issue #38 (Feb.

Released from September to November 2016, the crossover featured characters from various licensed toy lines IDW held the right to such as Transformers and GI Joe.

[20][21] The Micronauts originate in the Microverse, a microscopic universe full of strange planets like the human-inhabited Homeworld which is made up of diverse spherical habitats that are linked together in the fashion of a molecular chain.

The original team comes together in response to the threat posed by Baron Karza, former bearded and balding academic turned murderous immortal black-armored dictator, who gained control of Homeworld through the creation of the Body Banks, where life-extending brain transplants are performed on the rich and inhuman genetic alterations on the poor.

The alien gladiators Acroyear and Bug also join Rann's cause, and although completely different - one a noble armor-clad warrior prince and the other a wisecracking insectoid thief - the two become best friends and staunch allies of all Micronauts.

[22] Warping through the Spacewall, an energy barrier between the Microverse and our much larger universe, and becoming trapped for a time on Earth where they enlarge to the size of action figures, the team encounter the to-them giant-sized Florida teenager Steve Coffin, his ex-astronaut father Ray (who is briefly transformed into the first Captain Universe), the Man-Thing and the evil cyborg scientist Professor Prometheus before returning to the Microverse.

[23] Rann is able to claim victory due to the possession of the Enigma Force - a semi-sentient power source that bonded with him during his period of suspended animation and appeared in the form of floating, glowing green entities known as the Time Travelers - which enables him to perform incredible feats.

Joined by one of Acroyear's people - Dagon - the team discovers that the villains and HYDRA are secretly under the control of Baron Karza, who is able to resurrect himself by placing his mind in Prince Argon's body.

Biotron is destroyed by Dagon, who is revealed to be an agent of Karza; the Queen of Kaliklak, Bug's home planet, dies in battle; Rann is rendered comatose and Acroyear's traitorous albino brother Prince Shaitan dies summoning the Worldmind - the parallel power to the Enigma Force that sustains their own home planet of Spartak.

[32] A new problem arises when Prince Argon, turning tyrant after donning the sacred white armor of the legendary Force Commander, begins displaying paranoia regarding the Micronauts, and eventually sends a special alien Death Squad to kill them.

After several more encounters with beings such as Doctor Doom,[35] Wasp,[36] and Arcade,[37] Microtron and Nanotron sacrifice themselves to reanimate Biotron's consciousness in the Micronauts' new vessel, the Bioship.

[39] Weary of war, the surviving Micronauts leave behind the known Microverse (which they discover looking back resembles a galaxy shaped like a DNA Helix) and embark on a journey of exploration.

[40] They eventually discover the true nature of the Microverse and, in a final act that restores their ruined world, sacrifice themselves in order to repopulate the planets.

[47] In another largely untold tale, they also reteam with the X-Men against Baron Karza, who had recently been reborn, and his ally Thanos who seek to merge several of the sub-atomic universes.

[48] The first five-issue story arc of the Image series have been collected into a trade paperback: In May 2023 Marvel renewed the licensing with Hasbro in order to be able to publish Micronauts again.

[59] The 2002 Image Comics relaunch was followed the same year by Micronauts: The Time Traveler Trilogy, a collection of three paperback novels published by Byron Preiss Visual Publications and written by Steve Lyons.