Papercutz » Greg Farshtey

BIONICLE Graphic Novel #8

Greg Farshtey — Fri, 08 May 2009 01:32:30 +0000

Working on an exciting project I thought I would share with you — BIONICLE Graphic Novel #8 is going to feature ALL-NEW stories set on Bara Magna! The 75 page book will feature three new tales written by me — the first deals with the Skrall and why they moved south to the Bara Magna desert, and features the amazing menace of the baterra; the second is the story of Malum’s exile from Vulcanus; and the third looks back at the history of the planet Spherus Magna, the disastrous Shattering that destroyed it, and how Bara Magna came to be what is today. I am having great fun writing these stories, and I think you will really enjoy the book!

BIONICLE: The Early Years

Greg Farshtey — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 14:45:59 +0000

BIONICLE got its start in 1999-2000, when an international team of people employed by the LEGO Company were tasked with coming up with a storyline-based LEGO line. The early working title was, believe it or not, “Bone-Heads of Voodoo Island.” The first story bible (a summary of the year’s story) for 2001 actually ended with Mata Nui awakening! No one could be sure if BIONICLE would be a big enough hit to last for more than one year …

The BIONICLE line was introduced with a comic book, truck tours, a “build your own website” contest, and, of course, the first six Toa canister sets. The six villager sets (who would later come to be called “Matoran”) were available only through a McDonald’s promotion.

As the Toa were originally planned, they were all different ages and they would all sound sort of “godlike” when they spoke. I had a long conversation with story team head Bob Thompson as I worked on the first comic, and suggested that the characters might be easier to relate to if they had different personalities, and spoke differently from each other, rather than all sounding like Thor or Superman. He agreed, and that was how the initial characters were born in print.

We did three issues of the comic in 2001 in the US and Canada (only one in Europe, I believe). The original plan was to have issue #3 lead into a BIONICLE PC game, which would deal with the fight between the Toa and Makuta. But when the game was cancelled (when it was decided it did not measure up to LEGO standards), the battle ended up being reflected only on BIONICLE.com, and the first issue of the next year started the Bohrok storyline.

More to come!

Hi all!

Greg Farshtey — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 00:30:57 +0000

Hi folks,

For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Greg Farshtey, and I am the long-time author of the LEGO BIONICLE comics, as well as the BIONICLE novels. I have been writing for BIONICLE since 2001, when it first began. The BIONCLE comic is actually the most widely circulated comic in the world, with more than 1.7 million copies going out every other month!

I have been reading comics since I was about 5 years old, but didn’t know I would ever get the chance to write one. When LEGO Company decided to do the comic back in ’01, I was not slated to write it. But I did a few pages just for fun, to see if I could do it, and showed them to my boss. She said that they needed an approved script right away, so that was how I got the job — and I have been doing it ever since.

In future posts, I’ll share some of the inside stories of the making of the comic that fans don’t know, and let you know how work on the newest issue is going.

Until then, take care,

Greg F.