Description: This 8-page comic, illustrated by comic artist Luke McDonnell, was created in October 1993 for a line of proposed “electronic comic books” by Sega. Page 7 of the comic book (shown as the main image) was featured in the April 1995 issue of Popular Science in the What’s New section.

Beginning in the fall of 1993 and through early 1995, Pete McDonnell (twin brother of Luke McDonnell) was the lead artist for a handful of projects with Sega for electronic toys and games. Among those projects was an idea for a “cartridge-based” system with special comic books that would be placed on a touch-pad and allow the reader/player to direct the plot. The concept would have allowed users to “punch out bad guys, enter secret codes, and make decisions by pressing on the active page.” Accordingly, Pete created new comic art for stories featuring Batman, the X-Men, and the Eternal Champions. In total, there were three separate X-Men comic books, and Pete recruited his brother Luke to illustrate the first of the three. As these pages were very early into Pete’s work with Sega, he may have recruited his brother Luke, who had more experience illustrating comics, to help ensure the work continued and took off. The other two X-Men comics (done in 1994) were around 15 to 17 pages, as was Pete’s work for Eternal Champions and Batman, which reinforces that these 8 pages were possibly a bit of a trial run to make a book to showcase the concept.

The scan of the Popular Science preview by Benji Edwards on the site Vintage Computing is the only substantive information online about the project other than information received directly from artist Pete McDonnell. Only page 7 has been photographed; the rest are from artist scans and are shown in Additional Images.

Year: 1993
Medium: ink over pencils on illustration paper
Image Area: each page is 11"x13" on 12"x14" illustration paper 
Image Source: Original (additional images from artist scans)
Condition: Excellent