Universe Gun and more by Dr Mike 2000
Mike Cooper is an Adelaide-based indie creator of psychedelic superhero science fiction.
He first assumed the pen-name Dr Mike 2000 in 2002, to publish mods for the Australian made superhero game Freedom Force. With Mike being a professional games programmer, these took off because of their technical quality, but also gained a following for the writing, characters and wild story ideas.
In 2013 Mike turned his attention to comics, and Universe Gun was born! What started life as a 7 page webcomic experiment has now grown into an epic 12 issue series that is nearing completion. With one long ongoing story, eight main characters and an entire 37th solar system to depict in a unique psychedelic art style, this was not a project to be taken on lightly.
Universe Gun continued as a webcomic until 2014, when fellow Adelaide comic creator Haylee Snook persuaded Mike to exhibit at Oz-Comic Con. With the help of Comic Books on Demand, Universe Gun now became a printed comic, and the first two issue sold reasonably well at local events. Mike and Haylee continued exhibiting together as "Cosmic Sneeze" at Supanova and other local events. Universe Gun settled into a six monthly release schedule and started to gain a cult following.
- Website: http://www.universegun.com
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DrMike2000
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dr_mike_2000
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/Dr_Mike_2000
- Online Store: https://ownaindi.com/creator/dr-mike-2000/
Mike has also produced a series of "Strange Romance" 24 Hour Comics, as part of the 24 Hour Comic Challenge, where 24 pages are written and drawn from scratch in 24 hours. These are sci-fi stories of frustrated romance, bromance, marriage in the face of vast physical change and all-encompassing self-love. Taking his comics on the road around Australia in 2017, Mike met Melbourne-based collaborator Darren Fisher. Darren has taken on the art duties for "Entwined: A Recurrent Romance", a story of superheroes, gods and birth control in the storytelling style of Mike's 24 hour comics.
Mike is currently wrapping up Universe Gun, and plotting out the Amazanauts, a seven part series that will kick off production in 2019.
Universe Gun
Genre: Superhero sci-fi
Synopsis: Imagine a 37th Century Solar System past its best. The age of superheroes is over, and superhuman powers are now illegal. A vast inequality exists between an overpopulated and aimless Earth and the Martian colony of New Mumbai, where superintelligent programmers serve a vast artificial mind and lead perfect lives. The alien satellite known as The Life Star, which had once upgraded our planet is rotting in orbit.
Can a revolution overturn this corrupt status quo, and will it start in the unlikeliest of places?
Universe Gun is simultaneously a love letter to 1970s scifi and superhero comics, and a political critique on wealth inequality, the war on drugs and the role of the media in serving the ultra-rich elite.
Universe Gun #10 (out of 12) has just been released. The first 8 issues have been collected in two successfully kickstarted trade paperbacks, Book 1: The War on Orgone, and Book 2: Amazing Inequality. It can be read digitally either at comiXology or at www.universegun.com
Strange Romance Series - the 24 Hour Comics
Falling: An Atomic Romance
London physicist Michael Mordecai and Swedish artist Una Nystrom are lovers, doomed forever to be together but apart, in a homage to Michael Moorcock, Bridget Riley, Abba and early Queen!
Challenged: A Transhuman Romance
How does love work when your bodies have been ripped away in a freakish science accident? Doc Sensation and Optical Girl of the Challengers adapt to their transhuman forms as only a smart liquid and invisible energy field can in a story about sex and disability.
The Man Who Could See Everything
Superheroes! Mean streets! Bloody knuckles! And unlikley bromance examines the role of violence in superhero stories, and shows how a man with enhanced senses can really save his neighbourhood!
Reflections: A Singular Romance
Demian Triumph, the self-styled "most handsome man in the world" loses his heart to the only worthy suitor - himself! The highs and lows of life as a narcissicistic supervillain unfold!
