Megatokyo - History

History

Megatokyo began publication as a joint project between Fred Gallagher and Rodney Caston, along with a few internet acquaintances. Gallagher and Caston later became business partners, as well. According to Gallagher, the comic's first two strips were drawn in reaction to Caston being "convinced that he and I could do ... bothering me incessantly about it", without any planning or pre-determined storyline. The comic's title was derived from an Internet domain owned by Caston, which had hosted a short-lived gaming news site maintained by Caston before the comic's creation. With Caston co-writing the comic's scripts and Gallagher supplying its artwork, the comic's popularity quickly increased, eventually reaching levels comparable to those of such popular webcomics as Penny Arcade and PvP. According to Gallagher, Megatokyo's popularity was not intended, as the project was originally an experiment to help him improve his writing and illustrating skills for his future project, Warmth.

In May 2002, Caston sold his ownership of the title to Gallagher, who has managed the comic on his own since then. In October of the same year, after Gallagher was laid off from his day job as an architect, he took up producing the comic as a full time profession. Caston's departure from Megatokyo was not fully explained at the time. Initially, Gallagher and Caston only briefly mentioned the split, with Gallagher publicly announcing Caston's departure on June 17, 2002. On January 15, 2005, Gallagher explained his view of the reasoning behind the split in response to a comment made by Scott Kurtz of PvP, in which he suggested that Gallagher had stolen ownership of Megatokyo from Caston. Calling Kurtz's claim "mean spirited", Gallagher responded:

"While things were good at first, over time we found that we were not working well together creatively. There is no fault in this, it happens. I've never blamed Rodney for this creative 'falling out' nor do I blame myself. Not all creative relationships click, ours didn't in the long run."

Four days later, Caston posted his view of the development on his website:

"After this he approached me and said either I would sell him my ownership of MegaTokyo or he would simply stop doing it entirely, and we'd divide up the company's assets and end it all. This was right before the MT was to go into print form, and I really wanted to see it make it into print, rather die on the vine."

In May 2011, it was announced that Endgames were being revamped in a light novel format, with a story written by webfiction author Thomas Knapp, with four light novels planned. A short story "Behind the Masque" was also announced, and released on Amazon's Kindle Store on June 10, 2011.