Neo Comics

Neo Comics is an American comic book publisher founded in 1986 by Carter Simpson, initially based out of New York City before moving to Long Island after its purchasing by Epsilon Publishing in 2001. The company is best known as a superhero publisher, creating characters such as Steelhand, Mister Midnight, and Wild Heart. These characters initially existed in their own shared universe up until the Epsilon purchase, when all of their characters were signed over to the company and became a part of their own Epsilon Universe.

History
Neo Comics was founded by Carter Simpson in 1986, launching with three titles: Steelhand, Mister Midnight, and Wild Heart. Simpson was a life-long comic book fan and had worked as an editor for various magazines in the past, his experience in the industry eventually allowing him to form his own company, which he created along with a small group of writers, artists, and editors. The company was dubbed Neo Comics, as it was invisioned as being the next big comic book publisher. The comics published by Neo were quite popular at the time, as people enjoyed having a company that didn't have many years worth of backstory, though their sales would become more average in later years. Neo was known for being experimental and allowing their writers and artists freedom to tell the stories they wanted, which was described by critics as being "sometimes good, sometimes bad, but always entertaining".

The characters and stories were known for having a bit of an edge to them, designed to look powerful and intimidating as oppose to heroic. This led to great success and praise from readers and creators in the industry, who enjoyed the subversive nature of Neo's protagonists. Like other upcoming comic publishers at the time, Neo also did licensed work to prop up its original stories, creating comic continuations of the films Predator and Toxic Avenger as well as gaining the rights to produce comics based on the Street Fighter games. Uniquely, these licensed products were actually integrated directly into Neo's universe, having frequent team-ups and crossovers with their characters until the rights were lost for various reasons.

Notably, Neo had an incredible printing technology that it commissioned which was superior to most other printers at the time, allowing for incredible looking comics which most agree stand the test of time. Neo patented this technology, which prevented other companies from using it, and used it throughout the remainder of its years as an independant company. This technology would eventually catch the attention of Epsilon Publishing, who attempted to bargain a deal to use these printers for their own comics, but the deal fell through for a number of reasons, the biggest of which being that Neo was required to pay money whenever one of these printers was created and Epsilon was far larger than them, meaning they needed a lot more printers and Neo would be forced to pay much more money. After the deal fell through, Epsilon decided to buy Neo as a whole, which was far easier. For an unknown price (rumored to be close to a $6,000,000), Epsilon purchased Neo in 2001 and had their printers moved to their offices, Neo continuing to publish comics through Epsilon as a subsidiary.

Due to Neo and Epsilon's similar products and goals, the two companies eventually decided to merge their universes together, with Neo's characters joining the Epsilon universe. All of Neo's comics at the time were given at most 12 issues to wrap up their storylines and, once the year was up, the final story published as part of the Neo universe was made, the event mini-series titled Cataclysm and published from late 2002 to early 2003. After Cataclysm's conclusion, most of Neo's comics were rebooted and relaunched as part of the Epsilon Universe. Many characters had their origins changed during their reboots, most notably that of The Monkey King, as he was based on preexisting mythology whereas Epsilon had established most, if not all, mythological characters did not exist in their universe. Since then, the Neo characters have made frequent appearances in Epsilon's comics and related media, occasionally interacting and teaming up with their characters.

Pre-Epsilon

 * Steelhand
 * Wild Heart
 * Mister Midnight
 * The Monkey King
 * Might
 * Pale Ash
 * /The Sentinels/
 * /Street Fighter/
 * /Toxic Avenger/
 * /Predator/

Post-Epsilon

 * Steelhand
 * Wild Heart
 * Mister Midnight
 * The Monkey King
 * Might
 * Pale Ash
 * The Sentinels