College friends Grek Pak (Action Comics, Planet Hulk, Eternal Warrior) and Internet famous musician Jonathan Coulton held a panel at New York Comic Con to explain to the world that needs saving about the wildly successful Kickstarter comic based on ten of JoCo’s most popular songs, themes and lyrical insanity.

As so many legends go these days, “It all started with a tweet”.

Issue #1 of Code Monkey Save World (MonkeyBrain Comics) is available on ComiXology on Wednesday, October 16.

Greg Pak stood at the panel with sculptor and comic book artist Sean Chen, JoCo’s assistant Drew Westphal aka Scarface and Jonathan Coulton to his left. Upcoming covers for the debut four issues of Code Monkey Save World were revealed to an audience of JoCo and Greg Pak fans. The amazingly talented series artist Takeshi Miyazawa (Ultimate Comics Spider-Man, Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane) was not in attendance.

Sean Chen (Iron Man, Bloodshot) is responsible for the cool sculpt of main character, Code Monkey used to create figurines for Kickstarter backers.

Code Monkey works as a jackal in a cube farm somewhere, crunching code all day in oversized clothes and falling in love with his co-worker Matida. One day, while working for his boss Skullcrusher, robots from Chiron Beta Prime abduct Matilda and Code Monkey reluctantly team up to rescue her!

Pak hints that Code Monkey isn’t that great at his job and a lot of the humor comes from Code Monkey’s resentments toward all of the monkey jokes coming his way.

“In the song, Code Monkey is human”, Pak explained, “in the comic he’s a monkey because, Obviously!”

JoCo fans will be familiar with both Chiron Beta Prime and Code Monkey from his songs, as well as Skipper the curler who appears in issue #2. JoCo’s scifi fantasy nerdcore songs are full stories in and of themselves, prompting Greg Pak to get the rock in the house for a full blown comic story.

The Kickstarter was launched back in April, the same day as the Boston Marathon bombings, but while that occasion was unfortunate and ugly, Pak and JoCo’s fans pledged and outstretched the Kickstarter goal within hours, without the aid of creators usual self promotion.

New characters are developed by the team to tie a thread between the story songs, such as the impressive looking Laura the Robot Queen—object of unrequited love for our other near hero Skullcrusher.

Stretch goals include a ton of one off content, from Fred Van Lente and Ryan Dunleavy (Comic Book History of Comics, Action Philosophers) produce a “Kenesaw Mountain Landis” two page bonus for the paperback.

Coulton is also hard at work putting the 10 songs referenced in the comic onto an acoustic album, being mastered as we speak to drop online around the time issue #1 hits ComiXology (or thereabouts!).

More bonus features include a JoCo Funnies comic strip, a short story of “Mr. Fancy Pants” and children’s book of “The Princess Who Saved Herself”.

The panel turned itself over to Scarface for some hard figures and talk of fulfillment, and the challenges facing the team on delivering the comic and bonuses to the fans.

Everyone hopes for a great launch of the book outside of the usual JoCo fans and are excited to see the life Code Monkey can have beyond the Kickstarter.

Teaming up with MonkeyBrain Comics is a logical step to get the book in hands of retailers and distribution.

Look for Code Monkey Save World in ComiXology this Wednesday!