Author:Stephen Stern
Art: Bill Maus

“When artist Dan Cote and I created Zen Intergalactic Ninja and unleashed him upon an unsuspecting world 30 years ago this November, our blue-skinned alien hero had a largely featureless face. What he had was eyes. No nose. No mouth. It almost looked as if he was wearing a mask, and a number of readers would write to us, saying he reminded them of a ‘blue Spider-Man.’

In truth, I had always wanted Zen to have more of a face, even from our early days, and had been thinking on-and-off about how to make that happen. And so finally, in 2005, I wrote Zen: Bounty Hunter, a 50-page story which explained the p