#macross

Another 4x6” watercolor drawing for a Patreon backer: #RoyFokker’s #SkullLeader #Veritech (#Robotech/#Macross)

One year after the destruction of the SDF-1 andSDF-2,Rick Hunter takes the prototype YF-4 out for a spin to take out some well-armed Zentraedi agitators. This little skirmish and lot of gabbing comes from the pages of Robotech #0 (DC/Wildstorm, December 2002), written by Tommy Yune andJay Faerber with art by Jim Lee,Ale Garza,Carlos D’Anda,Lee Bermejo,Trevor Scott,Richard Friend, and Sandra Hope.

After taking a direct hit from the SDF-1′s main gun, Khyron’s cruiser has just enough power to keep on flying. He and Azonia agree to send it on a collision course with Earth’s similarly drained space battle fortress. Sammie reports that only one escape pod is operational. Despite Lisa’s protests, the rest of the bridge crew agrees on who is most deserving to take that spot.

With the destruction of the SDF-1, Robotech: The Macross Saga comes to a close at issue #36 (Comico, February 1989), by Markalan Joplin &Mike Leeke.

TheZentraedi renegadeKhyron completes his Christmas Day attack, fleeing as his operative on the streets of New Macross City sets off explosives throughout the twice-reborn metropolis. Rick Hunter andMax &Miriya Sterling cease their pursuit to help out with emergency relief, putting out fires and reuniting families. Some reunions that evening, sadly, are not so warm. We bask in the warm glow of lights aboard Earth’s two battle fortresses in this excerpt from Robotech: The Macross Saga #35 (Comico, January 1989) by Markalan Joplin,Diana Schutz, and Mike Leeke.

While references to the SDF-2 had cropped up in earlier issues, this was the first issue where Mike Leeke drew it into a scene, portraying it back-to-back with the SDF-1 inLake Gloval per descriptions in the Jack McKinney novels and remarks by Robotech TV series producer Carl Macek.

Your obligatory action sequence, breaking up another series of bad decisions on the part of one Richard A. Hunter, from the pages of Robotech: The Macross Saga #34 (Comico, December 1988) by Markalan Joplin &Mike Leeke.

Rick Hunter, still brimming with resentment after Lisa Hayes interrupted his reunion with Lynn Minmei following the operation to rescue her from Khyronand worn down from hours of searching for the escaped renegade Zentraedi, makes a complete ass out of himself. It’s the lousy day that precedes “A Rainy Night,” from early in Robotech: The Macross Saga #33 (Comico, November 1988) by Markalan Joplin &Mike Leeke.

Oh no, it’s the story that, if Macross were a bad Saturday morning cartoon, we would be seeing every week instead of just the once. If you ask me, though, once was too many, though the episode does have its joys. For instance, we get to delight to the sight of Azonia torturingLynn Kyle.Khyron proving himself immune to Minmei’s song is also an interesting moment, though we’d seen him placidly listening to her before back in “Force of Arms.” (Not pictured: the bit where a loyalist Zentraedi produces a giant cigarette and asks a Veritech Battloid to use its gun pod to give him a light, which I think we can all agree is the best scene in the episode.)

Anyway, yes, here’s some of the less objectionable bits of “Khyron’s Revenge,” from the pages of Robotech: The Macross Saga #32 (Comico, October 1988). Markalan Joplin &Mike Leeke do what they can, but, y’know, there’s only so much you can do with “Khyron kidnaps Minmei and demands that Admiral Gloval give him the SDF-1.”

Thanks to Lynn Kyle’s, *ahem*, crowd management skills,Rick Hunter andSkull Squadron have been driven out of New Detroit. In their absence, the piece of Robotechnology they were trying to keep secure, a rare Zentraedi resizing chamber, becomes easy prey for the renegades led by Khyron. This latest case of Kyle’s hatred for the military overriding common sense appears from the pages of Robotech: The Macross Saga #31 (Comico, September 1988) by Markalan Joplin &Mike Leeke.

As members of a joint human-Zentraedi attack on Reno’s Robotech Factory Satellite,Lisa Hayes andRick Hunter come to find out that they’re playing a bit more of a starring role in the operation than they realized when they signed on in this sequence from Robotech: The Macross Saga #30 (Comico, August 1988) by Markalan Joplin &Mike Leeke.

Minmei’s hopes for everything to settle into a fantasy version of the past are shattered by the sight of Rick&Lisa chatting. When Rick runs after her, he instead stumbles into a brawl between Zentraedi who stand divided on the issue of a life without war. This display of both humans and Zentraedi being unable to move on with their lives appears in Robotech: The Macross Saga #29 (Comico, July 1988) by Markalan Joplin &Mike Leeke.

Two years have passed since the near-destruction of the Earth and the obliteration of Dolza’s Zentraedi fleet. Rick Hunter swings off course when he catches a glimpse of life returning to once-barren ground. These pages of hope blotted out by grim musing come from Robotech: The Macross Saga #28 (Comico, June 1988) by Markalan Joplin &Mike Leeke.

Rick’s line of thinking is very much of the time when this was written, very late Cold War in the same way that Robotech’s classic conception of the Global Civil War was. (Hey guys, remember the Palladium RPG’s thrown-together Soviet bad guys E.B.S.I.S.? Soviet villains were still such a thing in the late 1980s that Palladium shoehorned them into the very setting we’re looking at here!) In the context of a real world that still feared nuclear annihilation, Rick’s stray, wandering remarks about man’s capacity to do just what the Zentraedi did make more sense than they might unmoored from the pages of a periodical published in the summer of ‘88.

Even outside of that context, though, Rick’s grim mood follows well from every other time we’ve seen him alone with his thoughts since his friends started dying all around him. Standing before signs of hope, Rick’s mind quickly returns to dark places. Sure, a really obvious reminder is sitting there in front of him in the foreground, but given the stark reminder that is literally all around him I don’t think he needed the prompt.

While I remain surprised that the two year gap between the destruction of Dolza’s fleet and the reconstruction episodes remains completely unexplored by the comics – not even by a shoddy Academy Comics or Antarctic Press one-shot – Rick’s sense of directionlessness a few pages later suggests that, at least as far as he’s concerned, nothing’s really been happening. Still, I’m sure there are The Macross Saga characters that have been dealing with crises of one sort or another. If I were doing a 30th anniversary comic series, this is one of the two gaps in the chronology I’d be looking to explore.

And thus ends the First Robotech War.

This depiction of the rescue of Lisa Hayes fromAlaska Base and the destruction of Dolza’s flagship from the pages of Robotech: The Macross Saga #27 (Comico, May 1988) by Markalan Joplin &Mike Leeke.

During the final battle of the First Robotech War, a Super Veritech pilot watches his friend exercise poor judgment while taking out a Glaug Eldare as all descend towards the surface of the ruined Earth. These grim, unfinished pages from Robotech: Final Fire #1 (Antarctic Press, January 1999) by Lee Duhig.

Exedore arrives on-board the SDF-1 on a diplomatic mission to discover the source of the Zentraedi’s foes’ powers. Instead he discovers things like handshakes, sexy advertising, and the joy of a cool, refreshing beverage. This sequence of educational moments comes to us from Robotech: The Macross Saga #26 (Comico, March 1988), by Markalan Joplin &Mike Leeke.

(As an aside, the Zentraedi’s request for peanut butter was part of a running gag that started right after Joplin started handling the dialogue.)

First date turns into knife fight. Knife fight turns into marriage proposal. The preface to one of the most beloved shotgun weddings in animation history, far more lovingly rendered than it was on television, from the pages of Robotech: The Macross Saga #25 (Comico, February 1988 – oh, cute, right around Valentine’s Day) by Markalan Joplin &Mike Leeke.

AsLisa Hayes travels back to Earth to try and talk to her father about a possible diplomatic end to the Robotech War, a force of Zentraedi Battlepods gets in her way. Rick Hunter is sent out in the brand new Super Veritech to clear a path for Lisa’s plane and its escorts – but a mix-up by Sammie Porter almost derails his mission before its begun! This scene of snappy dialog and sorry Battloids comes to us from Robotech: The Macross Saga #24 (Comico, December 1987) by Markalan Joplin and fill-in artist Howard Bender, whose characters are serviceable but whose mecha are … err … less-so.

In which Captain JLS discusses the biggest Robotech-related news since the announcement of The Shadow Chronicles in the early 2000s — Harmony Gold & Big West have, hopefully once & for all, settled their differences and unreleased Macross material and merchandise, new & old, can reach these shores through official channels starting … well, apparently about a month ago. Also featured: bits & bobs of Robotech & Robotech-adjacent merch ranging from the very recent all the way back to late last year.

ComicBook.com revealed yesterday thatJason & John Waltrip (the twin artists who together drew the entirety of Robotech II: The Sentinels’s 75-issue run at Eternity &Academy Comics from 1988 to 1996, in addition to the six-issue Legend of Zor mini-series and a wide variety of Sentinels-adjacent one-shots) have done a new cover for Titan Comics’s upcoming Robotech comic book series launching in the spring of 2017. This follows a series of four other cover pieces by artists I’m less familiar with that were attached to an article at Comics Alliance published during San Diego Comic-Con this past July, which can be seen here.

Not a great composition, to be honest – it looks like the result of an attempt to fit a certain number of Macross Colorforms into a comic book-sized-and-shaped space – and it’s come to my attention that most of the elements are redressed bits of copied/traced Macross lineart. All the elements have been added to or otherwise altered to some degree (Minmei was in a completely different outfit in the original Macross model sheet, while Rick & Lisa are cribbed from head shots so what you can see of them from their necks down is mostly new art), and it’s not like this is the first time the Waltrips have ever used animation model sheets from the Japanese shows that comprise Robotech as slightly-too-literal reference (for instance, see Breetai on the cover of Sentinels Book IV #2 from January 1996; the Waltrips also tended to copy from model sheets when dealing with mecha that didn’t appear quite often enough to remember throughout the Sentinelsrun), but it still registers a sour note when I wish I could just be happy to see those familiar signatures gracing the cover of a Robotech comic for the first time in over two decades.

(That said, this is probably still the cover I’m going to request when the book is solicited in the spring, assuming this appears on issue #1.)

Hey there, gang! 2016 is half over, and I thought it might well be time to check in with a State of the Robotech Universe – at least from where I’m sitting down here in little ol’ Southeast Kansas. Above you’ll see five images that I think cover all the major points worth looking at.

1. You’ve surely heard by now that, as Tommy Yune & Bill Spangler both alluded to on the convention trail during Q1 & early Q2, a new comic publisher has picked up the Robotech comic book license. The unlikely new home of Robotech comics in the English speaking world is Titan Comics out of the UK. Titan’s been around for thirty-five years, but they’ve been in the periodical comics game for only two or three, having immediately seized the worldwide publishing rights for Doctor Who comic books after IDW’s license expired. In the past year they’ve been diversifying their licensed comics portfolio, picking up licenses to publish comics for NBC’s TV series The Blacklist, Showtime’s recently concluded TV series Penny Dreadful, video games like Assassin’s CreedandDark Souls, and Dreamworks’s movie & TV franchise Penguins of Madagascar. They’re also the English language publisher of the manga based on the BBC TV series Sherlock. It’s been a while since Robotech has been snapped up by a company on the upward swing, and I’m curious to see what will come of this. No creative team or setting for Titan’s first Robotech series has been announced, but the first issue is pencilled in for Q1 2017. Further details may well start spilling out as early as this weekend, since Anime Expo startstoday.
   
2. Likewise, you’re probably aware that Sony’s free streaming platform Crackle is now playing host to the entire Robotechtelevision series plus The Shadow Chronicles. They only sent press releases about this to the four corners of the Earth, as well as used that overfamiliar promo piece of Rick in his Veritech as the icon for Crackle to entice folks to install the app on their PlayStations for a while. Of course, the version Crackle is showing is the 2004 Remastered edition. Mercifully, based on what I’ve seen, the ad breaks are at the proper midway act break and before the next episode previews, so they’re only as obtrusive as they would be if you were watching the show on TV in the 1980s or 1990s. (I hate it when streaming platforms start randomly throwing ad breaks in willy nilly.)
3. Ah, but what if you want to kick things a little more old school? Well, far less publicized is the fact that Amazon Prime streaming started offering up the original broadcast versions of the Robotech television series on June 13. No remastered footage, no modern sound effects – the TV series as it aired in syndication in the 1980s and on cable in the 1990s. They’ve also got The Shadow Chronicles as well as of the 29th. The official Robotech twitter account is really pushing the Crackle thing but, as far as I’ve seen they’ve said nothing about the original version of the show on Amazon Prime. I expect that’s largely because Crackle is owned by the same folks who are allegedly giving us that Major Motion Picture that’s been in the works off an on for almost a decade now …
4. As for merchandising, Toynami’s been awfully quiet since the repaint wave of the Toynami/Calibre blind box figures came out. On the other hand, Bandai in Japan have been busy putting out new original Super Dimension Fortress Macross mecha figures (in approx 1/100 scale) every other month or so. The latest release is the Glaug (a.k.a. the Officer’s Battlepod), and the coming months will see the massive Monster Destroid, the “cannon fodder” brown VF-1A Valkyrie andHikaru Ichijyo’s red & white VF-1J (a.k.a.Rick Hunter’s Vermilion One) with TV-series-accurate puffy round hands and a matching pilot beneath the canopy. I’ve got the Glaug myself, but haven’t had a chance to crack it out of the box yet; I’ve got the VF-1A on preorder, but that wasn’t easy. It’s definitely worth noting that preorders for all of these figures on the big import sites (HobbyLink Japan, AmiAmi, Hobby Search) fill up within hours. It’s nice to see such demand for the mecha of the old ‘82 & ‘84 material, but at the same time, it kind of makes me wish Harmony Gold and Big West would kiss and make up so that Bandai’s U.S. distributor Bluefin could carry these things. (Speaking of toys, Harmony Gold and RTUCN have been making a big deal about KitzConcept in Hong Kong doing officially licensed transforming SD versions of Rick & Roy’s Veritechs but A) I’m not a big fan of that VF-1S head sculpt, and B) these are just officially sanctioned rereleases of unlicensed “third party” toys that have been available for about a year now.)
5. I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that back in Japan we’re at the half-way point in the latest Macross sequel television series, Macross Delta. Thirteen episodes in and it’s everything I wanted from a new Macrossseries: a clever shuffling of archetypes (this time the lead character has no aircraft piloting aptitude and no dream he’s striving for at the outset – now that’ssomething new for Macross!), a new twist on the “music as a weapon” concept that’s been threaded through most Macross stories, awesome dogfights with Valkyrie designs that, to me, are a return to form after the boxy, ugly VF-25, and only very occasional overt callbacks to earlier shows (though there’s an awful lot of Macross II andMacross 7 in this thing’s DNA; the former might be a coincidence, but I’m betting the latter is not so much). Alas, as with every Macross series since Macross Plus wrapped,Delta is trapped in Japan until, again, either Harmony Gold and Big West agree to shake hands, or until Harmony Gold loses the rights to Macross (March 2021 at the earliest, assuming they don’t reach a new agreement with Tatsunoko; their claim to the Macrosstrademark would then need to expire or be challenged in court). However, big spenders should note that apparently the Japanese blu ray discs for Macross Delta (compatible with U.S. players!) that start hitting stores this month will feature English subtitles.
6. With that all said, here’s looking forward to some actual news from AX and/or SDCC. I’m not going to set my hopes too high; really, I’d just like to know what’s happening with the new comic series. I’d also like someone to ask whatever happened to those new art books from Udonthat were announced back in the summer of ‘14. I was looking forward to those …

Sheryl Nome by Coser Popy

Photographer by Mokona
-2013-

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