#rick hunter

Rick Hunter andLisa Hayes order the Zentraedifleet to bombard and bury the mounds housing the remains of the space battle fortresses SDF-1 andSDF-2 as well as the flagship of the renegade Khyron. This slightly gratuitous end to the “Mars Base One” serial’s framing sequence comes courtesy of Tommy Yune,Simon Yeung, and Omar Dogan, from the pages of Robotech Invasion #5 (DC/Wildstorm, May 2004).

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.

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.

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.

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.)

During a lull in the Zentraedi attack on Macross City, Rick Hunter spiesLynn Kyle kissingLynn Minmei. He vents his frustrations on a nearby squad of enemy Battlepods. Nearby, several micronized Zentraedi disembark from their Battlepods, eager to start new lives among their former foes, but fully aware that their chances of survival would drop to nil if the humans knew who they were. This display of frustrated efforts comes to us from Robotech: The Macross Saga #23 (Comico, November 1987) by Markalan Joplin &Mike Leeke.

Two additional notes:

In the TV episode, Lisa demands to know how Kyle is as Rick signs off. As Lisa’s fixation on Kyle is one of the worst subplots in all of The Macross Saga, the change here is welcome.

Not sure if this is the first time it’s appeared, but on the last page we see the Comico-specific Zentraedi exclamation “Macek’s eyes!” a cute reference to series producer & story editor Carl Macek.

Dolza has decided that the SDF-1 has become too dangerous. His point is proven by the behavior of the troops under Breetai’s command, who have fallen under the sway of the humans’ consumer culture. Meanwhileaboard the SDF-1, Rick Hunter considers the distinct possibility of his own death. These scenes from an escalating war come to us from Robotech: The Macross Saga #22 (Comico, October 1987) by Markalan Joplin &Mike Leeke.

Having both walked out of “Little White Dragon” during a particular moment both of them found hard to watch, Rick Hunter andLisa Hayes find themselves trapped in a cut off section of the SDF-1 during a full ship transformation. This scene of a slowly thawing relationship comes to us from Robotech: The Macross Saga #21 (Comico, August 1987) by Markalan Joplin &Mike Leeke.

As the late Roy Fokker did to Rick Hunter, so Rick does to Max Sterling. This parallel scene I didn’t mind comes from the pages of Robotech: Love & War #5 (DC/Wildstorm, October 2003) by Tommy Yune,Jay Faerber,Long Vo,Charles Park, and Saka.

If someone’s being shown a flashy new top secret mecha that never appeared in the TV series, you’re probably reading an Antarctic Press Robotech comic. Hell, grab a stack of the books and make it a drinking game. Take an extra shot every time the artist slips in a Macross Plus reference. Lee Duhig’sRobotech: Wings of Gibraltar #1 (Antarctic, August 1998) is rife with them, enough to burst your liver, from the relatively subtle (”Galaxy Dynamics” is a riff of YF-21 manufacturer General Galaxy and real world military manufacturer General Dynamics) to the beat-you-over-the-head obvious (on top of the series’s own “Super Veritech Vs. Shiny New Mecha You’ve Never Heard Of” setup there’s a particularly groan-worthy direct dialogue quotation I spared you on the next page, then later IsamuandMyung actually have a cameo).

The best part of this two-issue mini-series: catch the reference to square-headed test pilot McGavin having just been flying the newly developed Super Veritech. This came out concurrent with Gregory Lane’sCovert Ops two-issue mini-series, where Roy Fokker’swhole team was equipped with Super Veritechs back during the journey back to Earth from the space fold. C’mon, guys. Bad enough you bungled the continuity that bad to begin with, but two contradictory minis simultaneously? Good job.

Anyway, yes, here we have the Veritech Interceptor, complete with plenty of specs so you can hazard some guesses as to how to implement it in your Palladium RobotechRPG campaign.

RememberKimono My House? I bought a “We Want YOU…” T-shirt from them in the (I think) late ‘90s, along with a few vols of Streamline’s Robotech Perfect Collection on VHS. Wore the tee to AX06; it was already showing wear then. Threw the raggy tee away when I packed to move in late 2010. I miss it.

evancass:

Reconstruction blues. Robotech/The Killers “A Dustland Fairytale” AMV.

My second anime music video. The ecological & emotional upheavals of Macross’s Reconstruction era — and my appreciation for Minmei & Lisa’s characters — fit well with this ‘killer’ song, my favorite from the Day & Age album.

I think they’re out of my system now. For awhile at least. I’ll do a Southern Cross AMV someday for sure. Anyway – considering this one & the last, I think I’m pretty good at pairing songs & vids for emotional thrust. Hey, if I give myselfgoosebumps…

d4n13ldesigns:

“Skull Leader” by D4N13La.k.a.Daniel Sotomayora.k.a.@D4N150T0

Now available at ShirtPunch TV!!

Dash Shaw screened the “very best episode” of Robotech as part of Comic Arts Brooklyn’s November 2013 programming. I was intrigued by the cartoonist-animator’s promo art for his evening of limited animation and curious about what Robotech episode he selected & why. Since no other news source (that I’m aware of) wrote about the event’s specifics, I reached out to Shaw for an interview. He generously answered a few questions and, in the process, enlightened me to a possible reframing of Robotech’s original production – as collage.

EhC: How do you define “limited animation”?

DASH SHAW: Animation that “limits” the number of drawings, usually because it’s a low-budget project. It’s the art of communicating a lot, through a little.

WhatRobotech episode did you screen at CAB? Why that episode?

Episode 17, “Phantasm.” I love the fast pace and delirious energy of the episode. It’s a long dream. It’s basically the most avant-garde episode, and it’s also completely fun. I’ve watched it many times. It has that great thing that film can do, which is someone imposing their sense of time on you. It reminds me of the Guy Maddin short “The Heart of the World” and the episode recaps that appear before shows like Lost, but this Robotech episode is 25 minutes long and is a total joyride the whole way through.

How did you discover Robotech? What attracted you then and what attracts you now?

I just rented it at some point. I’ve liked comics and cartoons my whole life. I never took any breaks from it. So the kinds of things I like now are very similar to the things I watched as a kid. But I don’t think I have any nostalgia for it in particular. I genuinely love the characters, the moral complexities of the story, and – as it’s presented in this program – it’s technical qualities, such as pace and movement. Mostly showing it in the context at CAB was about the technical aspects, especially the frantic, delirious pace of this particular episode. I played it right after an episode of a very fast-moving series I did for IFC called “The Unclothed Man in the 35th Century AD.”

Collage is a technique you utilize in your work. The original 85-episode Robotech cartoon rearranges and draws connections between three separate series to create a unique multi-generational one. Is Robotechcollage?

I hadn’t thought of that before. Usually I think of collage in comics and animation in a spatial sense. By arranging things on a page or a screen you’re drawing connections between things, or suggesting possibilities that might not have been apparent immediately. Like layering sound over an image creates a third thing. But that’s also true in stories. Interesting point.

You’ve been given eight pages in a Robotech comix anthology to tell any story in any way. What do you do?

I’m not interested. I want to tell stories about my own characters.

Dash’s animated short “Seraph” was a 2013 Sundance Film Festival award nominee. His Cosplayersone-shot came out in April 2014 and is available at quality comix shops & on comiXology.

Robotech cover I did for @dogitiaed new book Protocultura. Si eres de Chile, puedes reservar el libro en www.chilecomics.cl