#robotech comics

...Everything about this cover is amazing. All the characters have so much personality here. Rick especially looks really pleased to be in comic book form again. Minmei also seems delighted to be a star again. Dare I say it's her time to be a star? (See what I did there?)

ComicBook.com revealed yesterday that Jason & 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 Sentinels run), 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.

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.

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 Creed and Dark 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 starts today.

Likewise, you’re probably aware that Sony’s free streaming platform Crackle is now playing host to the entire Robotech television 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.)

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 ...

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 and Hikaru 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.)

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 Macross series: 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’s something 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 and Macross 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 Macross trademark 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.