Hoo boy, it's been forever since I typed a word on the subject of Robotech comics. In fact, as of this writing, I'm just realizing I never even READ issue #5 ... I guess I figured I'd plow through it once I got back to work on the comics site.
Anyway, before I hit issue #6, a few of my own thoughts on #5 ...
1) Yeah, Evan, it WAS nice to see ol' Leonard. Especially nice seeing him within the RDF rather than as an outside antagonist ... though in some ways (some good, some bad), that changes next issue ...
2) The whole Jan Morris thing plays out like a shallow echo of the Nina Lang storyline Bill Spangler did back in Return to Macross, complete with a similar "Claudia storming off, Roy being innocent" scene to the sort that became RtM's stock-in-trade. Kind of makes me wish Yune and Faerber had a few more issues to pad out the story and do the romance angle RIGHT. (Then again, that seems to be what the next mini-series, "Love & War" is for.)
3) Speaking of echoes, the "Cancel the program, everything you know is wrong, steal the fighter" structure feels like it's stolen right out of Macross Plus, complete with the ranking officer giving the wink and the nod to the hotshot.
4) Finally, am I the only one who feels like the "Roy and Claudia in the rain" scene was poorly inserted? The bit outside the hangar Roy was talking about DIDN'T HAPPEN in the mini-series (remember the scene with him loopily boozing with the girls from "A Rainy Night"?), probably because we're working with the toned-down Hero-Boy Fokker of Return to Macross and Prototype 001 fame, not the hard-drinking, hard-loving and already kind of grizzled Fokker from Macross Zero ... oh, and because we've got enough material just in THIS timeframe to fill eight issues, but we spent one in '99 and one just to get Roy here, so we've got four issues to cover all this, and next time we've got to find time to wrap things up with some non-essential scenes ...
But I'm getting ahead of myself here. The point is, the "A Rainy Night" scene is shoehorned into the story without proper context. I guess Faeber is just hoping that the last of WildStorm's The Macross Saga Comico reprint graphic novels gives it that missing context.
5) Good use of the orbital booster pack we see later in "Viva Miriya" at the end there. And now that I think about it, not a bad idea for it to, next issue, be revealed to be multi-stage, with the second stage being sort of sawed-off Super Valkyrie FAST packs.
Which brings us right into my comments about #6 ...
1) EXCELLENT use of Roy's final words during his conversation with Shawn ... "It's never a game ..." At the same time, the anti-unificationists' angle is very well thought out here. I'm stunned. Though making the baddie the brother of Roy's ill-fated wingman from the first issue reeks of lazy character motivaton. (Not sure if it makes it better or worse for Roy's cocky remark to pretty much point this fact out and deflate him as a threat.)
2) As for the plot overall, again, it strikes me as a replay of the final arc from Return to Macross, only when the starship Achilles was taken over by anti-unificationists, the whole thing played out more like a TV drama than a summer movie ... all the players (long ago set up, some of them way back at the start of the Academy run of the book) had their roles in that story, wheras here it's just Roy versus a poorly-developed single antagonist.
3) I'd like to know how Shawn convinced the pilots of those Lancer Space Cannons to fight for him; they ARE manned, you know, contrary to whatever Siembieda said so many years ago.
4) Very nice Valkyrie action; shame it's so fleeting, what with Roy just switching to Battloid and taking out the bridge, then swooping down to save the SDF-1 from the Reflex Warhead.
5) Most bizarre revelation: Remember Leonard and Edwards's hinted-at cabal from the Sentinels and Lost Generation novels? Looks like it's still in effect. And what's with Leonard having an ASC Air Force insignia on his office wall? Methinks someone's got a Robotech Perfect Collection: Southern Cross tape laying about and doesn't quite understand the context for the symbol on its cover ... (Consider he's in charge of the Destroid project, which means they don't even quite have a case for it meaning something along the same lines in this story.) In the same scene, though, I think it's quite amusing that Edwards has turned on his VIP shielding (seen in "Showdown" when Lisa's shuttle comes under attack) to give himself some privacy for his scheming. Cute.
6) Yune and Faerber have one up on Spangler, though, in their placement of Emerson in the grand scheme of things. They write him better, too.
7) Three pages of Rick preparing for, and finally going through with, his proposal to Lisa: Cute, but wildly out of place as a coda for this story. It WOULD have worked, had there been a scene between Rick and Lisa in issue #0, but we got no such thing; anyone picking this series up cold would have no clue of the history between the two, though in a certain light I guess it's not necessary. Still, the epilogue that follows the proposal scene is all we really needed to see of Rick in this issue. (I quite liked the shot of the half-buried SDF-1 in the background when Rick proposes, though, and the use of a box remarkably like the ones Roy was fond of when trying to woo Claudia was spot-on perfect. Oh, and the art team does a FLAWLESS Rick, though their Lisa's a little iffy.)
Still hate Faerber's '80s X-Men take on Lang's dialogue. I can add the psuedo-German accent in my head quite nicely, thank you very much ...
9) The last two pages have me kind of tearing up, just like Rick on the next to last page. I can believe that parting with that last tie to the days aboard the SDF-1 would send Rick down that emotional roller coaster one last time. I imagine this will all work even smoother in the eventual trade paperback collection.
In the end, if you're going to ask me yea or nay on the run as a whole, I have to say "yea". Yeah, it's "Return to Return to Macross", just as I figured, but for the most part it's the best parts of Spangler and Gibson's 37-issue run with better continuity checking and more consistent art. There were a few too-forced continuity shoehorns here and there, but all in all it's a big step in the right direction.
I just have to wonder ... after six months of "Love & War" (crossing my fingers, hoping for some non-Macross material in later issues, BTW), what'll be next? The Mars Base Sara story Yune promised/threatened? Or something a little more substantial ... say, maybe a new "Invid War" (after all, with TEN years to play with now, there's all SORTS of fun to be had on the post-Masters, Invid-occupied Earth!).
*shrug*
--JLS
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Replying to:
I liked this issue very much. My favorite so far. Comments:
* Pleasantly surprised to see Leonard. (RM/SC hasn't been forgotten after all!) Is it just me, or does Leonard seem a little old, based on his physical appearance and the year (2006)?
* I continue to like the more realistic take on the RT backstory. Gloval: "Now you know why everything is being kept under such a tight lid. If this were made public, there would be mass panic on a global scale."
* In the same scene... Gloval: "Now if you observe-" Roy: " Wait, why are the crew so small in that photo? You'd have to be a giant to operate that vessel [the pre-reconstruction SDF-1]." Help me out here. What's in that photo? I have no idea what I'm supposed to see.
* The Anti-Unification League taking over the Armor-1 and on a mission of destruction: "One down, two to go. Soon, the old superpowers will be vanquished by the very weapons of their own design!" ...cool...
* It's nice to see Vince. I'm finding it interesting to see what HG retains/salvages from The Sentinels. (By the way, the "new" Edwards rocks!)
* Roy, concerning Rick: "Sigh... I hope you never have girl trouble, kiddo." Great line.
Can't wait for #6!
~ EhC
