Robotech: The Macross Saga (Comico The Comic Company)
Based upon episodes 1-36 of the 1985 television series produced by Harmony Gold in association with Tatsunoko Prod. Co.
The alien invasion began almost coincidentally. A mammoth interstellar fortress ripped through the fabric of hyperspace on a collision course with the Earth. Whether by chance or some obscure twist of fate, this alien vessel was drawn toward the unsuspecting planet.
THE LOWDOWN
In the year 1999 AD, a 1200-meter alien space fortress plunges through hyperspace from parts unknown and crashes into the Earth's surface, coming to rest on a small island in the South Pacific called Macross. The arrival of this visitor from the stars ends nearly a decade of global war and unites the people of Earth in a way that nothing before ever had. Ten years of painstaking restoration and dedicated research at the hands of the United Earth Government's newly-formed Robotech Defense Force -- named for the ship's mysterious alien technology -- result in the launching of the rebuilt starship, known as the Super Dimensional Fortress One, in July of 2009.By a strange twist of fate, on the day of the SDF-1's maiden flight, a genetically engineered alien force known as the Zentraedi arrive in Earthspace to lay claim to the ship and its secrets for their creators, the Robotech Masters. During an attempt to evade capture, the fortress is accidentally flung across the solar system to the near side of the orbit of Pluto. Now the SDF-1's young, inexperienced crew and its 70,000 accidental civilian passengers are forced to fight their way back to their homeworld.
BACKGROUND INFO
The Macross Saga made up the first thirty-six episodes of the ROBOTECH TV series, and at the same time its adaptation was the first ROBOTECH comic book series, published by the very first licensee ROBOTECH as we know it ever had, Comico The Comic Company.The comic series started in 1984 as an adaptation of Super Dimension Fortress Macross, the 1982-83 hit Japanese animated TV series, which was being released on video in the U.S. under the title Space Fortress Macross by Harmony Gold USA. However, during the period between the publication of issues one and two of the comic book series, Harmony Gold's plans changed. Rather than a somewhat faithful adaptation of the Macross TV series on video (certainly more faithful than previous anime dubs of the era, such as Battle of the Planets and Voltron), now Macross would be combined with two other anime series -- 1984's Southern Cross and 1983's Mospeada -- to create a new American TV series called ROBOTECH. Names and terminology changed, and Comico now had two more comic book series to produce.
Robotech: The Macross Saga, as the Macross adaptation was now called, became the flagship title of the ROBOTECH line, and as such seemed to garner the most attention from its publisher. The first three issues were written by ROBOTECH's story editor and producer, Carl Macek. The artwork for the first issue was drawn by Macek's wife, Svea Stauch, and later issues were drawn by future Robotech Masters and Robotech: The Graphic Novel artist Neil Vokes, New Generation artist Reggie Byers, and finally the man who would become the series's regular artist, Mike Leeke. On the story end, Jack Herman was the first writer to claim Macek's vacated chair, but it would be Markalan Joplin -- taking over with issue seventeen -- who would truly bring the series to greatness. Herman's scripts tended to hew closely to the source material, a plus for a series built on a fairly stringent continuity, but Joplin started bringing in additional details from the novels by Jack McKinney to flesh out the stories somewhat, and worked to adapt unclear events and dialogue from the TV series to make more sense emotionally and continuity-wise.
Markalan Joplin died at the age of 32, having been in failing health for a few years, not long after the completion of his script for issue #36 of The Macross Saga, the final issue of the series. The script for #36 had been completed before his script for issue #35 -- most of the Comico adaptations were drawn by the artist from tapes of the animation and then dialogued and captioned by the writer afterwards, but "To The Stars" was adapted with a full script first in order to segue the story into The Sentinels and better reflect the story as presented in the McKinney novels. Comico editor Diana Schutz eventually finished the adaptation for issue #35, "Season's Greetings," the last Comico ROBOTECH comic to be written. Ever.
A few months prior to the publication of the final issue of The Macross Saga, Eternity Comics, a division of Malibu Graphics, started cranking out their own black and white ROBOTECH comic book story adaptations -- adaptations of the unfinished ROBOTECH sequel TV series The Sentinels that was supposed to have launched back in 1986. The Comico era was over, and a few years later, Comico would be over, too. But that's another story ...
THE MACROSS SAGA
- Issue 1 -- Booby Trap
- Issue 2 -- Countdown
- Issue 3 -- Space Fold
- Issue 4 -- The Long Wait
- Issue 5 -- Transformation
- Issue 6 -- Blitzkrieg
- Issue 7 -- Bye Bye Mars
- Issue 8 -- Sweet Sixteen
- Issue 9 -- Miss Macross
- Issue 10 -- Blind Game
- Issue 11 -- First Contact
- Issue 12 -- The Big Escape
- Issue 13 -- Blue Wind
- Issue 14 -- Gloval's Report
- Issue 15 -- Homecoming
- Issue 16 -- Battlecry
- Issue 17 -- Phantasm
- Issue 18 -- Farewell Big Brother
- Issue 19 -- Bursting Point
- Issue 20 -- Paradise Lost
- Issue 21 -- A New Dawn
- Issue 22 -- Battle Hymn
- Issue 23 -- Reckless
- Issue 24 -- Showdown
- Issue 25 -- Wedding Bells
- Issue 26 -- The Messenger
- Issue 27 -- Force of Arms
- Issue 28 -- Reconstruction Blues
- Issue 29 -- The Robotech Masters
- Issue 30 -- Viva Miriya
- Issue 31 -- Khyron's Revenge
- Issue 32 -- Broken Heart
- Issue 33 -- A Rainy Night
- Issue 34 -- Private Time
- Issue 35 -- Season's Greetings
- Issue 36 -- To The Stars
posted by Captain JLS @ 11:14 PM
<< Home