Robotech and REMIX by Titan Comics

[peter]

1 hour ago, Seto Kaiba said:

They still did a pretty terrible job with 'em.  The art for Comico's Macross Saga comics is so bad it's the subject of several memes due to frequent art inconsistencies like Gloval's pipe teleporting from one hand to the other between panels or coloring errors making him look like he has a harelip.  

(They also attempted to "fix" several issues created by their bad dub, like drawing a second SDF in the lake in Ep36, which created a persistent fan myth that there was animation showing a second ship there that was cut for some reason.)

 

Clone was, IIRC, one of a large number of short-lived comic spinoffs that mostly got canceled.

The comic book adaptation/continuation of Robotech II: the Sentinels started out based on what'd been drafted for the Sentinels TV series before its early production cancellation.  It diverged into a loose adaptation of Luceno and Daley's godawful novels that skipped the vast majority of the Star Wars-ripoff¹ stuff (to its credit) and largely stayed that way until the series met its premature end after Academy Comics lost the license in 1996.  The successor, Antarctic Press, opted not to bring the comic's staff onboard and launched their own unrelated comic, Sentinels: Rubicon which was such an unholy mess it's almost a work of Dadaist art.

Antarctic Press were, hands down, the worst offenders in terms of copyright infringement.  They had several comics with entire plots stolen from other anime series like Ghost in the Shell, and in many of their comics they had characters and mecha stolen from other shows including a couple different Macross titles, several big-budget Hollywood movies², and TV shows.

 

 

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1. Like treating "protoculture" as analogous to The Force, VFs having shields, etc.  Sometimes I swear Luceno and Daley's Robotech books were rejected Star Wars novels that were subjected to a find-and-replace.

2. Robotech: Wings of Gibraltar introduced a new VF to the "Macross Saga" era that is rather obviously a VF-19F under its hideous purple, gold, and green paintjob.  The character who'd developed it at a secret asteroid base is drawn in a totally different style from everyone else because he's traced from stills of Brent Spiner's character from the movie Independence Day, with zero effort made to hide the fact.  The other comics were hardly any more subtle about their thievery than that.

 

 

which somehow became this?

 

[jenius]

Oh the SDF2... that was a thing.  Hey, those mounds are important because Hollywood will need them. The RT movie is the RT story so the movie may very well start with Zor escaping from the Masters on the SDF1 with the protoculture matrix. He might even survive and work with humans to harness Robotechnology or his ship may crash 50k years ago and he might be what leads to human evolution.  Hopefully they change the name of protoculture... I would predict that the Zentraedi will be re-imagined as either a race of modified Masters used as slaves or an alien group the Masters have effectively enslaved and the victory will come from humans making them realize that and turning against the Masters. Basically Dolza replaced by The Triumvirate. 

That was a long rant having nothing to do with comics... I apologize. 

[Old_Nash]

2 hours ago, peter said:

 

which somehow became this?

 

Drougs.

Heavy drougs.

[Seto Kaiba]

2 hours ago, peter said:

 

which somehow became this?

 

Pretty much, yes.  One of the panels from the final issue of the Comico Macross Saga comic shows the ship in greater detail.  It was essentially the unused SDF-2 design from the Super Dimension Fortress Macross animation model sheets, but scaled back down to the same size as the SDF-1.  I suspect someone working on it had a copy of Perfect Memory.

Their rationale for the three plateaus from Super Dimension Cavalry Southern Cross was that they were containment structures built to contain the wreckage of the SDF-1, SDF-2, and the Zentradi medium-scale gun destroyer that rammed the former.  Even the post-reboot comics continued to regard them as such, and even showed them being constructed and buried.  This new series will likely not get that far, since IIRC Titan Comics indicated they were only doing twelve issues that would span the Macross Saga's story.  (I suspect an awful lot of stuff will get left on the cutting room floor, considering they barely got through one episode's worth of material in issue 1.)

 

12 minutes ago, Old_Nash said:

Drougs.

Heavy drougs.

Draugs?

Edited August 10, 2017 by Seto Kaiba

[JetJockey]

When I was a kid, I thought my recording was cut or I just a missed an episode where they showed the SDF-2. I was actually glad the comic had that image because I didn't know what was going on in Robotech's final episode when they were running from the damaged SDF-2 to get to the old SDF-1. But there are a bunch of odd things like that which don't make sense in older animated cartoons. I always thought those mounds in Southern Cross were cool though with the hidden tunnel in one of them.

[Einherjar]

If they only put the same kind of effort to keep Lynn Minmay relevant to their story over the years.  Or just write her off altogether and tell the story HG really wanted to tell, whatever that's supposed to be these days.  I know it's not about idols, yet Titan still shoehorned her into this.

[Old_Nash]

FEAR!!!!!!

[Dynaman]

I don't think the art is bad at all, I just don't like the redone character styles.

 

As for Minmei - it was RT's constant attempts to keep the character relevant while getting rid of the music plot that did her in.  

[Kelsain]

I'll admit, Claudia looks good in this pic. 

Roy is Val Kilmer. 

[peter]

Finally saw it at the local comic shop.  I like how the cover art doesn't match the content.

[Seto Kaiba]

On 8/14/2017 at 10:57 AM, Einherjar said:

If they only put the same kind of effort to keep Lynn Minmay relevant to their story over the years.  Or just write her off altogether and tell the story HG really wanted to tell, whatever that's supposed to be these days.  I know it's not about idols, yet Titan still shoehorned her into this.

4 hours ago, Dynaman said:

As for Minmei - it was RT's constant attempts to keep the character relevant while getting rid of the music plot that did her in.  

From my experiences with their "creative" staff I'm quite certain that Harmony Gold does not, in fact, have anything remotely resembling a "story [they] really wanted to tell" anymore.  They've given up (again, and justifiably).  

It's not for want of effort, mind you.  HG's RT staff have tried several times over the years to put together their own original stories and brought out the results of their brainstorming to show the world.  The result is, always and without fail, a shabby mess that bears more resemblance to the worst submissions on fanfiction.net than professionally-written SF anime.  The reasons are rather straightforward: they're writing with an astronomical number of legal restrictions on what they're allowed to do and use, the audience they're writing for adores "the Macross Saga" and views the other 49 episodes with something between disinterest and dispassionate loathing, and the actual staff working on it has historically been a collection of incompetents and bloviating hacks.

They're stuck in a hilariously ironic vicious cycle.  For all their efforts to deride Macross for having made music a central plot point, Macross is the only part of their story their audience cares about, so they're stuck endlessly rehashing it and being punished for any significant deviation while their own attempts at original stories die on the wire because they're not Macross-y enough while their audience also refuses to move on to Macross proper because they're invested in the propaganda about HG's version being better somehow.  Like Oscar Wilde said, "There is no Hell other than the one we make for ourselves on Earth".  HG made theirs, now they're stuck in it.

 

[dizman]

Spoilers in Minmei's character description, jeeze HG do you want to give the whole plot away! 

[Einherjar]

3 hours ago, dizman said:

Spoilers in Minmei's character description, jeeze HG do you want to give the whole plot away! 

The real spoiler is that in less then a generation her contribution will be for nothing.

[Dynaman]

4 hours ago, Einherjar said:

The real spoiler is that in less then a generation her contribution will be for nothing.

That reallllly depends on which continuity you go by, RT had a whole bunch of them and is some she is the mother of Zor?  Or something...

[Einherjar]

2 minutes ago, Dynaman said:

That reallllly depends on which continuity you go by, RT had a whole bunch of them and is some she is the mother of Zor?  Or something...

Only after bring treated like garbage for a very long time in the novels.  Seto or a wiki would know better.  Kind of mean spirited 30+ years afterwards.

[JB0]

3 hours ago, Dynaman said:

That reallllly depends on which continuity you go by, RT had a whole bunch of them and is some she is the mother of Zor?  Or something...

I had successfully forgotten End of the Circle until just now. THANKS A LOT.

[Podtastic]

Amazing, there are people who  are actually capable of caring about Min Mei?

When I read the RT novels I just read the alien segments and the battles. Whenever I tried to read the human parts I kept falling asleep.

(Same thing is happening now that I'm reading the Anglo-Martian War of 1895 and The Great Martian War.

Nice info on the HG Wells Martians in these tomes BTW.)

[myk]

2 hours ago, JB0 said:

I had successfully forgotten End of the Circle until just now. THANKS A LOT.

Funny thing is, I just bought a copy of that to visit my youth/Robotech days...

[Seto Kaiba]

18 hours ago, Einherjar said:

The real spoiler is that in less then a generation her contribution will be for nothing.

That's putting it mildly... 

 

13 hours ago, Dynaman said:

That reallllly depends on which continuity you go by, RT had a whole bunch of them and is some she is the mother of Zor?  Or something...

13 hours ago, Einherjar said:

Only after bring treated like garbage for a very long time in the novels.  Seto or a wiki would know better.  Kind of mean spirited 30+ years afterwards.

IIRC, it was only the "Jack McKinney" novels that included that bizarre stable time loop plot wherein the SDF-3 and its crew were catapulted back in time to become the origin of the Robotech Masters and their Zentradi slave army.

Minmei being treated like garbage and serving as the nonthreatening equivalent of a Goldfish Poop Gang is shared by all of them, though the extent of the abuse she suffers varies by version.  In the novels she only really got ignored and neglected for the most part.  The comics tried to make her a "Miss Fanservice" by giving her a HUGE set of knockers before making her, in rough order: a crazy and obsessive ex-girlfriend, the SDF-3's village bicycle, the destroyer of Jonathan Wolfe's marriage, a recurring threat to Rick's marriage, and the love interest to a complete and utter psychopath (T.R. Edwards).  The official canon version kept most of the comics abuse, and added her being abducted and tortured by T.R. Edwards in an implied "Why won't you love me?!" sort of thing that ended with her being badly enough hurt for her condition to shock a platoon of career soldiers into silence and permit the series to put her on the metaphorical bus for good.

 

 

7 hours ago, Podtastic said:

Amazing, there are people who  are actually capable of caring about Min Mei?

Well, the Robotech version's kind of useless and annoying... basically being the Macross version but without any character development or redeeming qualities.  They really put her through such a total wringer in the Sentinels arc in Robotech that it's hard NOT to feel bad for her on some level.  There's being the woobie, and then there's that.  

 

 

6 hours ago, myk said:

Funny thing is, I just bought a copy of that to visit my youth/Robotech days...

Does it count as child abuse if you're abusing your own inner child?

[myk]

Lol I don't see it that way.  I actually enjoyed Robotech and I see nothing wrong with the Harmony Gold effort inside of their bastardized Robotech trilogy, which is why End of the Circle and the Sentinels series before it was an entertaining read for me...

[jenius]

As a like 13 year old boy, I was totally entertained.

[Podtastic]

15 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

That's putting it mildly... 

 

IIRC, it was only the "Jack McKinney" novels that included that bizarre stable time loop plot wherein the SDF-3 and its crew were catapulted back in time to become the origin of the Robotech Masters and their Zentradi slave army.

Minmei being treated like garbage and serving as the nonthreatening equivalent of a Goldfish Poop Gang is shared by all of them, though the extent of the abuse she suffers varies by version.  In the novels she only really got ignored and neglected for the most part.  The comics tried to make her a "Miss Fanservice" by giving her a HUGE set of knockers before making her, in rough order: a crazy and obsessive ex-girlfriend, the SDF-3's village bicycle, the destroyer of Jonathan Wolfe's marriage, a recurring threat to Rick's marriage, and the love interest to a complete and utter psychopath (T.R. Edwards).  The official canon version kept most of the comics abuse, and added her being abducted and tortured by T.R. Edwards in an implied "Why won't you love me?!" sort of thing that ended with her being badly enough hurt for her condition to shock a platoon of career soldiers into silence and permit the series to put her on the metaphorical bus for good.

 

 

Well, the Robotech version's kind of useless and annoying... basically being the Macross version but without any character development or redeeming qualities.  They really put her through such a total wringer in the Sentinels arc in Robotech that it's hard NOT to feel bad for her on some level.  There's being the woobie, and then there's that.  

 

 

Does it count as child abuse if you're abusing your own inner child?

Well I enjoyed the alien back story in RT. By this I mean the whole Invid-Tirolian/Zentraedi war and history.

No redeeming qualities? Surely you have not forgotten the Invid Hellcat?

 

Edited August 18, 2017 by Podtastic

[JB0]

12 hours ago, myk said:

Lol I don't see it that way.  I actually enjoyed Robotech and I see nothing wrong with the Harmony Gold effort inside of their bastardized Robotech trilogy, which is why End of the Circle and the Sentinels series before it was an entertaining read for me...

I enjoyed Robotech too. Used to have a complete set of the novels. Even enjoyed The Sentinels.

But End of the Circle was, ummm, kind of awful.

[Podtastic]

4 hours ago, JB0 said:

I enjoyed Robotech too. Used to have a complete set of the novels. Even enjoyed The Sentinels.

But End of the Circle was, ummm, kind of awful.

I still have the complete set.

Didn't the Zentraedi - Invid battle on the ice world of Tawkhan (or something) happen in that novel?

That was at least cool in concept if not in actual description.

Edited August 18, 2017 by Podtastic
grammar

[Dynaman]

End of the Circle was bad, and I generally liked those books since they filled in some holes in the animation, and even the Masters segment in the books was readable.  Oh wait, I might be remembering how much I hated a different book - the one where the Invid were made to fight like video game characters by whatever the baddy was called, THAT gave me an image of Space Invaders, which is good if it is Fry from Futurama but not so good for Lisa, Rick, and company.

[Einherjar]

Bringing the conversation back, in a comic book trying to be taken seriously and portray itself as gritty, unless the staff has the guts to take this into a whole new direction that ugly girl with a bat, who a lot of people invested in this mess loathe, care very little about in the long run, or gladly trivialize, is going to end the war by singing.  Try to make that believable in about 12 issues in a condensed storyline clashing with the mood the staff is trying to establish and in a very Americanized retelling.  

[Seto Kaiba]

8 hours ago, Podtastic said:

Well I enjoyed the alien back story in RT. By this I mean the whole Invid-Tirolian/Zentraedi war and history.

The only part of it I really enjoyed was that the Sentinels arc was so badly written in every one of its iterations that the Invid Regent, the arc's Big Bad, ended up as a scenery-chewing, delightfully hammy, "for teh evulz" antagonist in the fine tradition of Ming the Merciless, Skeletor, Dr. Hell, or Emperor Daibazaal.

The comic book version devoured the scenery with such gusto that he'd fit right in in The Venture Bros as a member of the Guild of Calamitous Intent.

 

8 hours ago, Podtastic said:

No redeeming qualities? Surely you have not forgotten the Invid Hellcat?

Alas, despite my best efforts, no I had not forgotten that hilariously corny robot cat or the robot noodle people that accompanied it.  Kind of off-message for an alien race that found inorganic technology offensive and unnatural.

 

 

3 minutes ago, Einherjar said:

Bringing the conversation back, in a comic book trying to be taken seriously and portray itself as gritty, unless the staff has the guts to take this into a whole new direction that ugly girl with a bat, who a lot of people invested in this mess loathe, care very little about in the long run, or gladly trivialize, is going to end the war by singing.  Try to make that believable in about 12 issues in a condensed storyline clashing with the mood the staff is trying to establish and in a very Americanized retelling.  

 

I'm totally on board with Titan's earlier assessment that this series probably won't get far enough to have to worry about it... if it actually makes it to its final (12th) issue I will be quite surprised.

Barring the incredibly lame attempts to make it darker and "gritty", I think this will be the same by-the-numbers revisit of the Macross Saga as every previous attempt, which means maybe Minmei is going to take up a different genre... think she's got it in her to do death metal?

[Sandman]

Those Antarctic comics were terrible even by 90s standards. I don't even consider most of them as "professional" works. There was one series (can't remember the name) where the art was obviously done by a non-artist, just some guy who could doodle in the margins of his school notebook. A lot of them had "story" that was utter gibberish. Jeez thinking about this now makes me want to dig up some scans and laugh at it again. It amazing HG would ever allow their brand to get insulted by that crap. I'd love to see a documentary from antarctic's perspective on making these comics and what a crap show it must have been.

[Keith]

On 8/15/2017 at 6:45 PM, Old_Nash said:

FEAR!!!!!!

Why did Claudia get demoted from helmsman to communications? Did they get her confused with Uhura?

Also, why does everyone look like bootleg Archer characters?

Roy = Archer

Rick = Figgis

Minmei = Cheryl

Lisa = Malory

Claudia = Lana

Global = Krieger

Hell, I'd sue.

[Keith]

Edited August 19, 2017 by Keith

[Seto Kaiba]

5 hours ago, Keith said:

Why did Claudia get demoted from helmsman to communications? Did they get her confused with Uhura?

Claudia's position, per Macross Chronicle, was "Ship Coordination"... which apparently covered a lot of ground including navigation and weaponry.

Vanessa Laird was the communications officer (her station is marked "3D CAPCOM").

[Dynaman]

I just read the Lisa is now First Officer of the SDF-1, she got a promotion.  Who was the guy with that job in the original?  Seen on screen all of about 2 minutes or so.

[TehPW]

On ‎8‎/‎19‎/‎2017 at 10:04 AM, Keith said:

I would totally sh*t if, somehow, they could do a Macross parody on Archer?

[Seto Kaiba]

18 hours ago, Dynaman said:

I just read the Lisa is now First Officer of the SDF-1, she got a promotion.  Who was the guy with that job in the original?  Seen on screen all of about 2 minutes or so.

You mean Colonel Maistroff?

[Dynaman]

39 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

You mean Colonel Maistroff?

That must be him.