Robotech: The New Generation (1985) #1-25 by too many people to list
To recap the Robotech lore once again (hey, perhaps there’s new readers? you never know): The US Robotech TV series was made by concatenating three non-related animated Japanese TV serials. The first one, Macross, survived more or less unscathed (except for editing out some nude scenes). The second one, Southern Cross, suffered a lot — not only did it have to be altered to refer to Macross concepts, but it also had to work as a bridge to the third serial, Mospeada.
And the comics adaptation of Southern Cross/Robotech: Masters was even worse, because they couldn’t even refer to things that had happened in Robotech: The Macross Saga because they didn’t want to spoil any plot developments. So the Robotech: Masters comic series was… junk. I think that’s a fair summation?
Which brings us to the last of the three serials:
Well, the artwork’s not terrible…
And the first issue is written by Carl Macek, who was responsible for editing together the US Robotech TV series.
The New Generation is set far in the future, which helps with a lot of the problems Masters had: While they make some references to Macross and Masters, they don’t have to mention it a lot — just change some words here and there, and that’s that, basically. What a relief!
The action in this issue is a lot better depicted than in the other two series, really — they had some real problems in depicting the drama in the fight scenes, but this is pretty good.
See?
OK, this first issue felt a bit overloaded, but it works.
So of course Macek drops out, and Jack Herman takes over.
And this penciller really attempts to do Japanese style stuff, but… er… is it successful? Not really.
Huh, they relettered “Robotech” there? Perhaps they hadn’t quite decided on terminology yet…
This isn’t bad, really — they’re setting up a proper Scooby Gang, with a cool one, a brawny one, a comedy sidekick child… Very different from the other two serials.
And more kickass women!
But not all women…
… are what they seem! SHOCK AND AWE!!!
Heh, cool.
I guess it’s a very direct adaptation — the humour is pretty… isn’t very funny, is what I’m saying, and I’m guessing that’s from the original Mospaeda series?
The art team changes every issue apparently. Here Sam Kieth does the inks, and… it doesn’t look very Kieth-ish?
In Macross, “protoculture” was this mysterious McGuffin the aliens were trying to capture, and the humans didn’t know what was. It was never really resolved, I think? So it remained a pure McGuffin.
In Masters, it was this substance the aliens needed to keep their species alive — they needed it for cloning and stuff, and it was still this mystical thing.
In The New Generation, it’s basically gas. They produce it, and then pour it into their kick-ass mecha motorcycles. But I guess that in Mospaeda it was just a fuel of some kind, and they just renamed it… and that’s enough of a reference to keep things tied together, even though it doesn’t make much sense.
Mospaeda is very different from the first two serials. The first two serials had lots of space battles and stuff, and they both were basically one long plot line (each). The New Generation is quite episodic — every issue they come to a new village, or military installation, and then they have an adventure with the people there, and then they move on to the next.
The artwork keeps on deteriorating — it’s like they told Reggie Byers to make the eyes bigger to look more Japanese-ey, and then he ended up with these… monsters.
One thing this serial has in common with the previous ones is that there’s tension between pacifists and militants. (Oh, I forgot to mention what the setup is: The Earth has been invaded by the Invid. Human resistance groups have formed that fight against the occupation. Oh, and in Mospaeda originally, it wasn’t the Earth but a different planet.)
Somebody writes in to complain about the artwork, but we’re assured (!?) that Reggie Byers is going to do all the artwork from now.
So of course next issue is by somebody else.
Somebody much better.
*gasp* Dastardly traitorous humans!
For two issues, Mark Burbey takes over the scripting, and he’s much better at it — his issues have a much better flow, and make more sense. The previous issues suffer from introducing a bunch of new characters all the time and then not really making it clear who they are and whether they’re just background characters or whether they have some relation to the main plotline or not.
Mark Burbey makes things more readable.
We get some well-deserved backlash to the artwork, and as he notes, Reggie Byers started out pretty well, but the artwork gets worse with every issue. So perhaps the problem is just a time crunch? He doesn’t have time to do the layouts/pencils for each issue in 42 days?
Because it starts looking like something from the utter dregs of the Black & White Boom as the series goes along.
[time passes]
I wrote the stuff above more than half a week ago, because things happened and I was distracted. But now I’m back! The only problem is that I don’t really recall much of what happened in the first half of the series now…
As usual, the creators keep rotating.
So are these artists any good? No, not really. The colouring’s pretty nice, though.
The artwork’s really wooden, and the storytelling isn’t on point.
And the story keeps on being a lot of fake drama — there’s more pages spent on the people on our team bickering than on them fighting the aliens, it seems like. But it’s not like this even establishes character or anything — it feels like they’re just marking time.
Yet another reader writes in to say how much they dislike the artwork. It can’t have been fun for the artist(s) involved. I can’t ever recall anybody carrying this much negative feedback on the letters pages.
“What is friend?” Oh yeah, I forgot to mention the plot? Or did I? Anyway, the aliens create human-looking people, who naturally fall in love with our heroes.
Man, the artwork from Byers… His line (or that of the inker) does improve, but his faces tend towards the grotesque.
I guess this is a fill-in issue — Tenney would become the new regular penciller, so perhaps it’s a “try-out issue”. And… hey! John Workman! He’s a good letterer.
That’s how you prove you’re not an alien!
Lawrence Schick did not return, and that’s probably for the best — the storytelling in this issue is perhaps the worst of any of the issues, and that’s saying a lot.
Comico starts printing stills from the animated series on the back… which may not be a good idea, because it’d just remind everybody how much better the source material was. They stop after a handful of issues.
Did I mention that this series is very much patterned like a drama TV series? That is, every issue is basically a separate story: The overall story is that our band of heroes are travelling towards the aliens’ headquarters, but every week, I mean issue, they encounter a new group of people, and solve a problem they have. Or more often than not — watch that group of people die.
So for one issue they encounter a theatre group who are staging a show. Because why not?
If you’ve survived the electrician’s strike, you can survive an alien invasion. Snap out of it, musical director man!
Finally we get to the epic conclusion — while the series has been very episodic, there’s been an over-arching plot of the aliens plotting and stuff, and Admiral Rick Hunter is coming back from space to fight the aliens!
Then they mention in a panel that his ship got lost, so he’s not coming after all. And of course he’s not: They had no way of editing Rick Hunter into this animated series!
Instead we get the Alien Boss explaining everything to our merry band. With a letterer that writes abnormally big, so the pages look like the above.
Hey, nice suits.
And then: The end. The aliens just take off and leave, because they’ve been convinced that humans are just too ornery. But Rick Hunter is still missing, and he has the Protoculture, so, er, one of our band leaves Earth to find him.
THE END.
Man, what a sucky ending. But it had that in common with all three series, so I wasn’t surprised this time around.
So… I mean, this is a comic book for children. So the question I’m asking myself: Would I have liked this when I was ten? The Macross Saga, sure. Robotech Masters? No way — that’s really, really bad. The New Generation, then? Hm… I think not, but possibly? The episodic form is kinda charming, but the artwork is mostly horrible, and the storytelling is bad. So probably not.
Protoculture Addicts #3, page #18:
The three last episodes of the New
Generation were done by Markalan Joplin and
Thomas A. Tenney. As I said before, I was
very pleased with Thomas Tenney’s work on the
pencils and found that he improved the New
Generation quality for its last issues. So
those three last adaptations were quite all
right and the New Generation series comes to
an end in a nice fashion.
Whatever was said about the Masters and
New Generation adaptations, it still is sad
that all is over for them because now those
series will only live in our memories. Let us
keep them alive in our heart.
Amazing Heroes Preview Special #2, page #101:
The third Robotech title is a more
episodic series than the other two. Scott
Bernard and his ragtag freedom fighters
continue their slow journey across the
continent to Reflex point to confront the
alien Invid, conquerers of Earth. Each
issues relates a separate adventure that
they have along their way.
In issue #5, “Curtain Call,” the singer
Yellow Dancer puts on a rock concert
in a town that is collaborating with the
enemy, while Scott and the others raid
the town’s protoculture supply for fuel
for their Alpha and Cyclone motorcycle-
fighters. Issues #6, “Hard Time,” and #7,
“Paper Hero,” give Scott (and the
readers) a glimpse into the personal
histories of two of his band. “Hard
Time” tells of Rook Bartley’s past as a
gang member, while in “Paper Hero,”
Lunk tries to make up for his desertion
from the Army. In issue #8, “Eulogy,”
Scott is thrilled to meet one of Earth’s
most famous fighters against the Invid,
until he learns what a lifetime of
hopeless struggling has done to the
morale of the once-unbeatable hero.
We’ve changed the stories for the
better, too. A lot of fans think that
Japanese animation is really great,
but when you know what the char-
acters are really saying, you find out
that the writing isn’t any better than
in our comic books. For instance, in
the original version of Robotech: the
New Generation, the hero is a Mar-
tian colonist who’s fighting to free
the Earth which was conquered by
the aliens a whole generation ago.
We had to change that a bit to fit it
into the overall Robotech story line;
but anyhow, our hero is the only
human survivor of a space battle,
and his space fighter crashes in the
Amazon jungle. This is the first time
that he’s been to Earth, and he has
to travel to North America, looking
for members of the Earth Resistance
Movement, so he can complete his
mission and destroy the invaders’
main base. In every episode he gets
a little closer and he picks up some
new companion to join the
resistance. Well, if you’re travelling
from the Amazon up to North
America, you’ve got to go through
Colombia and Central America and
Mexico. One of the first things that
happens, before he’s had time to
leave the Amazone area, is that he
runs into a grizzly bear. In the
Amazon, right? He also keeps hav-
ing trouble with biker gangs who
have sort of taken over the small
towns since the invaders destroyed
the Earth governments. The story is
set in the 21st-century, but the biker
gangs look like your typical late
20th-century North American biker
gangs. In one episode the town that
he’s passing through is holding a
rock concert, with an audience of
10,000 or more screaming teen-
agers. Anyhow, as I’ve rewritten it,
he crashes in an area that’s
unspecified, and the towns and
people he meets all have standard
North American names. I’d rather
have a tiny number of Japanese car-
toon purists complain that I’ve
changed the Amazon to the North
Woods than have everybody in
America write in to say that there
aren’t any grizzlies in South
America, and that the towns and
people don’t look Latin American at
all.
Oh yeah, it sounds like he improved things so much! Soooo much.
Reading the above, I’m almost interested in watching the original Japanese series before they were butchered…
Robotech: The New Generation has apparently never been reprinted, but if you want to read them, you can usually pick them up on the cheap. For instance:
And with that, I’m finally done with Robotech! Well, except for a few specials, but that’s not for a few weeks.
This blog series should be less gruelling work for me from now on — sure, there’s a couple more long series to cover (Grendel, Jonny Quest, etc), but I’m rather looking forward to reading those.