Two years have passed since the near-destruction of the Earth and the obliteration of Dolza’s
Two years have passed since the near-destruction of the Earth and the obliteration of Dolza’s Zentraedi fleet. Rick Hunter swings off course when he catches a glimpse of life returning to once-barren ground. These pages of hope blotted out by grim musing come from Robotech: The Macross Saga #28 (Comico, June 1988) by Markalan Joplin & Mike Leeke.Rick’s line of thinking is very much of the time when this was written, very late Cold War in the same way that Robotech’s classic conception of the Global Civil War was. (Hey guys, remember the Palladium RPG’s thrown-together Soviet bad guys E.B.S.I.S.? Soviet villains were still such a thing in the late 1980s that Palladium shoehorned them into the very setting we’re looking at here!) In the context of a real world that still feared nuclear annihilation, Rick’s stray, wandering remarks about man’s capacity to do just what the Zentraedi did make more sense than they might unmoored from the pages of a periodical published in the summer of ‘88.Even outside of that context, though, Rick’s grim mood follows well from every other time we’ve seen him alone with his thoughts since his friends started dying all around him. Standing before signs of hope, Rick’s mind quickly returns to dark places. Sure, a really obvious reminder is sitting there in front of him in the foreground, but given the stark reminder that is literally all around him I don’t think he needed the prompt.While I remain surprised that the two year gap between the destruction of Dolza’s fleet and the reconstruction episodes remains completely unexplored by the comics – not even by a shoddy Academy Comics or Antarctic Press one-shot – Rick’s sense of directionlessness a few pages later suggests that, at least as far as he’s concerned, nothing’s really been happening. Still, I’m sure there are The Macross Saga characters that have been dealing with crises of one sort or another. If I were doing a 30th anniversary comic series, this is one of the two gaps in the chronology I’d be looking to explore. -- source link
#robotech#robotech comics#macross#rick hunter#roy fokker#skull leader#skull one#veritech#markalan joplin#mike leeke