Wha--I wanted to see giant robots, not the least compatible couple ever making out!

I know a lot of times around here, when I blog some random comic, it's part 9 of 47, and you're going to have to either catch up on the fly or figure it out from context. And that's how I came to this particular issue, almost 39 years ago! From 1986, Robotech: the Macross Saga #11, "First Contact" Written by Jack Herman, pencils by Mike Leeke, inks by Chris Kalnick.

Without getting deep into Macross/Robotech (or the plot this issue, since we don't have all day!) this was one of the first anime shows to break big in America; and it wasn't aired within 80 miles of me! I think it and Star Blazers were maybe sometimes on WGN from Chicago or something, at like four in the morning in some (relatively) nearby towns, but nowhere I could watch it. (See also: Spectreman, which was on TBS in 1978 every day while I was languishing in school! Goddamn Mountain Time...) Nor do I recall usually seeing Comico books on the spinner racks near me: for some reason, I only ever saw them in Canada, where I occasionally visited my grandparents. I bought this issue, but I'm pretty sure it was the only issue of the series I ever saw!

Two or three years later, I'd read the guidebook for Robotech: the Roleplaying Game, and then much later read the Jack McKinney novels. I recall different covers, though: I didn't read them as single novels, but rather omnibuses or collected up a bit. I don't think I watched Robotech until the late 90's! Enh, it's okay: I have an abiding love for Macross II, though. (Shiro Sagisu music! He'd go on to Neon Genesis Evangelion.) I don't know if I have a point to this, except that if something maybe interests you, maybe if you're patient you'll eventually find it. Especially now with that new-fangled internet: I hadda do some legwork! Read more!

Five out of six, what could be sadder...

...actually, it may be sadder that I'm not sure the...ugh..."Justice Buster" is going to be a great Build-a-Figure Collect & Connect. We'll compare him to the Mandroid, once I get that last piece.

I originally had little intention of getting this one, but lucked into the Joker and TV's Flash at about $14 off. That convinced me to grab TV's Arrow, and then I figured I could wait a while for the next three figures and pieces showed up. Nope, they're out now: managed to get Earth-23 Superman and Zero Year Batman for about ten bucks off, total. But Reverse-Flash was already sold out! Well, sooner or later, I suppose.

Currently, I'm a bit medicated, so have a good weekend! Maybe I'll get back to the comics then...
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Continuing an unintended theme, more Tarot cards...

We've mentioned the A.B.C. Warriors before, and I continue to randomly stumble into non-sequential reprints of the robots. Today's story (Script by Pat Mills, art by Kevin O'Neill) was reprinted in 1987's Quality Comics Rogue Trooper #5, but mentions the next chapter would appear in an entirely different title, Sam Slade #6! Crap, I actually think I have that...it has a short Alan Moore/Steve Dillon story that I don't think was very good.

This episode introduces Deadlock, Grand Wizard (an unfortunate title...) of the Knights Martial; robots with strange powers and disciplines that A.B.C. Warrior Hammerstein describes as "making the rest of us look like Robbie the Robot!" Who also had a lot of weird powers, if I remember Forbidden Planet correctly...Deadlock tells Hammerstein that he foresaw his coming in the Tarot cards, and will join him, if Hammerstein can defeat him in a tournament. The next issue blurb teases "the secret powers of Deadlock!" so I'm guessing it wasn't gonna be a walk in the park.

Well, now if I can find another random issue with Tarot cards for the week...

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Bought a figure, made a poster...haven't seen the movie yet.

I had to make a Jaeger poster for my ancestral homeland, on the Pacific Rim Jaeger Designer: look, if Kaiju make it from the ocean, to Montana, you may as well just let me pilot a damn robot, I'm the least of your worries. I do like how there were poster options besides ocean or wrecked cityscapes--there's more wrecked buildings on the posters than there are buildings in Montana--and this one has trees and snow, just like home! It is, of course, snowing even now in Big Sky country...Check out Fourth String Jaegers for far more fun lesser giant robots.

I also bought one of NECA's Crimson Typhoon figures, because it's neat, and because it and the other robot--Gipsy Danger?--appear to be sold out now in my neck of the woods. And yet, since I've been running behind all week, I probably won't get to see the actual movie for another two weeks; which makes me feel like I've let down the side and now Pacific Rim won't get a sequel or more figures or a breakfast cereal or anything. Disappointing.

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Retro Toy Week: Gundam Wing Deathscythe Hell! (Custom?)

The Ramones asked if you remembered rock 'n roll radio; I'm curious if you remember Toonami. From Bandai and 2000, the Gundam Wing Deathscythe Hell!

I know I watched Mobile Suit Gundam Wing, and I know the Deathscythe pilot was supposed to be the deadliest, but I'm going to be completely vague on the details since I don't think the show has aged especially well in my memory. I also think Gundam Wing was aiming for nuanced and dark and ended squarely in emo, before that was even the term. That's doubtless not a fair assessment for a kids' show designed to sell several tons of action figures and models; because by that metric, mission accomplished.

OK, the figure; and you'll excuse me if I forget if it's the Gundam Deathscythe proper or the Deathscythe Hell Custom upsell upgrade: there's not a lot of paint, since most of the pieces are cast in the appropriate colors. There's a goodly amount of articulation, including the wings of the big, Batman-like cape or whatever; but a lot of it is blocked by the design, which technically would be referred to as a "hot mess." Take your basic Gundam chassis, then add Wicked Witch of the West pointy shoes, huge grey pointy bits that go on top of the shoulder and knee pads, wrist guards and skirt piece, including a codpiece that appears to be at half-mast, giant cape with additional pointy bits, and the traditional Gundam head with big V-crest. (There may be some warping on mine from the position he was in on my desk, namely wedged between it and the wall.) Deathscythe makes the Big O look positively streamlined...he also comes with his "beam scythe," which he holds fine, but it's problematic to get him in a good two-handed grip-slash-action pose.

So, Deathscythe Hell might be trying a little too hard to be "extreme." Especially for the show it was on: if you're going to call that thing "Deathscythe Hell," own it. Go full-on death metal with it. But the figure is a fun reminder of when anime was still on Cartoon Network. Maybe that cycle will spin around again someday...

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They say there's someone out there for everyone, but...

With Grimlock there, that's the Daikū Maryū, or Space Dragon, from Gaiking. Pretty sure it was way bigger, so we're not to scale here. I have an old videotape with the first two episodes of the old Force Five dubs--from a box set of four of said five, omitting Spaceketeers; no great loss. I didn't remember Gaiking as clearly as the others. Grandizer is still my favorite, and Danguard Ace was a bit better than I remembered.

What were these figures called? Heroes of Cybertron, wasn't it? I still have a packaged Megatron one, since I got a silver-finished one off eBay or somewhere. I got the Daikū Maryū as part of a loose set from a local store, with Grandizer, Mazinger, Combattler, and the three versions of Getter Robo. I was completely blanking on the names until I looked it up: it was called Starvengers in America, and there were three jets that combined into a giant robot. Depending on the order they combined, they could form three different robots: Star Dragon, Star Arrow, and Star Poseidon. Even though I don't think they ever even went into space...I still have the VHS for the Getter Robo OVA's from years back. Combattler's the only one I've never seen at all.

Every few years, I go on a giant robot kick. Could be coming back around again.
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Your Happenstance Panel for today:

Yeah, no matter how friendly of a robot you might be, you probably don't want red-stained claws. Makes you look like a frakkin' Cylon. (In other news, I would totally buy a Colonel Tigh Battlestar Galactica action figure, but only if he comes with a voice chip! And removable eye-patch...)

From Trouble Magnet #1, "Saving the Galaxy" Written by Ryder Windham, and art by Kilian Plunkett, co-creators. This is yet another one of those DC mini-series I have three out of four issues for--why this problem for me seems restricted to DC, I couldn't say. Despite a pretty good creative team (Plunkett has done design work for the recent Star Wars: The Clone Wars series, as well as Aliens: Labyrinth and the Unknown Soldier for Vertigo) this series came and went without much of a ripple, like a lot of DC limiteds. (Anyone read Forever Maelstrom, for example? I know Howard Chaykin was in on that, but that's all I could tell you...in issue #2 of Trouble Magnet there are house ads for Relative Heroes and Supermen of America, also forgotten.)

Anyway, Trouble Magnet. Reminds me of like a beta-Atomic Robo, predating that series by a few years--and I really want to pick up Atomic Robo, by the way. Witlock is an internationally famous robot: astronaut, adventurer, hero. But after a skirmish with a disgruntled scientist and his exo-suit in Vegas, Witlock's CPU (Cognitive Processing Unit, which looks like a fairly large server) is stolen from his home base, leaving him running on a buffer of short-term memory. The rest of the series is a running quest to get it back, complicated by the U.S. Army trying to capture the now-rogue robot for their own purposes. Not a mind-blowing comic, but not too shabby, and I do like Plunkett's art. Never gonna find that third issue, though...

Gah, this is like the first time I've sat down at my home computer in days. Better get next week started! See you then.
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Anyone younger than this comic is not going to believe this, but...


Here's a double-barrel blast for the youngsters in the audience: once upon a time, not only was manga not readily available and cheap (yet alone ubiquitous); but there weren't a lot of American artists influenced by anime. Shocking, I know, but back in the day, 'anime' meant Battle of the Planets or Robotech: you may have heard of others, but tracking them down, in English, would be akin to trying to hunt down Bigfoot starting from Florida.

Put like that, 1986 seems like a million years ago: no internet, no cell phones, the NES was the only game in town...and now it sounds more like Gilligan's Island. Do kids get that reference? As usual, let's move on.

Seriously though, Doug Rice may have been one of the earlier anime-influenced artists, both here and later on DC's Manhunter, the Mark Shaw version, again with Ostrander. Later issues of Dynamo Joe would also feature work by Phil Foglio and Ben Dunn. The book was a war story, a sweeping epic of alien empires, and had giant robots hitting things and each other. I think I would remember reading the Foundation trilogy or Dune books (past the first couple), if they had promiently featured giant robots.

Or, excuse me, 'battlesuits,' as the robots are referred to in this series. I know lots of series from Gundam to Patlabor to this comic have used different little aphorisms or misnomers like 'mobile suit,' or 'battlemech,' to try and disguise the fact that these are giant robots. True, some of these are far removed from the Super Giant Robots of my youth, like Grandizer (aka Grendizer, Goldorak, Steve...) and Gaiking: brightly colored, invulnerable megaliths, with kid pilots that shouted the names of their weapons as they fired. Dynamo Joe was a fun little comic that took a little from both schools.

Anyway, when I think of 'battlesuit' I think smaller, more man-sized: Iron Man being a prime example, most of his villains, X-O Manowar, Prototype, Spitfire, the Atomic Knight...

From Dynamo Joe #3, "In the Ashes" Written by John Ostrander, created and pencilled by Doug Rice, inked by Brian Thomas and John Nyberg. Read more!

What, that you've been an LMD for how long?

We interrupt our...whatever I had planned for today. Seriously, I swear I had something else going, but this just leaped out at me.

Today on my lunch break, I biked over to Target, since I hadn't been in a while and I've been hoping the new Ultimate Nightcrawler figure would be out. It wasn't, but there was the ever-popular metric assload of toys at severely cut prices. Some were oddball items in the Superman Returns and Pirates 2 toy lines. Others were entire lines like Super Hyper Monkey Robot Go, or whatever the hell the name of that one was.

I was mostly in for the Marvel, and had enough spare change rattling about to get the Captain America Megamorph. (I also got my oldest boy the Ghost Rider one, but I'm saving it for Christmas or something, so if you see him, keep it under your hat.) For those of you who aren't toy junkies, it's a Transformer-style toy; a Captain America robot who turns into a complicated helicopter. It's not a bad toy, but not quite a great one either: the transformation took me a while the first time, and isn't as smooth as current Transformers. The disc launcher is a little on the feeble side, and some of the plastic is or is likely to warp a bit. It did come with a minature Cap to ride around in it, and a dedicated mini-comic.

Now, you may assume that the comic would just be a little bit of fluff: an eight-page ad for a toy, designed to get you to buy another toy. Well...yeah, pretty much. I mean, that's what it was made for. But it also features a great meta-line from Doc Ock, the theft of the Statue of Liberty (if you don't miss that kind of thing in comics, I feel sorry for you) and more consistent characterization of Cap, Tony Stark, and probably Doc Ock, than seen so far in Civil War. At least, I assume so: The Captain America Megamorph was $3.76 at Target, so I bought it instead. Even with the "return" of Thor, and even as curious as I am to see how Thor returning on Iron Man's side makes any sense at all, the toy seemed the better deal. (The toy was cheaper.) Or at least less likely to make me feel like a chump for buying it.

And if you think Captain America, Living Legend of World War II, Sentinal of Liberty, doesn't deserve a giant robot in his likeness that turns into a...helicopter with feet; then you are a goddamn communist. Or something. Giant robots rule. I usually bike to work, partly because I'm too cheap to buy gas, partly because I'm afraid of getting fat, lip service to the environment; yes, a rich tapestry of reasons. But if you gave me a giant robot that belched plutonium waste, I would drive that mothertrucker to work every day. And stamp on cars.

One last thing: even if the comic is a little piece of "fluff," how many copies were distributed? There was a different issue in each of the Megamorphs, but even counted individually...I don't know. But I think the answer might be surprising. This issue was written by Sean McKeever, pencils by Lou Kang, inks by Pat Davidson.

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Back in the day, when Cap and Tony didn't knuckle-kiss each other.

Suck. I was going to say, "If Tony built me a giant robot, I'd support about any damn thing he wanted!" But that's not true, is it?

Leaving fictional super-hero registration and giant robots out of it for a second, just by thinking about it for a few minutes I could see where my lines are. There are some things that are just wrong, and I wouldn't support for cash, power, all the tea in China. I might sell out someday, but I'll never support hate, or the abuse of those who can't defend themselves, or "us vs. them."

Of course, it would be easier to affect real change from within if I had a giant robot...

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