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Bernard may have been among his friends again, but he certainly didn't act like it, and he now had a mysterious woman standing at his side. At Belmont, he reorganized the Robotech Defense Force, and before long the liberal democracy became a military dictatorship, with Bernard as its figurehead, former GMP head Nova Satori as its true ruler, and mysteriously scarred Rook Bartley as the head of its enforcers.
Before long, a group of wandering Zentraedi led by Ganz Hohsq found its way to Belmont's now-closed borders. Turned away by Bartley's Iron Butterflies, they kidnapped Invid princess Sera, and took up camp in an abandoned--and radioactive--RDF headquarters called Castle Fate, preparing to take control of Belmont's North Fields, fertile lands north of the city, by force if necessary.
In the middle of all this stand Lancer, Rand, Annie, and Lunk--opponents of the new military state, enemies of the Zentraedi aggressors, and willing to risk their lives one more time for their friends and for the future of mankind.
When Bill Spangler and Tim Eldred decided to finally put Invid War to rest after eighteen issues, Malibu Graphics graphic designer Bruce Lewis was handed the surviving cast of the series and told to pick up where the Invid War series--and by the same token, the original Robotech TV series--left off. Originally, Lewis and Dave Lanphear came up with an idea they called MegaRoad, but Eternity decided they'd rather stay with the established Robotech cast, and so Bruce and Dave decided to work within the timeframe prior to their story--the Aftermath. Yet, he didn't want to simply adapt Jack McKinney's final Robotech novel, The End of the Circle, or even use the Earth that McKinney's generally space-based novel left behind. Partially this is because so much had been done in the Invid War comic series that simply was not in the novel, and Lewis did not wish to ignore all that; additionally, Ballantine Books owned the full rights to EotC and, as Lewis explained in the letters page for the third issue of Aftermath, Eternity had no legal right to adapt it.The significance of this is that the storyline he developed showed that there was room for Robotech stories that weren't in step with the novels, which appear to have been (up to that point) accepted as series gospel by the vocal majority of Robotech fandom. Of course, where there is change there is controversy, and Invid War: Aftermath quickly became the most controversial Robotech title in Eternity's lineup. It was not only because of the shake-up in the continuity, however; some objected to Lewis's use of the Robotech cast and storyline as a soapbox for his liberal agenda. Despite this, he said in various forums that mail about the book was 5:1 positive, so controversy aside, the readers were enjoying it.
Lewis always said that the goal with Aftermath was to do a story about characters rather than giant robots. Of course, this being Robotech, the giant robots were sure to appear eventually, but in taking the series away from a full-scale war, he did find room to flesh out the cast, test their bonds of friendship, and create a dramatic new chapter in the ongoing saga of Robotech.
Aftermath ran for six issues at Eternity, pretty much tying up the conflict at Belmont with a neat bow, but leaving plenty of room for more adventures concerning the survivors of the third generation of Robotech. When the license moved to Academy Comics, writer Rosearik Rikki and artist Tavisha Wolfgarth took over Aftermath for three issues, while Bruce Lewis contributed a one-shot telling the life story of original Aftermath "villain" Hohsq Ma'alduk. The three Aftermath issues contributed by Rikki and Wolfgarth serve as a prequel to their Clone series, chronicling Lancer and Annie's adventures on the Isle of the IHE (Immuno Heredity Enigma) prior to the lift-off of the Super Dimensional Fortress Mordecai. At once more and less conventional than earlier Aftermath adventures, it lacked the lengthy exposition and footnotes of Lewis' work, but featured a cast of arrogant, haughty new characters who treated the established cast--little more than bit players in these three issues--with a sense of disdain.
With Rikki and Wolfgarth continuing the chronciles of the SDF-M and the IHE in Clone, Lewis picked up where they left off with what would be the final four issues of his contribution to the Robotech saga. He decided that Aftermath would be split into two distinct "sagas"--one following Scott Bernard and his MEGARoad convoy across the country as it spread technology to the masses; and one staying put in Belmont, following the day-to-day lives of Sera, Lancer, Lunk, Rand, and Annie as well as the rest of Belmont's fluctuating population. Only two installments of each were actually produced, and the final issue was half truncated (and self-contradictory) storyline and half retrospective article. It is obvious in the last few issues of Aftermath that Bruce Lewis had something epic planned--something about short-skirted Zentraedi magical girls from the moon and a spy within the MEGARoad organization--but due to an increased workload in his own comic studio, he ended it then and there. The article, by Matt A. Kudasai, hinted that Lewis did want to eventually return to Robotech, but as the years pass by it looks increasingly unlikely that we'll ever get another look at the world of the Aftermath.
Matt A. Kudasai interviews Bruce Lewis about his intense hatred of fandom in general and his work on Aftermath.
