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The mission is simple. Our strike force comes in low, using the terrain for cover. Zentraedi are accustomed to all-out warfare, not stealth attacks. Two fighters stage a bombing run for diversion while a second team infiltrates the target and plants explosive charges to take it out. The tech boys hae already pinpointed the locations of the power generators from the surveillance photos. Everything goes according to plan, we're in and out and back in time for cocktails in the officers' lounge--on me.
Mini-series / August 1998 - September 1998 / By Gregory Lane
THE LOWDOWN
In the aftermath of Kohrah's devestating attack, the crew of the SDF-1 is faced with an enemy force located on the fourth moon of Saturn, Pandora. When a VF-1E recon plane goes missing, intelligence discovers the culprets hiding out on Pandora and, taking a suggestion from Commander Hayes, devises a strategy to destroy the base with a small team of specially equipped Veritech Fighters. Roy Fokker, Rick Hunter, and Max Sterling lead a demolitions team to the target, but find themselves confronted with a desperate foe hungry for glory.
BACKGROUND INFO
Out of all the people who worked on Robotech comics for Antarctic Press, Greg Lane probably had the second most experience with the series after Fred Perry (who inked and toned a few issues of a few of Bill Spangler's Robotech series back in the early-to-mid '90s). Lane did the pencils for a few issues of The Malcontent Uprisings over half a decade earlier. Despite his qualifications, however, his first two issues of Robotech material for Antarctic cross one of those lines that frustrates hardcore Robotech fans. Most of the designwork Lane used was from the 1984 motion picture Macross: Do You Remember Love ("DYRL" for short)--from the bridge uniforms, to the pilot uniforms, to the SDF-1 bridge, to the Zentraedi base and armor design, even down to the Coca Cola machine on page 3 of the first issue. The problem is that DYRL is not--and never will be--part of the Robotech canon, especially in the supposed timeframe of this story. DYRL is strictly a piece of the Super Dimension Fortress Macross canon, and even then most of its designs did not actually enter production in the Macross storyline until well after Space War One (the First Robotech War to you and me), despite their appearances in the movie. It's worth pointing out, though, that Lane does not use DYRL designwork all the time in this series--indeed, on page 7 of the first issue, you get an eyeful of the contrast that appears throughout Covert Ops. The SDF-1 body we see is based off of the DYRL ship design, while the Daedalus and Prometheus are straight out of the TV series. Hence, the SDF-1 gets the intricate detailwork treatment, while the deck of the Prometheus gets TV animation-level detailwork. What you end up with is a story which in many ways tries to be true to the TV series, but for some reason the author wants to use all the eye candy from the movie at the same time.
If Covert Ops weren't tied into Megastorm and didn't have the non-canonical art design and didn't have the SDF-1 doubling back to Saturn (after all, Saturn is after Jupiter when going AWAY from Earth, not when going towards it), it would actually be an excellent side-story. To tell you the truth, as is it's not that bad and is actually a fun ride. The characterization is excellent, the artwork is quite nice and character-wise does a very good job emulating character designer Haruhiko Mikimoto's style to a degree (though the inking, as Lane would himself admit, is not that great), and the mecha action is done pretty well given the lack of tones in the artwork. There are only a few confusing panels, and those are just the ones without a dark space background.
To sum up, it's not a terrible Macross-era mini-series--in fact, it compares very favorably to the rest of Antarctic's Macross-era offerings because of the characterization, style, and--best of all--the touches that recall the Eternity and Academy days (Zentraedi villain Buran's furious shout of "HAJOCA!"). It just doesn't work very well as either a sequel to Megastorm (due to the sudden and radical change in equipment and uniform design and the place setting) or even as a side-story in ANY series continuity (due to the same factors). Well worth a read, but a mess in the series continuity department.
COVERT OPS
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