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Amy said some outside force was jamming her controls. Even I didn't think she meant it literally. But I did now. My mecha had transformed without my willing it.

ROBOTECH II: The Sentinels - Cyberpirates

Mini-series / March 1991 - July 1991 / Story by Bill Spangler

THE LOWDOWN

It's the year 2025. On Earth, the Army of the Southern Cross has been handed the task of keeping the planet safe from any new threat from space. However, a new conflict arises without the aid of a new wave of alien invaders. At Fokker Field, Veritech Alpha Fighters are starting to act on their own, contrary to the orders of their pilots. One of these bizarre incidents takes the life of a young woman named Amy Pollard, of Cobra Squadron. The military can't find anything wrong with the fighter, but Amy's fiancee, Terry Weston, knows something strange is going on. He swears to get to the bottom of this, and finds himself entangled in a conspiracy involving a prestigious military academy, stolen Protoculture, and the high command of the Army of the Southern Cross!

BACKGROUND INFO

Cyberpirates promo art of Terry Weston and Dana Sterling by Thomas Tenney Cyberpirates was created simply because Eternity Editor-in-Chief Chris Ulm (one half of the team that scripted the regular Sentinels title) told Malcontent Uprisings writer Bill Spangler that they wanted to start a new Robotech book. Spangler, as he writes in the introduction to Cyberpirates #1, had two other ideas in his head, but ultimately ended up making this series, an attempt to combine Robotech with, as he puts it, "the gritty, cyberpunk look of Akira or Megazone 23". Ultimately, it's a story that needed to be longer than the four issues it recieved. The revelations are made all too quickly without a hint of mystery or effort. The identity of the mysterious project's backer is too easy to figure out--anyone familiar with the Robotech work of Spangler or McKinney can probably figure out who it is by issue two. And Dana Sterling's role, played up in the ads for the book, is relatively minor.

The series's other main problem was that inker Fred Perry had to go and serve his country in Operation Desert Storm after finishing the first issue. Angel de Mioche, a far less talented inker, took over and sent the artwork's quality down the toilet. Perry had the dark and mysterious tone down pat, and did an excellent job shading the mecha and keeping the sometimes substandard, rounded penciling job from looking silly. Mioche, alas, couldn't do that. While he tried to give the art that dark and mysterious look, his shading and toning skills were far inferior to those of Perry, so it ended up just making the book look sloppy.

Later, Bill Spangler would write that he considered Cyberpirates an experiment, one that many people believe failed. Most decried the fact that very few TV series characters appeared, and that the star was a wholly original character. Still, despite this, Terry Weston became a fan favorite character and would later make a cameo appearance in BIll Spangler's Invid War series (issues 3 & 4) and in Jack McKinney's novel The Masters' Gambit (Robotech #20).

Artwork from an advertisement on the back of Robotech II: The Sentinels Book Two #6, published by Eternity Comics. Art by Thomas Tenney.

CYBERPIRATES

INTERVIEWS

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