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It became one of our little rituals: every weekday morning, my wife and I would get up, make a pot of coffee and yell at Rick Hunter for wasting his time with Lynn Minmei.
Joyce and I had discovered Robotech, and although the local UHF station had scheduled it for 7 a.m., we had quickly gotten involved in it. We had both enjoyed Star Blazers and I was looking sporadically for more information about anime and manga. But I think we would have enjoyed the show with or without preparation.
Robotech is a unique achievement in televised science fiction. Not only did Carl Macek and his crew create a genuine future history--a rare item in visual SF--but they also managed to balance some large-scale events and ideas with smaller, more personal stories. (You can even call it soap opera. I won't be offended.) The Lisa-Rick-Minmei triangle and Scott Bernard's thorny relationship with Marlene were just two of the things that made sure the characters were never lost in the rush of battles and world-shaking changes.
The original Robotech television episodes are hard to come by right now (your local video store is a good place to look); but the series itself is still going strong. In addition to Jack McKinney's forthcoming novel, "The End of the Circle," there's Eternity Comics' adaptation of The Sentinels, and, of course, the book you're holding in your hands, The Malcontent Uprisings.
The Malcontent Uprisings are described in the early "Sentinels" novels as a series of battles between dissident Zentraedi and humans, after the defeat of Khyron. It would be easy to write these incidents off as the last gasp of the First Robotech War, but I think the issues involved were very different.
In orbit, the Robotech Defense Force was building the SDF-3, preparing for its long voyage to the planet Tirol. On the surface, though, the remaining humans and Zentraedi were facing a different sort of challenge: they had to find a way to live together, to share the meager resources of a devastated world.
There is a mastermind of sorts, waiting in the wings of this story. In general, though, the Malcontent bands worked independently, and that's an important thing to remember. There was no single force or person who started the Malcontent Uprisings; no Khyron, no T.R. Edwards. It was a series of bad choices and unlucky breaks. On both sides.
This limited series will deal primarily with the last days of the Uprisings, although we will flashback to some of the earlier, formative events. We will see how the Army of the Southern Cross was formed and how the Uprisings affected Monument City. We'll also see how Jonathan Wolff and his Wolff pack earned their places on the SDF-3.
The main characters in this series, though, will be Max and Miriya Sterling. I think I would have pushed for using them even if it wasn't suggested in "The Devil's Hand." As a human-Zentraedi couple, their relationship would naturally be tested by the Uprisings. Also, I think Max and Miriya are interesting enough to stand on their own as lead characters, not just as supporting players.
On the visual side, Michael Ling has produced some spectacular new mecha for this series: battle armor and vehicles that keep Robotech's basic flash, but are also consistent with what we know about this time period.
This is traditionally the point where the creative staff of a new comic asks for letters of comment. After seeing the letters pages in Robotech II: The Sentinels, I don't think getting letters is going to be a problem. But I do want to stress that I'll read every letter and take them seriously.
I also want to thank Chris Ulm and Tom Mason at Eternity, for their confidence and support, and the good folks at Harmony Gold, for letting us play in their yard.
Bill Spangler
August, 1989.