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Welcome to the world of the ROBOTECH comic book universe, 300+ installments of invading aliens, giant robot melees, star-crossed lovers, seduction, betrayal, and those damned Shapings; published over the course of fourteen continuous years by four different comic book publishers, and picked up again by a fifth four years later. This website will eventually serve as a guide to each and every one of the comic books published by Comico The Comic Company, Eternity Comics/Malibu Publishing, Academy Comics, Antarctic Press, and Wildstorm Productions, and will also provide other bits of information on the Robotech universe that was created from 1985 to 1998 (and then rebooted in 2002) by the joint efforts of numerous talented individuals (and some not-so-talented invididuals--you know who I'm talking about, and if you don't, you'll see).
The five companies that published Robotech comic books are, in order:
COMICO THE COMIC COMPANY
The first Robotech licensee EVER (outside of Harmony Gold licensing the name from model kit producer Revell). They produced the first issue of Macross in 1984, and turned the title into Robotech: The Macross Saga the following year. Their contributions to the Robotech comic book universe include comic book adaptations of every single episode of the Robotech TV series, a lavishly illustrated graphic novel depicting the events leading up to the SDF-1's crash and the first human excursion into the bowels of the ship, and a second adaptation of the first episode in 3-D. You can see their name at the end of the credits of every episode of the Robotech TV series. They eventually went under due to their decision to start distributing their comics to newsstands as well as their standard comic book shop distribution--a decision, made during Robotech's peak popularity, which required high print runs. This led to losses that piled up much faster than anyone at Comico anticipated, leading to bankruptcy in 1989 and a complete shut-down in 1990. They reemerged in the early-to-mid 1990's to resurrect some of their superhero titles, but today are no longer with us. This did not affect Robotech, because they stopped publishing Robotech titles in 1989.
ETERNITY COMICS
A part of the Malibu Publishing Group, Eternity began their association with Robotech in 1988 by releasing a monthly black and white title based on the unfinished Robotech II: The Sentinels TV series, based at first on the original scripts for the series, and later based strongly on Jack McKinney's five Sentinels novels. Eternity soon branched out into other corners of the Robotech universe, publishing two mini-series (The Malcontent Uprisings and Cyberpirates) under the Sentinels banner before recieving the rights from Harmony Gold to produce comics based on the entire spectrum of the Robotech universe. Titles produced after this point include Genesis: The Legend of Zor (the only color title they ever did), Invid War, Return to Macross, and Invid War: Aftermath. They also produced a Sentinels swimsuit issue, a three-issue handbook to the Sentinels saga (later issued in a compiled format), two books of the original Sentinels TV series scripts (containing eight episodes in all), and four Sentinels compilation graphic novels (covering sixteen issues total). In 1994, Malibu did away with their Eternity imprint (then devoted totally to manga-style comics, such as Ben Dunn's evergreen Ninja High School and an adaptation of Tatsunoko's 1987 TV series Zillion; a Super Dimension Century Orguss series was forthcoming at the time), deciding to give more care and attention to their new Ultraverse imprint, a prefabricated superhero universe designed to be more competitive with Marvel and DC. In the late '90s, the company was acquired by Marvel for their computer coloring processes and the Ultraverse died a slow, painful death. Go figure.
ACADEMY COMICS, LTD.
Formerly Acid Rain Studios, a publisher of gothic and vampire comics, this company apparently did a total image makeover once they acquired the Robotech comic book license. Picking up immediately where Eternity left off, new issues were published of Robotech II: The Sentinels, Return to Macross, and Aftermath, ending the latter two series. New series that started and ended runs at Academy include Clone, Warriors, Academy Blues, Macross Missions, Mechangel, Robotech: The Movie, and a series of Worlds of Robotech one-shots that tied into the monthly Sentinels book. There was also a flurry of other one-shots that tied into other series, and even a few that didn't. What one has to realize is that for the two and a half years they had the license, Academy was almost TOTALLY devoted to publishing Robotech books. Doing three to seven Robotech titles every month meant that some of it would inevitably be somewhat shoddy-looking, and some of it was. Outside of the comics and a few scant compiled editions for some titles (Aftermath, Warriors, Return to Macross, Worlds of Robotech), they also produced a t-shirt featuring the Alpha Fighter in Battloid mode. After losing the Robotech comic license in the end of 1996 due apparently to Harmony Gold's dissatisfaction with their overall quality, Academy Comics was going to publish a new mecha series by the Waltrips entitled Noble A.R.M.O.U.R. Halberder, but only one issue was published. What happened to Academy after that is anyone's guess. In any case, there is currently a group calling themselves Academy Comics with a webpage (which hasn't been updated since mid-2000), but it appears to bear no relation to the company that cranked out so many Robotech books on a monthly basis for so long.
ANTARCTIC PRESS
The only company EVER to gain and lose the Robotech comic book license and still survive to tell about it. Antarctic published Robotech books for two years (1997 & 1998), starting with a color anthology title and branching out with short mini-series and one shots, including Vermilion, Sentinels: Rubicon, Covert Ops, and Wings of Gibraltar. The art and production values tended to be better at Antarctic than they had been at Academy, but the storylines suffered greatly--most Antarctic stories were a showcase for new improbable mecha and generic new villains. Continuity with both the TV series and between different series was a joke, and most vocal long-time fans were dissatisfied with the overall quality of what was produced. Antarctic claimed that they lost the license because Harmony Gold wanted all their licenses back, probably in preparation for the then-upcoming Robotech 3000 TV series and had nothing to do with Harmony Gold's dissatisfaction with their work. However, sources within Harmony Gold claim that Antarctic lost the license because they failed to run things by Harmony Gold for approval; the appearance of designs from the 1984 film Macross The Movie: Do You Remember Love? in such titles as Covert Ops and the regular color Robotech series, for instance, was not approved by Harmony Gold. In any case, with Harmony Gold's decision not to renew Antarctic Press's license, so ended the history of Robotech comic books. Antarctic continues to publish their regular creator-owned series, as well as a licensed title here and there (such as the Gigantor series they did in the late '90s), to this day.
WILDSTORM PRODUCTIONS
Founded by X-Men artist Jim Lee as one of the studios that published under the Image Comics imprint, Wildstorm is best known as the studio responsible for Wildcats, Gen 13, and The Authority. In the late '90s, Lee sold Wildstorm to DC Comics, where they now reside. They came to start publishing ROBOTECH in 2002 after a bidding war with Dreamwave Productions, the publisher of the phenominally popular Transformers comic book relaunch; it is believed that what gave Wildstorm the edge is the fact that a former employee, Tommy Yune, just happened to be Harmony Gold's creative director at the time. As of this writing, their first offering is going to be a six-issue mini-series, preceded by an "issue 0" one-shot that serves as a sort of flashback-style prequel. They're also working on a sourcebook, which will probably cover The Macross Saga and its prehistory, and will be taking the unprescedented step of releasing trade paperback compilations of the old Comico ROBOTECH comics.
If you have any corrections or additions to the information provided here, feel free to drop me a line at scwonkey@hotmail.com!
The history of this website and its contents will go here when I have the time to tell the tale.