|
|||||||
|
|
|
|||||
|
|
|||||||
|
|||||||
|
|
|
|||||
|
|
|||||||
However, as a chapter of the Robotech saga, Southern Cross was given a new lease on life as a sequel to The Macross Saga. Heroine Jeanne Francoix became Dana Sterling, the daughter of Macross's Max and Miriya; her close friend Bowie Emerson became Bowie Grant, the nephew of bridge officer Claudia Grant; and the alien force attacking the planet was changed from a race of mind-altered former colonists calling themselves the Zor into the Zentraedi's former masters, the so-called Robotech Masters.
What is interesting about what was done to Southern Cross is that due to the radical and sweeping changes made to the show, it became the true "meat" of the Robotech saga, explaining the nature of the war that the SDF-1 and the Zentraedi fought a generation earlier and the ramifications of the current conflict--that this war could easily lead to another against a foe even the Masters fear, the Invid.
The relevance of all these facts to the comic book adaptation that Comico released is this: the people Comico hired to handle this stage of the saga either were not up to the task or just didn't seem to want to handle the task. While Macross and New Generation were both handled by invididuals whose scripts either hewed closely to the original TV material or expanded upon it, Masters did not fare so well. It ended up with a writer who was held in great esteem by his colleagues, one Mike Baron, who was at the same time writing his own title, Nexus, at Comico (a property which is, to this day, still alive and well and has won him several Eisner awards). He was held in such esteem that some thought he was "slumming" doing a trendy kids' "robot comic". Perhaps it is the very idea that he was above such work, adapting some esoteric Japanese robot cartoon, that led to the discrepency between the quality of Masters' writing and that of the other two Robotech titles. In any case, Baron's rewrite of the Masters episodes at once tweaked the plots just enough that details didn't sit quite right anymore, tarnished memorable quotes (or cut them outright), and did very little to delve further into the series' complex storyline.
On the artwork end, Neil D. Vokes did an OK job of rendering the series' cast, and while he did take some time out to do the Robotech Graphic Novel, his influence could still be seen in the fill-in artists' drawing styles. Yet, when Vokes left to pursue his own work, Harrison Fong (who had done some fill-in work on the other two Robotech titles) changed the entire look of the title. His far sketchier style had worked in the two Robotech issues he had done before--both dream sequence issues--but as far as a regular title went, his style didn't lend itself very well to reality, and the sketchiness really didn't help the colorist's job any. Still, his potential can be seen on the poster-style art he did for the back covers of the last few issues.
Masters was followed up by a one-shot special that adapted the only one of the 24 Robotech Masters episodes that wasn't adapted in the regular series. For obvious reasons, Comico decided that the first Masters episode, "Dana's Story", was too spoiler-ridden to use as the first issue of the series. However, with the entire Masters saga behind them and Macross winding down, Comico handed Macross and New Generation writer Markalan Joplin the job of adapting the first episode of the Masters saga and New Generation artist Thomas Tenney the job of drawing it. The only problem with this generally excellent double-sized adaptation was the sometimes inaccurate (though technically beautiful) coloring job. If the Masters series had been this good, it could have been the best of the three series. As it stands, the "Dana's Story" special is essentially a "what could have been" for the regular series.
