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If I'm going to hell ... I ain't going alone!

Rolling Thunder

Four-part regular story / September 1997 - March 1998 / Story by Fred Perry

THE LOWDOWN

While the curtain fell on the Second Robotech War with the scattering of the spores of the Flower of Life to the winds and the deaths of Robotech Masters Shaizan, Dag, and Bowkaz, that does not mean that the Masters have been utterly defeated. Indeed, remnants of the Masters' forces continue to be a threat to the scattered and poorly-armed Army of the Southern Cross as well as the human race at large. When Dana Sterling's 15th Alpha Tactical Armored Corps is called in to defend a surviving human settlement, she and her allies find themselves pitted against perhaps the most merciless Master of all, a creature guided so totally by the concept of "survival of the fittest" that he finds defense of the weak to be the most intolerable of all crimes. His name: Dalmeric Khane ...

BACKGROUND INFO

Robotech #6 It is unfortunate, in my opinion, that this is the only story outside of McKinney's final Robotech novel, Before the Invid Storm, to chronicle the period after the defeat of the Robotech Masters but before the arrival of the Invid. It is also one of the only original Southern Cross tales featuring the TV series cast ever published with Harmony Gold's blessing--outside of the Southern Cross-era tale in Antarctic's Robotech Annual, in fact, it's the ONLY wholly original comic story featuring the 15th Squadron! As such, perhaps I was awfully easy on it when evaluating it the first time around. Heck, I'm probably still being rather easy on it today; in some respects, it's not too different from Perry's earlier effort, the hopelessly flawed Megastorm. It's a very action-oriented tale pitting original Robotech TV series heroes against a villain more powerful than any they faced in the course of the old show, featuring improbable new mecha and irritating cultural references. Still, the unique character redesigns--done in the same style as writer/artist Fred Perry's Gold Digger series--matched up with the excellent new Bioroids and the less garish camo look given to the Hovertanks and other ASC mecha provide the series with some excellent eye candy. The returning characters are all handled pretty well, though there are a few noticably absent from the roster (most notably Dennis Brown, Nova Satori, and Musica). The only thing is, the new villains, while excellently developed as far as personalities go (Khane ranks as my absolute favorite of Antarctic's Robotech villains for his menacing look and viciousness), raise a number of questions which are never addressed in the story.

Unfortunately, Fred Perry's story is more concerned with flashy battle sequences and grows preoccupied with a target that shouldn't even exist and interesting but unsubstantiated theories about the history of the Robotech Masters and the Zentraedi. In the end, though, it is a far more satisfying and interesting tale that Perry crafts than his previous effort, and it does rank as one of Antarctic's best Robotech tales. Unfortunately, that really doesn't say much ...

ROLLING THUNDER

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