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After witnessing the true power and vastness of the Zentraedi fleet, I am convinced it is only a matter of time before the Earth is destroyed. Your problem is the SDF-1. I can deliver it to you, for a price ...
Mini-series / August 1997 - February 1998 / By Duc Tran
THE LOWDOWN
The SDF-1 has finally returned to planet Earth, and all's been quiet for over a week. Lt. Rick Hunter has been spending some of his time breaking in a new Veritech pilot, young Hiro Amano. One quiet day, Rick is forced to return to the SDF-1 early in the middle of a training session due to low fuel levels, leaving Hiro to practice a little more on a maneuver he just learned. However, as Rick discovers while on the shooting range with his own mentor, Roy Fokker, Hiro goes missing shortly thereafter. With some help from Fokker, Rick manages to gain access to an experimental long-range radar plane called Project Cerebrus to search for his missing pilot. The chaos that ensues involves Rick's second trip on-board a Zentraedi warship, a squad of defecting Veritech Fighter pilots, a framed hacker, a general's family's long-standing military history, and the madness of Khyron Kravshera.
BACKGROUND INFO
When the first issue of this series hit stands shortly before Labor Day of 1997, I'd never even heard of it before. The first issue cover doesn't say much except that it apparently stars Rick Hunter (who for some reason seems to have acquired The Untold Story's Mark Landry's wardrobe) in the good old First Robotech War days. Indeed, aside from issue 2's cover, the covers only feature Rick Hunter and either an orangish VF-series Veritech or the SDF-1. Nice pics, but not much meat there.
While the first issue of Duc Tran's four-issue story runs only thirteen short main story pages (the remainder is a clunky New Generation recap; the remaining issues aren't too much longer, and feature a very American-style New Generation era backup story), it does manage to capture a very traditional manga-style feel, down to the speedlines, the effective gray tone work, and even the shape of the word balloons (nubs pointing to the speaker rather than the points that American comics have). The character design is also fairly impressive, suggesting what the Macross cast might look like were they redesigned by Evangelion's Yoshiyuki Sadamoto. The new characters are interesting, if shallowly scripted--like many of the new characters that Antarctic's books introduced, they left me at least wanting some additional background, or some further adventures concerning them, something along the lines of Cyberpirates' Terry Weston's appearances in McKinney's The Masters' Gambit or his return in Bill Spangler's Invid War.
Like many other Robotech mini-series, despite a number of logicistical flaws (and a VERY rushed ending that contains a very Rurouni Kenshin-like juxtaposition of a very disturbing death and a bit of super deformed nonsense), this is a fairly entertaining little story, even with the stigma of being an Antarctic Macross-era tale with the original Macross cast. Trust me when I say that this and Covert Ops are the good ones. It's downhill from here.
VERMILION
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