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Welcome to RDF weapons and research base Gibraltar. I call it "the meatball".

Wings of Gibraltar

Mini-series / August 1998 - September 1998 / By Lee Duhig

THE LOWDOWN

Rick Hunter and Max Sterling are sent via fold-capable shuttle to an RDF research base in the asteroid belt to take a look at some new weaponry being developed for the continuing war with the Zentraedi. However, during the tour, a Zentraedi battlegroup armed with new classes of powered armor arrives to wipe them out. Rick, Max, and the crew of the base get an opportunity to try out some of their new toys--but will they survive?

Wings of Gibraltar #1

BACKGROUND INFO

This series by Antarctic regular staffer Lee Duhig came out simultaneously with Greg Lane's Covert Ops, and what's odd is that Lane used the Super Veritech in his story which was set during the SDF-1's journey back to Earth (episodes 4-13), while Duhig's story, set during the SDF-1's return to space (episodes 21-23), shows it under development. Shows you how hard the editors were working.

While Covert Ops did have its own set of problems regarding continuity and canonity of the designwork Lane chose for the series, Wings of Gibraltar's problems are of a different sort. Duhig's two-issue series is far more fanboyish than Covert Ops, throwing in direct references to the 1994 OAV series Macross Plus and anime fandom in general. There are even cameo appearances by Macross Plus main characters Isamu Dyson, Myung Lone, and the main character from Gainax's film Wings of Honneamise. Mind you, this is nothing new--issue 25 of Comico's The Macross Saga had cameo appearances by Camille Vidan and Lt. Quattro Bagina from Zeta Gundam--but after the quoting of a line of dialogue from Macross Plus by one of Wings of Gibraltar's author-created characters, it was certainly distracting from the flow of the story.

As for the story, it's a simplistic exercise in how many cool new mecha you can throw into Robotech at once without seriously damaging the fabric of the series continuity. The Gibraltar base has spiffy new mecha for the RDF, while the Zentraedi attackers have spiffy new mecha for no good reason. In the first issue we get to see what the spiffy new mecha looks like all nice and shiny, and in the second issue we see the spiffy new mecha in battle. And at the series' end, Duhig--through Rick's mouth and through narration--talks about how horrible war is. I could probably write for hours about the discrepency between the oohing and aahing about the shiny new mecha in the first issue and the fact that the purpose of all this equipment is the evil of war that is being preached against by the conclusion of the story, but the series is rather ambiguous about whether or not the discrepency is intentional or not.

All in all, this is a rather mediocre series, with decent enough artwork and decent mecha design, but far too many amateurish, meaningless obscure references that would be far more at home in an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000 and an overly linear plot in which NOTHING is accomplished. Unfortunate, but the good news is that Duhig's second Robotech book, Final Fire, proved that he did learn from this experience working in the Robotech universe.

WINGS OF GIBRALTAR

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