“Yesterday’s” Comic> Robotech: The Macross Saga #6

Rick Hunter was surprised to learn he could tap into the Speed Force.

Robotech: The Macross Saga #6

Comico The Comic Company (September, 1985)

“Blitzkrieg!”

WRITER: Jack Herman

PENCILER: Mike Leeke

INKER: Chris Kalnick

COLORIST: Rick Taylor

LETTERER: Bob Pinaha

EDITOR: Diana Schutz

The disappearing fold system left behind some discharged energy, which Dr. Lang believes he can turn into a barrier system for the ship. However, there’s only enough for three small “disks” that have to be moved around the ship with trackballs, like some kind of early video game. As they approach Saturn Captain Gloval plans the titular blitzkrieg, hoping to catch the enemy off-guard so they can make their escape. Meanwhile, Rick is feeling the pressure of his first mission as part of Skull Squadron, and it isn’t helped when the “pinpoint barrier system” disables the main gun and he ends up in the attacking Zentraedi cruiser, face to face with one of the soldiers. Luckily Lisa comes up with a plan to use the barrier and the “arm” of the ship formed by one of the aircraft carriers to punch the ship and blow it up. Rick manages to escape, noting that he needs to change if he’s going to survive as a soldier.

What they got right: As silly as the idea of the pinpoint barrier moved by trackballs is, they manage to make the idea work. There are some fun moments when Minmei drags Rick into a dress shop only for him to get caught by Lisa, Sammie, and Kim, and later when Lisa finally recognizes him as the pilot she had words with when he was a civilian.

What they got wrong: There’s a scene missing where Rick has a nightmare about confronting a Zentraedi soldier, probably due to the first time he saw one in person, which comes up again in this story. The writer also changed the scene so that instead of both Rick and the soldier being surprised and a bit scared, the soldier keeps taunting Rick about not having the guts to shoot him, which changes the tone of the scene. “Guardian” mode is also referred to by the Macross name Gerwalk, which could be the result of leftover scripts from the originally intended Macross solo dub for all I know. And they spelled Veritech wrong but I don’t know when the spelling was finalized. I do wonder how the Zentraedi not only know we call the ringed planet Saturn (which wasn’t in the episode) or the expression “shooting fish in a barrel” when they don’t understand the latter (was in the episode)?

Recommendation: There are some changes that I thought the show handled better, so I recommend finding the original episode but it’s not a bad adaptation. If you need the comics in your collection this is a rather important issue for the characters. Worth looking into for that.