“Yesterday’s” Comic> Robotech: Vermilion #2

“Guys, there’s plenty of standing room. Just move back from the camera.”

Robotech: Vermilion #2

Antarctic Press (October, 1997)

No credits given on the main so I’m going to assume the previous issue’s credits still stand.

Antarctic Press (August, 1997)

WRITER/ARTIST: Duc Tran

COVER COLORIST: ARNie

3D rendering: Tipatat Chennavasin

“Unsung Heroes” part 1

WRITER: Brian Farrens

PENCILER: Joe Weltiens

INKER: Kelsey Shannon

In our main feature, Roy enlists the help of Lena, creator of a prototype recon ship with improved scanning ability to find and help clear Hiro of going AWOL. There are two problems though; they have to convince the command crew to go along with it, which happens when Rick makes a strong enough case, and the fact that Lena is dating Raven, whom Rick is sure is connected to Hiro’s disappearance. The ship was designed to find Zentraedi but Lena can fine tune it to find Hiro’s fighter…but it misses the incoming Zentraedi ship that arrives to attack them! (I wonder why. Oh how the mind boggles.) We also learn the head of the traitors is a man who believes the Zentraedi will win and just wants to be a great military man like his late father…while betraying the Earth so I’m not sure his father would be all that pleased. At least I hope he wouldn’t. At any rate the group is caught hacking into SDF-1 information but Vanessa is only able to track the terminal used.

What they got right: This is a better way to sneak a conspiracy story into the Robotech saga than Titan’s been doing. Seeing Rick and Roy play detective shows how much Rick’s men mean to him and fighter pilots in general mean to Roy as well as his friendship with Rick. Lena is an interesting character. With some more fleshing out she might actually have made a good addition to the cast. Too bad she has bad taste in men. She and Rick have good character chemistry but I don’t see her as being added to Rick’s current girl troubles with Minmei and Lisa.

What they got wrong: Raven’s stupid ponytail. In light of anything not mentioned last issue I’m going with the ponytail.

Our back-up story takes place during the third Robotech War, which may explain last issue’s summary of the beginning of that war. A group of a small band of rebels comes up with a plan to steal protoculture from downed Invid mecha if they aim correctly. The first part ends just as the plan begins. I like the Invid having their own font, indicating that their voice (which all seemed to be the Regis’ voice) is different from the humans. While those pages you have to turn the book sideways to enjoy is usually crap, it really works here in showing the scale of the Invid troopers to the humans. However, they shoved in a subplot where one of the men wants to tell the lone woman in the group I can see that he likes her but I don’t think this story is going to be given enough room to grow in the span of three five-page chapters. I wonder if he was pressing for his own miniseries? The comic is off to a good start though.

Recommendation: Overall this is a good comic and we’ll see where both tales go from here. Thus far it gets my recommendation to check out.