“Yesterday’s” Comic> Robotech: Hohsq’s Story

Okay, it seems this comic was not placed in the proper spot in the timeline in my collection. It actually takes place during the period of the Robotech: Aftermath series, so you’re about to get a sneak preview of my thoughts on that series as well as this comic.

“I really haven’t cleaned this jacket in a while, have I?”

Hohsq’s Story: A Robotech Romance

Academy Comics, Ltd (November, 1994)

WRITER/ARTIST: Bruce Lewis

A woman later learned to be Sera interviews Hohsq, a former Zentraedi (and for those of you read this story, no I’m not using the “T’sentraeti” stuff from the novels used here) solider who fell in love with and married his doctor after he was shot down and micronized. They have a son and things seem to go well until the Robotech Masters arrive and his wife is killed during a civilian attack. People around him blame the Zentraedi for…reasons…and the two are forced to flee, joining with others to start a colony for Zentraedi, humans, and their half-breed children to live in peace. One day a Zentraedi named Hagana Bohsq came and turned the colony into fighting warriors to push back against the humans, but things get difficult when the Invid invade and start harvesting them for protoculture in their blood. After the Invid leave Hagana takes some of the warriors, including Hohsq’s son Chaver, leaving Hohsq in charge of the remainers until events depicted in Aftermath. Then Hohsq just passes away at the table, the last of his story told.

The story itself is fine. It tells the life story of a Zentraedi through all three Robotech wars and the Eternity/Academy series that followed (though apparently he missed the Malcontent Uprising, though they are mentioned in passing). It’s not really much of a romance once Hohsq and the human woman are married but the story itself I have no problem with.

On the other hand, nothing about this story had to be Robotech. You’ll see when I get there that I’m not a fan of the Aftermath series for the same reason. It doesn’t feel like a Robotech story. It could be any alien race in any intergalactic war and nobody would know the difference. As noted in the summary I’m also not a fan of Lewis using the bits where someone decided that Zentraedi, despite them always calling themselves that and not being an Earth term, or referring to humans as “micronians” (again, a Zentraedi term, not an Earth term) wasn’t alien enough. They had to borrow elements from the animes. Yes, plural. At one point Hagana refers to the Invid as “Inbit”, their name in Genesis Climber Mospedia. Random Zentraedi/Tiresian words are tossed in sometimes as well sometimes, which I didn’t enjoy in the Warriors miniseries either. Then there’s the idea that the giant Zentraedi bodies are a sort of organic mecha for the human-sized being inside rather than giants shrunk, which is not from the show at all and I don’t know where it comes from or how that would even work. All of it just makes the experience even less Robotech as Lewis wants to embrace unnecessary concepts and it kind of ruined the experience for me.

I guess if you follow Aftermath, Clone, or any of the other supposedly post-wars period comics from Eternity and Academy comics you may like this as well. However, I was never really able to enjoy it, which you’ll see when we eventually get there. The Shadow Chronicles work much better for me.