Anime Weekend Atlanta 5 - Robotech Comics
|
 Robotech has
been a stalwart part of the world of television for a decade and a half,
but it's also had a second life as a comics series. Remember the credit
line at the end of Robotech that advertised the comic books? These guys
did: (left to right) artists Bruce Lewis and Tim Eldred, who worked on
the Robotech books produced by Malibu, and Greg Lane, who worked on the
most recent robotech comics from Antarctic Press. They were on hand
to talk about Robotech comics over the years, which came first from Comico
(the first issue was called Macross, then the title switched to Robotech),
then Malibu, Academy and Antarctic. |
 Lewis had some
now-I-can-laugh-but-it-was-no-laughing-matter-then stories about how an
executive at Malibu didn't like manga and ranted on Robotech. Lewis enjoyed
noting that the hottest comic in the U.S. in 1999 was the Pokemon manga,
but that's a little off topic. In any case, he was very pleased with most
of the Robotech comics he helped draw... |
 ...as was Eldred,
who went on from Robotech comics to an animation career. "They're really
cheap to produce and when they're done well, they're every bit as good
as movies," Eldred said about comics in general and the Robotech books
in particular. Eldred seemed to have a soft spot in his heart for the Sentinels
story line that was developed only in print. |
 Lane's Robotech
tenure at Antarctic was cut short by the decision of Harmony Gold, the
California company which owns the rights to the series, to withdraw all
of its licenses - including the license to make Robotech comics. Talk is
that Harmony Gold is making a computer-generated Robotech 3000 series for
TV syndication in the next year. |
