Good Points of Series One:

• The return of the Star Force in a new story
• The suspenseful storyline (which carried on well from the Comet Empire war)
• The new characters introduced

Shortcomings of Series One:

• An art style which was rather rough and primitive
  The coloring especially needed work. The Comet Empire ships were strangely colored and General Talan came out green. Nova also had blue eyes in a few panels.
• A few unbelievable elements detracted from the story. The wave-motion gun, while a powerful weapon, was never shown as being able to destroy entire planets (even in Be Forever Yamato, the destruction of Planet Dezarium was a fluke because it was hollow and the wave-motion energy mingled violently with the Dark Nebulans’ beta energy). So Radnar would not have been able to destroy Earth. The destruction of Megalopolis City would have been more believable and accomplished much the same thing. Also, recon planes were sometimes drawn as fighters; fighter planes should have been drawn throughout when fighters were needed.
• One would think that even a band of space cadets would have fought a bit harder to keep the Argo from being captured. Radnar’s troops seemed to walk over them a little too easily.
• There was a goofy reference to “oil derricks” in the 23rd Century in issue #2. We know now that fossil fuels would have become outdated by then.
• The Moon was shown as totally destroyed when it was only partially melted in the TV series.

Memorable Original Characters:

• General Radnar: The mad priest of Arishna made a memorable, ruthless villain with a morbid sense of humor and typicially anime sense of style. Interestingly, his design was based on an early version of Zordar.
• The Comet Empire space goddess Arishna: Even though her appearance was limited to a Queen-of-Aquarius-like cameo at the end of the story, Arishna’s advent and her vengeance upon her followers was quite memorable and seemed to fit the spirit and feel of the series well.

Honorable Mentions for Existing Characters:

• Nova was very well-handled in this writer’s opinion. While she displayed skills in fisticuffs and sabotage that had never been seen before, it seemed fitting, particularly in the light of how she sabotaged the Double Nucleus Bomb in Be Forever Yamato.
• Desslok was generally well-handled. His talents in deviousness and diversion in the plan to help free the Argo were worthy of his character. However, a flashback sequence in which he tells Talan to “smile” seemed a bit out of character.
• Derek Wildstar was also quite well-written; he had some great one-liners that fit his character very well. Unfortunately, we didn’t quite see enough of him.

A discussion with Star Blazers superfan Rob Fenelon about the first miniseries

How did you become involved with the Comico Star Blazers comics?

I was at a wedding in New York where the best man was Phil Foglio, who ended up being the writer of the comic books. Phil and I go way back from when I was in Boston in 1981. He came up to me at the wedding and said, “Have you finished writing my introduction, yet?”

I said, “What introduction?”

He said, “For the Star Blazers comic book that’s coming out.”

“I guess no one told me that…”

Since Star Blazers had been off the air for so long, instead of editorials, Comico wanted to begin each issue with an introductory article reminding readers what Star Blazers was all about. They needed an expert, so Phil Foglio suggested me.

They had me write the introductions for the first four issues. The first one was all about the historical Yamato, and something about the TV show. The second one was about the Japanese concept of the “admirable adversary,” Leader Desslok. I don’t remember what the others were about, offhand…

You had something in the third one or fourth one about the setup of the Argo and the fighter squadrons and so forth and the historical parallel between that and how the original Yamato went out on her last mission without air cover.

Okay, yes, the Cosmo Tigers. The editor put little pithy lines at the end. That’s what editors do. Phil asked me how much do you want to get paid and I said, “I have no clue, how does a dime a word sound?” he said “sounds good to me.” Later I heard that the editor was extremely mad because she only got paid a penny a word for her editorials.

Can you comment on the artwork?

Doug Rice did the art for the first miniseries. I don’t remember who the colorist was, but it looks like the colorist didn’t have much time, all of the Comet Empire uniforms came out one color.

And the Comet Empire ships, which should have been green, white and orange, came out as bizarre psychedelic colors.

One thing Doug did that I thought was amusing was, there was a Japanese manga artist (Akira Hio) who did adaptations of Yamato. He’d draw a ship once and photocopy it forever, and he’d paste down dozens of photocopies of the same ship. Doug followed the same technique, reasoning that this is how the original comic was done, so he’d do it the same way. “It’ll save time and I’m not getting paid much…” I thought that was cute.

Another thing they did that I liked was, there were the “Perfect Memory” books for Yamato. They had a lot of character and mecha design sketches, including many that were never used.

If I remember, the design for General Radnar was actually an unused design for Zordar.

Precisely! And Radnar’s flagship was an unused earlier rough draft of Zordar’s superdreadnought. So that’s an extreme inside reference that very few fans would be able to pick up on.

How was the creative team chosen?

Doug was chosen because he and Foglio had worked on a prior comic called Dynamo Joe. It was about a giant robot. It had a lot of Japanese influence, which is why Comico fingered them. But Phil actually hadn’t seen Star Blazers when he wrote the Star Blazers comic

And that’s a truism in the American comic book industry, you’ll sometimes have a new author writing a comic book they’d never read. And there were a few…problems.

Would that explain the continuity gaffes?

Well, when General Radnar of the Comet Empire fleet shows up, and confronts a much smaller Gamilon fleet, Desslok SURRENDERS. It’s not in character for him at all. The rest of Desslok was written was fine, but, that one thing was a little bit different.

Even though Phil hadn’t watched Star Blazers, he picked up enough from folks like Doug and me. He portrayed Earth with a ring of asteroids left over from when Zordar destroyed the moon.

What else? Let’s see, General Radnar was a religious fanatic, who captured the Argo and was going to use the wave-motion gun to pulverize Earth…

But it never had that kind of firepower in the series, being able to destroy planets, except for Dezarium in Be Forever, and that was a fluke of physics.

Yeah, different energies interacting and that sort of thing. But still, like we saw at the end of the second series when Zordar was bombing Earth, you can’t do it all in one shot. This was written before it became fashionable to have religious fanatics as your enemies.

Which was another interesting concept for the time…

Yeah, like the “cosmic chick,” Mother Arishna, the goddess of the Comet Imperials, who, at the end, is apologizing…and the President of Earth says, “blah, blah, blah”, and she says “I WASN’T TALKING TO YOU!” She was talking to Earth’s cosmic chick. Desslok also referred to theirs, when he said “if there is a goddess on Gamilon, we’d better get back there because She is probably rather cross with us right now…”, which would segue perfectly into The New Voyage.

How did the series do for Comico?

The sales were unprecedently huge. A reality in the American comic book industry is that nothing sells as
well as a comic book with a cartoon tie-in; GI Joe, Transformers, etc, they sold like hotcakes. Robotech was on the air. The Macross comic book did better than the Mospeada or the Southern Cross one. I don’t remember the numbers precisely. The best-selling one of them was doing something like 80,000 copies. Star Blazers came out, hadn’t been on TV in seven years. They were expecting 30,000 in sales, they sold like 290,000 of the first issue, which for a comic book in the 1980s was absolutely spectacular.

Trouble is, I’m not too sure about the exact number. I can’t quote that as a fact. I remember it was triple the sales of the best-selling Robotech comic at the time, and it blew everyone away. It surprised everybody.

Continue to Part 2