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Robotech Archives: The Masters Vol. 1
An epic new addition to the series of books collecting classic Robotech comic material.
Titan's Robotech Archives omnibus series continues with a huge collection of the classic The Masters comics - which have never been collected before! The Macross Saga is over and 15 years have passed since the war with the Zentraedi. But the peaceful life of the surviving humans ends when the Robotech Masters attack, in their search for the Protoculture. Can Dana Sterling - the daughter of Max and Miriya - and her fellow soldiers save the Earth?
Collects issues 1 to 11 of the The Masters series plus the Robotech Special, 'Dana's Story'. Also includes a brand new foreword by writer Mike Baron.
Titan's Robotech Archives omnibus series continues with a huge collection of the classic The Masters comics - which have never been collected before! The Macross Saga is over and 15 years have passed since the war with the Zentraedi. But the peaceful life of the surviving humans ends when the Robotech Masters attack, in their search for the Protoculture. Can Dana Sterling - the daughter of Max and Miriya - and her fellow soldiers save the Earth?
Collects issues 1 to 11 of the The Masters series plus the Robotech Special, 'Dana's Story'. Also includes a brand new foreword by writer Mike Baron.
352 pages, Paperback
Published December 1, 2020
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
October 29, 2025
I originally gave this 3 stars, but bumped it to 4 just because at least they kept a consistent Robotech Archive going for one collection of Masters, and they included Comico's Dana's Story/Robotech Special #1, so we'll round up here.
If you're this far into reading these books, or at least considering it, you probably know what to expect. This is the first collection for Robotech: The Masters (of two that were planned, though the other never materialized, despite a release date and a cover advertised). This is my least favorite generation, so I picked it up as a completist, and as part of a planned re-read of every single Robotech comic (sadly, now I'm stuck tracking down floppies). Macross is iconic, New Gen is my personal favorite, Sentinels has sentimental value, and this one is a thing that also exists.
As for the general story, it's ok. Despite Mike Baron writing it (which I had much higher hopes for), it's just ok. It can be a bit disjointed, and feels phoned in. It was a paycheck for Baron, it seems pretty clear.
I will give Baron points for, perhaps more than any of the other Comico series, seeming to do his own dialogue and scenes based upon the animation, as opposed to just rehashing it, but that doesn't actually always end up being a good thing. A lot of it is just not good, and he seems to forget what he's doing sometimes (for example, issue 10 has Carpenter return from the Expeditionary mission, but then issue 11 says he's coming from Moon Base Alice, which is a silly gripe, but it was kind of the entire point of that issue). This is not Baron's creator-owned writing by any stretch.
The art starts off ok, very anime-like, but then seems to get rushed and lazy as it goes. Sam Keith picking up penciling duties over Vokes' layouts helps a bit, but then half the time it doesn't look like Keith doing it and seems to go back to the rushed, amateurish material.
More on Vokes' layouts in a bit.
I have to say that one of my favorite things about collections like this, especially book 1 of a given subset, is when the writer or another prominent creator writes the intro. This is usually where we get some behind the scenes views, as well as getting past the rumors and getting to the TRUTH of what was really going on. I was genuinely excited to read Baron's foreward...
and that, then, became probably my biggest disappointment.
Baron does a surprisingly low effort foreword, and just doesn't seem to care at all. Worse yet, he says things that are just wrong and false. Not a matter of opinion, different sides may disagree. Abjectly, provably wrong.
He says that Robotech was an 85 episode anime in Japan, apparently unaware of how it was compiled.
He lists companies that supposedly did Robotech comics that never existed, because he must have been looking at the title of a collection by Titan.
He references DC's series incorrectly.
He talks about other important books that Comico put out incorrectly.
Remember Matt Wagner's Sage? Sage? Not a typo.
He tries to get deep about themes in scifi, but seems to be off by a few thousand years in his references, and glaringly he really gives no insight into Robotech or his work on it at all, except for saying that he likes to do layouts/thumbnails for the artists as his scripts, and speaks pretty horribly about those who write long scripts (not mentioning Moore, but it seems implied). He then spends an oddly large portion of the 1-page forward on how Steve Rude hated long scripts too, and they bashed writers who wrote them.
So, all we really learned was that Baron watched VHS of the cartoon, and did layouts... except that, maybe 2/3 through the collection, Vokes stops being credited with pencils and is instead credited with layouts.
He talks up Nexus and Badger more than anything else, and it's clear where his heart is vs. where the paycheck is coming from, as long as he provides a minimal modicum of effort... but we don't even get insights in Nexus or Badger or anything else Comico.
It's kind of all understandable, but still...
Just disappointing for a foreward to what is a work from a classic small publishers in a classic era of comics.
Also, the cast of characters page in the collection shows Nova Satori but thinks she's Miriya, and for some reason Titan appears to continue randomly re-lettering some of the issues but not others, but now I'm just being nitpicky.
If you're this far into reading these books, or at least considering it, you probably know what to expect. This is the first collection for Robotech: The Masters (of two that were planned, though the other never materialized, despite a release date and a cover advertised). This is my least favorite generation, so I picked it up as a completist, and as part of a planned re-read of every single Robotech comic (sadly, now I'm stuck tracking down floppies). Macross is iconic, New Gen is my personal favorite, Sentinels has sentimental value, and this one is a thing that also exists.
As for the general story, it's ok. Despite Mike Baron writing it (which I had much higher hopes for), it's just ok. It can be a bit disjointed, and feels phoned in. It was a paycheck for Baron, it seems pretty clear.
I will give Baron points for, perhaps more than any of the other Comico series, seeming to do his own dialogue and scenes based upon the animation, as opposed to just rehashing it, but that doesn't actually always end up being a good thing. A lot of it is just not good, and he seems to forget what he's doing sometimes (for example, issue 10 has Carpenter return from the Expeditionary mission, but then issue 11 says he's coming from Moon Base Alice, which is a silly gripe, but it was kind of the entire point of that issue). This is not Baron's creator-owned writing by any stretch.
The art starts off ok, very anime-like, but then seems to get rushed and lazy as it goes. Sam Keith picking up penciling duties over Vokes' layouts helps a bit, but then half the time it doesn't look like Keith doing it and seems to go back to the rushed, amateurish material.
More on Vokes' layouts in a bit.
I have to say that one of my favorite things about collections like this, especially book 1 of a given subset, is when the writer or another prominent creator writes the intro. This is usually where we get some behind the scenes views, as well as getting past the rumors and getting to the TRUTH of what was really going on. I was genuinely excited to read Baron's foreward...
and that, then, became probably my biggest disappointment.
Baron does a surprisingly low effort foreword, and just doesn't seem to care at all. Worse yet, he says things that are just wrong and false. Not a matter of opinion, different sides may disagree. Abjectly, provably wrong.
He says that Robotech was an 85 episode anime in Japan, apparently unaware of how it was compiled.
He lists companies that supposedly did Robotech comics that never existed, because he must have been looking at the title of a collection by Titan.
He references DC's series incorrectly.
He talks about other important books that Comico put out incorrectly.
Remember Matt Wagner's Sage? Sage? Not a typo.
He tries to get deep about themes in scifi, but seems to be off by a few thousand years in his references, and glaringly he really gives no insight into Robotech or his work on it at all, except for saying that he likes to do layouts/thumbnails for the artists as his scripts, and speaks pretty horribly about those who write long scripts (not mentioning Moore, but it seems implied). He then spends an oddly large portion of the 1-page forward on how Steve Rude hated long scripts too, and they bashed writers who wrote them.
So, all we really learned was that Baron watched VHS of the cartoon, and did layouts... except that, maybe 2/3 through the collection, Vokes stops being credited with pencils and is instead credited with layouts.
He talks up Nexus and Badger more than anything else, and it's clear where his heart is vs. where the paycheck is coming from, as long as he provides a minimal modicum of effort... but we don't even get insights in Nexus or Badger or anything else Comico.
It's kind of all understandable, but still...
Just disappointing for a foreward to what is a work from a classic small publishers in a classic era of comics.
Also, the cast of characters page in the collection shows Nova Satori but thinks she's Miriya, and for some reason Titan appears to continue randomly re-lettering some of the issues but not others, but now I'm just being nitpicky.
Displaying 1 of 1 review