Warm Fuzzies and Sharp Shuriken
Reviews from the Webmistress

The BotP Comic Issue #12 - The Explosive Non-Conclusion!
August 28, 2003

First off, my thanks to Jane, Katharine and Dei (my fellow "High Horse-Riding Puritan Witch Burners") for several of the comments I'm using below. You've helped dull the pain.

The Good: Nice front cover, a couple of decent action and fighting scenes, and some information on the Rhino "Ultimate DVD Boxed Set."

The Bad: Everything else.

The story: In the EXPLOSIVE CONCLUSION! to the Battle of the Planets comic series, Zoltar, assisted by traitorous world leaders who guided him to the site, has attacked the meeting place of the Global Council and taken Chief Anderson and President Kane hostage. G-Force finds they must protect Zoltar's latest monstermech from attacking UAF fighters because the hostages are inside. When the UAF turns on the Phoenix, Zoltar disappears, and Mark has the team fake its demise. At the same time, General Tomak must maintain his G-Force-hating facade while warning them of a tracking device aboard their ship, and then is warned by his fellow Rigans to stay out of Earth's affairs. Before tracking Zoltar to his main base, Mark confronts Jason over his assassination attempt on Chief Anderson (from the "Jason" one-shot). G-Force easily rescue Anderson and Kane, impressing Kane with the Whirlwind Pyramid, but at the end of the mission, Jason is missing. And where he is now may signal the end of G-Force.

So where exactly is the heavily advertised conclusion to this story arc? Even the title, "Destroy All Monsters!" taken from a well-known Godzilla movie, is misleading. There are monsters, but they just stand around as Zoltar hands them off to his circle of Global Alliance defectors--we never get to see them deployed. G-Force battles one, maybe two mechs. Our heroes do indeed save their mentor and President Kane from the Spectrans, but the rest of the issue consists of a snarled mass of dangling loose ends.

• We learn more about Shiro, the little one-armed janitor... kind of. He's ninja (we saw that one coming) and has a special relationship to Keyop. Trainer? Cell donor? He leaves a book and a scroll behind--what for?

• We finally get to see some Rigans, who chew Tomak out for blowing their cover to Chief Anderson a few issues ago. Why bother forcing Tomak to let G-Force and Anderson die if Spectra winds up taking over Earth? Riga's probably next.

• What is the mysterious connection between Anderson and Zoltar? That was a big plot point in earlier issues, and Zoltar whines about it in the end.

• Is Colonel Cronus dead after being blown up in issue #11? What was it he saw just before the explosion?

• Who was the guy in the basement of the Church of Our Lady of the Perpetual Cliche?

• What ever became of Korak, the crispy critter ex-commander who was plotting revenge against Zoltar?

• What provoked Jason to take Zoltar's side? Was it planned?

• Who cares?

This is not a conclusion. It's a continuation to an arc that, hopefully, will not be allowed to continue. I have an email from the writer stating that he planned the initial story arc to run 18 issues. Obviously, nobody bothered to tweak this issue into a conclusion when it became apparent the series would end here, yet they have the nerve to devote the last five pages to schmaltzy letters of self-congratulation. It's almost as if Top Cow is saying, "Bad readers! Bad! You let this title drop in sales, so we're not gonna tell you how it ends!" It's lazy. It's empty. It's dissatisfying. It's false advertising. And it's a waste of money.

Footnotes, footnotes, footnotes. Though not as numerous and annoying as last issue, the footnotes are misplaced. They're used in areas that are obvious (most of us know what a GPS is and that when Tomak is speaking with the Rigans, he's speaking Rigan) and missing where they're needed (more failed attempts to cultivate an air of mystery).

Cliches, cliches and more cliches. Issue #12's storyline consists of a collection of tired devices that have been beaten to death in countless other movies and comics. Worst of all, they don't make sense:

• Oh no! The Earth Defense Forces have turned on G-Force! When G-Force attempts to block the UAF fighters from destroying the monstermech that holds Anderson and Kane prisoner, and when Zoltar blocks all radio communications, the UAF instantly begins attacking G-Force. By this time, G-Force is not an unknown, and they're not opening fire on the approaching forces. And where was the military when the UN building was attacked? Surely somebody got Zoltar's transmission about the hostages--Center Neptune sure did. Don't you think the generals of the UAF would have taken note and thought about it a bit before ordering the attack? And later, Princess says the UAF has been ordered to attack G-Force if they don't surrender. How can she know that if the radio's jammed?

• Say hello to Secret Sensei: "The little mysterious old man who is more than he seems" has been done and done and done. What's worse, there has been no character development whatsoever on Shiro (who, looks like a caricature of a Chinese, not a Japanese--c'mon, Alex, get your stereotypes straight), making him little more than a device.

• Come to the Dark Side, Jason. After a thoroughly staged and pointless fight with Mark ("You want me to be a bad guy? Okay, I'll be a bad guy."), Jason vanishes and is next seen working for Zoltar in the training of a new genetically engineered army. Yeah, right. That'll happen. Zoltar is supposed to be an "engineer of frightening brilliance," right? Sure, he's going to take Jason right under his wing the moment G-2 pops into his control room fully armed in full birdstyle and says, "Let me join you, and we can conquer Earth together." That's like, to borrow another friend's analogy, having Colin Powell parachute into Saddam Hussein's secret camp and say, "Let me join you! We can create an army together to defeat the Americans!" Any villain worth his title would respond by opening fire on the defector--especially one with a family history of treason (let's not forget Jason's father was killed for betraying Spectra). The only thing this foolish gimmick succeeds in doing is infuriating the Jason fans, and there are a lot of them. But I need to remind my fellow fans this isn't Jason we're dealing with--it's an empty cardboard stereotype that just happens to wear his face.

Please, Top Cow, Alex Ross, or whoever is in charge, don't let Munier Sharrieff crap all over this universe anymore. Just look at the numbers: Battle of the Planets plummeted from #3 in sales (Issue #1 according to the ICv2 Top 300 Comics) to #91 and lost 77% of sales--the largest drop of any comic in 2002-3. The art has been almost unanimously praised, and the issues released on time, but the poor writing and mistreatment of the characters have discouraged both fans and casual readers from buying the title. Mr. Sharrieff clearly can't write believable characters or interesting stories. He had his chance, and he blew it. Keep him off the G-Force book and start afresh with a new writer and a new outlook. I keep my fingers crossed tightly for David Wohl's efforts in the three-issue manga edition.

Now, for what's good in the book:

• G-Force finally gets to do the Whirlwind Pyramid, and it's impressive indeed. They finally get to act like a combat team, which is what they should have done way back at Issue #2.

• There are some nice, tense layouts when G-Force evades the UAF missile onslaught, and when they come riding to the rescue. Some nice nuances in body language, like Jason's clasped fists on the control panel, made the scenes effective.

• Thanks to the ad at the back of the book, we get to see what the special edition Jason action figure looks like--the one that's going with the Rhino Ultimate BotP DVD box set. It's basically Jason with civilian hair. No telling if the civilian vehicle is with it, but I'm guessing so.

• The cover is an adaptation of a classic image taken from the Gatchaman ending credits and used prominently in BotP advertising. Alex Ross does an excellent job of it, and it has also been released by Top Cow as a poster advertising their upcoming G-Force comic run.

The art remains the strongest feature of this title, but it runs hot and cold. There are some wonderful mechs, close-ups and battle scenes, but while BotP is known for some intense expressive characters, but it's hard to create emotional impact with these characters when their features are consistently twisted into anime parodies of expressions. Too many curled, sneering lips. Too many eyeballs rolled up in their heads. Let's not go too "anime" with this title.

The bottom line: A waste of five bucks. Save your money.

Other Reviews of This Title:

Guest Review by "Disturbed" Foust-Martin

http://mediasharx.com/comicreviews.php?op=showcontent&id=1122

Title: Battle of the Planets #12 Release Date: August 2003 Produced by: Top Cow Productions Art Director: Alex Ross Writer: Munier Sharrieff Pencils: Wilson Tortosa Color: Shane Law, Angelo Tsang, Calvin Lo and Jamie Noguchi of Udon Studios Lettering: Robin Spehar and Dennis Heisler Associate Editor: Scott Tucker Managing Editor: Renae Geerlings Editor in Chief: Jim Mclauchlin Editorial Story Consultant: Chris Carlisle Special Thanks To: Philip Oldham (Sandy Frank Productions), Jason Hofius, Nicola Barrucci

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