Eighty pages of Mikimoto Macross manga is nothing to sneeze at.

Anime News Network reported last Friday that original Macross character designer Haruhiko Mikimoto will be writing and drawing a new Macross manga series for the new, now announced as quarterly, Macross magazine Macross Ace. Tentatively titled Macross The First (shades of Gundam character designer Yoshikazu Yasuhiko's Gundam The Origin), it will be focused on Lynn Minmay and, I presume, will cover Space War I through her eyes. Eighty pages of the series will be published in the first issue of Macross Ace, which will appear on Japanese newsstands January 26, 2009.

Hey, DC Comics -- how about you and Harmony Gold go talk to Kadokawa and help us get this stuff over here? I'm sure it'll sell a CRAP-TON better than those musty old Comico collections!

Other minor bits of flotsam I've picked up across the internets:

• Artist Eamon Dougherty reflects on Duc Tran's Antarctic Press ROBOTECH series Vermilion, one of that publisher's stronger efforts, as I've no doubt remarked upon dozens of times over the past ten years.


• Anime blogger 21st Century Digital Boy places the original Macross animation at the top of his "Essential (non-GAINAX, non-Miyazaki, non-Satoshi Kon) Anime" list. (For the record, I've watched at least one episode of ALL but two of those shows; I've seen six of them in their entirety. And I'm pretty sure I'll get around to watching all of Honey and Clover one of these days, and would very much like to bask in the glory of Rose of Versailles in its entirety.)