Daily Comic Book Mission #020: Shogun Warriors #7

Welcome back to your daily comic book mission here at ComicBook.beer, where I'm wrapping up my giant podcast all about the Shogun Warriors comic book series published by Marvel Comics in 1979. It's just fantastic, pure insane nonsense. And I love it. Just giant robots battling monsters and other giant robots and space creatures. It's just exactly what I'm looking for in a comic book.

And I'm surrounded by Shogun Warriors stuff right now, which is not a bad problem to have. So I'm going to recommend one of my favorite issues in the series here from August of 1979. This is your mandatory required reading. Shogun Warriors issue number seven, titled The Many Heads of Cerberus.

I totally forgot that I actually did a video review of this for the eighties comics series, like six years ago now. And you can find that on the website, ComicBook.beer. We're moving all the stuff off YouTube to the website. Hit up the videos section on the website. Lots of good stuff. Mark Hazzard MERC, Shogun Warriors. What's not to love?

And this issue is fabulous because after the events from the first couple issues, which were just ridiculous, the three human characters, Richard Carson, Genji Odashu, and Ilongo Savage, were all basically abducted by the followers of the Light and forced to pilot these giant robots in battle. And they disappeared from their homes and their friends and their jobs and their families, and now they return, and nobody believes them. And they've also got these secret pendants around their necks. So we get stories about Richard Carson, who shows up, his girlfriend doesn't believe him at all. Ilongo Savage returns to a research vessel where he wisely decides not to actually tell his girlfriend what happened. And Genji Odashu was basically just arrested.

What? I guess she lost an airplane, so they say. But we quickly find out that these pendants are like futuristic pagers that Dr. Tambura uses to contact the Shogun Warriors when there's danger like a giant mechanical monstrosity that rises from the ocean off the beach of California.

Thankfully, Richard Carson is there after he gets a glass of wine dumped on him by his girlfriend, who still refuses to believe him until she sees Raydeen also just appear from out of nowhere, complete with its shimmer tube.

And I love the fact that Carson jumps his motorcycle into the shimmer tube to board Raydeen. And then he follows that up by actually eating his girlfriend. He holds her up to his mouth. But it's just, this is so much fun. It's just nuts. And the creativity is off the charts. I love the transforming head. It reminds me of the Transformers Headmasters a bit.

Herb Trimpe does the artwork. There's these incredible huge fight scenes, and Herb Trimpe always, I like the way he draws computers and like buttons and stuff and like the pilot, human pilots. There's two of them now. I guess Richard Carson and Deena are running around the cockpit, pushing buttons and launching missiles, and I like the design work on not just Raydeen, but also the many heads of Cerberus thing is really cool. And it's just ridiculous. And that's why I love Shogun Warriors.

So if you like Transformers, this is like five levels more absurd than even Transformers. And it's so much fun. So I mistakenly said there were 17 issues in the series earlier. I was wrong. There are 20. I'm not sure why I thought there were 17.

As I was working on the podcast, I did a little bit of research on my Sega Dreamcast web browser, which is the only acceptable internet tool that you should be using to access the web. None of those other companies will do. If it doesn't say Sega, it's not gonna work. The Sega Saturn Netlink is also acceptable. Anyway, I figured out there were 20 issues. So I've actually got three more issues to collect and read. So I'm kind of excited about that.

Three more Shogun Warriors for Mark. That'll have to be its own special feature. But I'll talk about issue eight next, which is just as crazy as this one, if not more so, because stuff starts falling from the sky. Doug Moench was just really off the charts, awesome writing all of these issues. And Herb Trimpe also brought his A-game.

So they're really not that expensive to collect, Shogun Warriors, so go out there, and you can dive into them, the series in issue seven if you want. Personally, I'd recommend starting at the beginning. They didn't really do story arcs per se back then like they do now, but issue seven is a bit of a reboot since they all return home with their freaky disco pendants around their neck that summon an image of Dr. Tambura and then project it on the side of whatever they happen to be standing next to.

So futuristic technology that's actually way more cool than the actual futuristic technology that we have today. You know what your iPhone can't do? It can't summon a giant 20 story robot, so sorry. Smash it with a hammer and go see if the followers of the Light will give you a job.

Here is Shogun Warriors, issue number seven, I love this issue, and so will you. So that's why it's your daily required mandatory daily comic book mission.

Good luck.