Daily Comic Book Mission #002: Shogun Warriors #2

Welcome back to another ComicBook.Beer Daily Comic Book Mission that you have no choice but to accept. It's a requirement that you read Shogun Warriors, issue number two, published by Marvel Comics, 1979, back when everything was so much way more awesome than it is today. And the second issue of Shogun Warriors, is better than the first issue. Now I'm not gonna give this away because I'm not gonna give away like the whole plot. Because I really want you to go out and read this. I you have to go out and read this. It's your daily mission. Your daily comic book mission assignment. It's like homework but more fun.

The cover's really nice. Shogun warriors, Combatra and Dangard Ace join Raydeen to battle the Elementals of the, the Elementals of Evil! Exclamation point. The cover pictures robots fighting a monster, people running away screaming. Written by Doug Moench. Herb Trimpe is the artist. I love Herb Trimpe's work. I think he did some Transformers. I don't have all the Transformers stuff in front of me right now, but I know he did the first issue of G.I. Joe and some of the G.I. Joe stuff. Very cool style. It's like, takes some definite inspiration from Jack Kirby, but he's really good at just like the giant robots. I love the way he draws computers, and the people are really good.

But this issue's cool because the first Shogun Warriors establishes the whole nonsensical plot. And would have loved to be a fly on the wall for the development meetings. You know, there's probably this room full of writers and they were just handed a bunch of plastic toys and a bottle of tequila. And it's like, just go to work and make up something crazy, which they do. And it's fabulous. This is really just a wonderful comic book series. A total precursor to the Transformers, by the way. These giant transforming robots. They even kind of look like Transformers. But we get to meet the three robots, the three main robots in issue number two.

So the first issue introduces the humans, Genji Odashu, Ilongo Savage, and Richard Carson. She's a pilot. He's a marine biologist, and Carson's a stunt car driver. So it's ridiculous. But it's so cool. And this time we get the three robots. There's this great scene where Dr. Tambora from the Followers of the Light, like the scientist with the glasses, of course, shows off all of their superpowers, like rocket fists and finger missiles and the giant missile arrow, and it's just a great, totally, I wanna run out and buy these toys.

So these are based on the mid to late 70s Shogun Warriors toys. I think they're from Mattel, anyway. There's a giant battle scene where they fight Rok-Korr once again, but instead of using one robot, they're using three robots. What happens at the end of the battle? You're have to read that. It's really good and there's some super cool things in here that remind me of Voltron as they're trying to save this they're trying to save this train trestle and this train filled with innocent passengers just on their way to work from being destroyed by rock cores they hop on their jet cycles to the launch silos and they ride these huge launch tubes it's like Voltron up to the Shogun warriors. What a great read. I'm like basically reading it again while I'm just sitting here.

And there's a sweet ad for Hostess Cupcakes with the Hulk. If you watched any of my 80s comics stuff, which was a series I ran a couple years ago, you know I have this fondness for the Hostess ads. Fruit Pies, in particular, are my favorite. I love it when Iron Man or Spider-Man or whatever has to get out there and hawk fruit pies. I literally just want to go out there and buy fruit pies, but I know they're not the same. They're not nearly as big as they used to be. I saw them advertising a peach one in one of these issues. I don't think they make peach fruit pies anymore. That sounds really good, though, doesn't it? Peach fruit pie.

Oh, I love this page. Page 14, got Maur-Kon's just screaming, and he looks like a nutcase. A lot of Jack Kirby inspiration in there. Fun issue. Shogun Warriors doesn't get nearly enough attention, so... uh, assuming that the ComicBook.beer series continues here, I think you'll be hearing a lot more about Shogun Warriors because
this, it's one of these, it's kind of like Micronauts... based on these like 70s toys. I'm from '75, so these were a little early for me. I got into Transformers and G.I. Joe and stuff. But like these 70s toys looked really cool. Micronauts went for, ran for a long time, and Marvel's actually published some really good omnibuses of the Micronauts stuff. I don't think they've published anything with Shogun Warriors. I could be wrong, but I don't think there's probably some licensing stuff in there, but you may have to hunt down the original issues. They're not like a dollar, but they're not super expensive either.

So I bet this, this is an approachable mission that you can accept. I mean, you literally have no choice. So, happy reading the invincible guardians of world freedom. Shogun Warriors issue two is your Daily Comic Book Mission. See you back here for number three. I'm gonna have to find a comic book number three that's really good.
Definitely gonna have to run the sequence here for a little bit. What should I do for number three? There's so many good ones to choose from. Oh, see, now I'm getting excited. All right, see you next time. ComicBook.beer.