Daily Comic Book Mission #021: Shogun Warriors #8

Welcome back to your daily comic book mission from ComicBook.beer. And we're going to do something a little bit different today before I get into today's mandatory suggestion.

We're going to take a trip back to 1979. This might require something. Hang on.

I hope you came prepared. What we're going to do here is we're going to shut our eyes after I pour my beer.

There's a sequence of events here, and I just screwed up. Well, I did it right, but I told you to… See, somebody probably screwed that up. Told you to shut your eyes and pour a beer. And you probably poured a beer, like right in your lap. That's a rookie move. Come on.

Alright, anyway, now that I have my beer, it's time to time travel back to 1979. So shut your eyes.

Take a deep breath, maybe a swig of your beverage of choice.

The smell of cigarette smoke lingers in the air while the sounds of Boston and Led Zeppelin play on high rotation on the radio nearby. Clicking and clacking sounds emanate from the local arcade, because remember, this predates Pac-Man by a year, so lots of cool pinball machines.

Sears sells Atari 2600 games.

And a brand new El Camino drives by.

Yeah, 1979. I hear the next Star Wars movie's coming out soon.

And specifically, this is going to be September of 1979. Do you know what life-changing TV show event is about to take place this month?

You need to open your eyes for this one.

because it's Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, but it's not Buck that catches your eye.

No.

It's that cool-ass Dr. Theopolis. That's right, in the future you can wear a groovy computer around your neck that does lots of calculations and talks to you. But check it out in this spinner rack over here. What is that?

It's September of 1979 and is that the brand new issue of Shogun Warriors? Number eight, the invincible guardians of world freedom?

This is your daily comic book mission. I talked about issue seven yesterday. If you read them chronologically, eight comes after seven and it continues the storyline, which is amazing. I think these are my favorite couple episodes of Shogun Warriors because they are just straight up bat-shit crazy and they're so much fun to read and so much fun to look at.

Cerberus and the Skyfall, no relation to James Bond.

So in the previous issue, this giant robot monster with a transforming head emerges from the ocean and starts to fight Raydeen, piloted by Richard Carson and his girlfriend. This issue continues that battle and it's just fabulous because the first thing the robot does here is its head starts to spin and turns into something called the Vortex Force, which shoots like a laserized wind tunnel at Raydeen's face. I just made up that term, but it's pretty applicable really for that's pretty much what it looks like.

So Herb Trimpe did a nice job drawing that. They start firing missiles at each other. But then the Coast Guard gets involved and the Coast Guard doesn't know who the bad guys are and the good guys and it starts to fire at both of them.

So Raydeen lifts up this Coast Guard battleship and gently places it on the beach. And they're fumbling about with the buttons inside the cockpit. It reminds me of the intergalactic video from the Beastie Boys. They're just pushing buttons and the robot's kicking.

Raydeen is kicking this enemy robot, but then the story cuts away to Ilongo Savage, who's making out on the deck of his research vessel with his girlfriend Judith. And then this meteor crashes into the ocean right next to them, and it cuts back to the battle scene.

And it's just like a nonstop action packed awesome fest.

And really this is Herb Trimpe's art at its finest and Doug Moench's writing is just hysterical.

And it's so over the top and nonsensical. I just absolutely love this issue.

And we even get one of the scenes where Raydeen transforms into Firehawk, this jet.

And it's just, this is your daily required reading because honestly, like anything that just takes you away from 2026 and sends you back to 1979, anything really, whatever it is, it's good. Unless it's maybe like a 45 year old Twinkie or something. That might not be good, but a 46 year old Twinkie, my God, I'm getting old. Well, it doesn't matter. I'm still here thanks to the power of beer. That rhymes... Luck and a whole lot of biking. And great comic books like Shogun Warriors, issue number eight. I hope you enjoyed your time traveling trip back to 1979. Truth be told, I only remember probably bits and pieces of '79 and I can't really differentiate them from 1980 except for maybe one or two memories where I actually saw the date.