Shogun Warriors #6 - Video Review by 80s Comics

Welcome back to 80s Comics Pro, your professional source for unprofessional comic book reviews broadcasting from the intergalactic 1970s space bar. Allow me to present Shogun Warriors issue number six from 1979. This is a fantastic issue of Shogun Warriors, one of the best in an amazing series. And I’m pretty excited. And if I’m excited, that means you gotta be excited because clearly you have good taste if you’re a professional at watching 80s comics.

Even though this is all very 70s up in here, is everyone ready for more Shogun Warriors? I hope so because I’m bringing you the review of Shogun Warriors issue number six from July of 1979 here on 80s Comics. Shogun against Shogun. I love the cover. These issues just keep getting better. It’s a great series. There’s a nice Battlestar Galactica t‑shirt advertisement. And this issue is titled Downfall. It’s really good.

If you remember in the previous issue, if you’ve been watching 80s comics or reading these for yourself, I hope you’ve been reading them. They’re really good. They’re cheap and easy to find too. But Genji Odashu, pilot of Combatra, is captured by Maur-Kon and the forces of evil, leaving the other two Shogun Warriors to battle that thing, which is like Mecha Godzilla but with wings. And it’s alive and even meaner than Mechagodzilla. Mechagodzilla is a good guy. This is not a good guy. It’s so bad it can even withstand the rocket fist from Dangard Ace.

I love the way Herb Trimpe, the artist for this issue, draws computer terminals. That’s really cool. So Carson and Savage have to take this thing down, and Carson, whose real‑life job is a stunt driver for movies, comes up with this scheme to use his stunt driving tactics to destroy this monster. It’s great and so highly improbable. I love it. He’s going to play chicken with this thing, but Savage, who’s piloting Dangard Ace, is going to assist as Carson flies straight into its mouth. Savage blasts it down. He shoots an arrow into its face and we get an ad for Fruit Stripe Gum. Fruit Stripe Gum, which just reminds me of Beastie Boys Paul’s Boutique. Fruit Stripe Gum gets a shout‑out. They always have good taste in everything.

Using the power of teamwork, Carson and Savage blow this thing’s head up and destroy the monster. But they don’t know that Genji’s been captured. And aren’t they surprised when they locate Combattra and it starts to attack them? This part’s great because it’s straight out of Star Trek. They turn on the view screen and it’s like Maur-Kon is sitting there. Actually, it’s more like Flash Gordon. It’s sort of Flash Gordon meets Star Trek. There’s absolutely nothing that doesn’t sound great about that. So we get this great fight scene between all of the Shogun Warriors, capably illustrated and storyboarded by the amazingly talented Herb Trimpe.

Trimpe did a lot of work on the G.I. Joe comics, like I’ve said before. He’s just a really good artist for this kind of work. And check this out: right next to O.J., we get the new Star Wars figures. Let’s get the checklist out and see which of these I had. The Gonk Droid. They don’t call it a Gonk Droid, but we know it’s a Gonk Droid. Walrus Man. Darth Vader. I’ve heard of him. I had the Death Star Commander. That guy was cool. He had a collector’s case. I remember how many different collector’s cases there were. Can I order these?

Now you may be thinking there’s no way this comic book could get any more awesome, but it does. Let me get you up to speed. There are two bad guys. There’s Maur-Kon, who hijacked Combatra, and then there’s Maygar. Maur-Kon believes in using technology and science to battle the Shogun Warriors, whereas Maygar wants to use alchemy and magic. He frees Genji Odashu and then ties her up over this pool of magic molten lava, which comes alive and starts to grab her because it’s going to transform Genji Odashu into a new magical monster.

Except, of course, since she’s one of the Shogun Warrior pilots, she’s awesome and she uses her acrobatic skills to escape the pink evil liquid in the Haunt of Evil. The underground lair is known as the Haunt of Evil. I don’t want to give away the ending here because I really want you to read this, but we can assume that Genji survives, which she does in spectacular fashion. There are lots of explosions and maybe an ad for this sweet Light Writer. My favorite ad is actually this one. I gotta flip over to it. If anyone from Hostess is watching, the company Hostess, I think you should know that the ad money you spent in 1979 is helping you sell Hostess fruit pies today in 2020.

I love these things, and your ads have totally rekindled my desire to eat these delicious fruit pies. As the Thing and Torgo will tell you, Hostess fruit pies — apple, cherry, peach — these are very good. You’d like their light, tender crust and real fruit filling. Everyone does. Everyone likes Hostess fruit pies. Even the Jawas back here. Everyone. And everyone also likes Shogun Warriors. It’s a great comic book series, highly underrated. Sadly, it only ran for twenty issues, but so far the ones I’ve read, every one of them is good. If you think these look cool and you’re looking for some great late 70s, early 80s mecha action, you can’t go wrong.

Shogun Warriors issue six may be the best of the bunch up to this point. They just keep getting better. Can they continue to get better? We’ll find out here on 80s Comics. Thanks for watching. Isn’t this fun? In addition to this being a great comic book, we also get ads for Fruit Stripe Gum, Battlestar Galactica t‑shirts, Star Wars figures, and more. Like the Daisy 840. You’ll shoot your eye out, kid.

You just don’t get artwork like this anymore. It’s well detailed. Trimpe is really good at this stuff. It’s well detailed but in a very different style than they would do today. The modern style is like a combination of manga and classic comic book art, probably gravitating more toward manga. And this is classic old‑school American comic book art but with Japanese‑style robots. That’s part of the reason it’s so cool. It’s an interesting hybrid that was kind of popular near the end of the 70s and early 80s but not really. The whole robot thing got super popular after Voltron and then Transformers, and this predates Transformers by a couple years.

I love the way Herb Trimpe draws the computer terminals and the buttons and dials. Such a cool style. A lot of the art from this period was inspired by Jack Kirby. You can see his influence in here. And I love Kirby as much as anyone else, but at some point it seems like all the art from the period started to look like Kirby. Trimpe puts his own stamp on it. The people certainly look a lot different. I love the shots of the ooze.

This is basically the best comic book ever made. We’ve got it all. We’ve got giant robots fighting each other. We’ve got sentient magic molten lava that attacks a human. Genji Odashu runs away from this thing and hops into a tank and blows up Combatra’s head. It’s so much fun. Look at it. Decapitating robot heads with laser fire. Maygar just sort of hops out. Maybe he can fly. I don’t know. I’m not sure if they can. We don’t know much about Maur-Kon. We don’t know if Maur-Kon can fly.

And here we get a Pete Rose advertisement. I read that as bedding practice, but that’s my sick sarcastic sense of humor. So I’ve got a whole bunch of these things by now. I’ve almost collected the entire series, which really should not cost you more than thirty dollars if you purchase wisely, if you shop smart. Go online. Hopefully your local comic shop has it. It’s good to support your local comic shop. But if they don’t, go online. Some of the larger ones that sell on eBay have a bunch of them and you can combine them all with cheaper shipping.

It’s one of my tactics, a strategy that I use when purchasing cheap comic books. Tactical advantage. Pile everything into one order because you can use media mail in the U.S. and it’s really cheap. That’s how I like to score a lot. Buy as many of them at once as possible and then hunt down the other issues and pile them on top of other things I’m collecting like Groo. I’m trying to pick up all the Groos and Alpha Flights as well. So incredibly inexpensive. All these combined might cost me sixty bucks. It’s one of the great things about 80s comics. They’re cheap as dirt and they’re so much fun. It’s good.