ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
“Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!” — from the film The Wizard of Oz (1939)
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Back when I web-published the first article and wedding album, I seemed to had increased the number of my Internet handles. And then I brought them back for my more recent second article. My fictional writers, whose names appear in the bylines, are indeed that—not real. So is the main photographer. (Yeah, painfully obvious, right?) But I’m real, and so are the creative people behind the stories I value in the Robotech saga. (Jason Waltrip, the “photographer” for the picture at the start of the second article, is very real. More on how he got involved in my project in a bit.) I’m not here to talk “canon” or convince anyone of why that word is meaningless to me. I’ve loved a number of different sci-fi properties and a few comic book universes, but I certainly have not loved all of their content; I’m used to not caring about what is considered “canon” or “official.” I wrote the first web article to help us celebrate a date in a specific part of the Robotech lore that was about to pass in real time—the wedding of Rick Hunter and Lisa Hayes. As the date of this event approached me and others in real life, I thought that something should be done online to share with people who have the same reverence for the best of the Robotech material that I do. That in-universe article and the second one are a reflection of how I see the animated series, the first straight-to-video story, the pre-millennium editions of the novels, and certain comic books as contributing to the Robotech saga in ways meaningful to me (and others, as the number of people who like my Robotech-related Facebook pages would attest). For anything that wasn’t in my preferred lore but was needed for the purposes of the articles and supplemental pages, I made up. I do not necessarily think of every single thing I invented for the articles or the supplemental pages as part of what I now go by for my personal take on Robotech; the main purpose of the article is to entertain while observing a Robotech event. In addition, I put considerable thought into what I was working on, and I had some fun with it. Hopefully, you’ll enjoy it for what it is—a celebration!
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The articles are not only a celebration of two characters’ nuptials but also the material from which I had drawn. What follows is an incomplete list of the Robotech contributors who made a positive impact on me and who influenced these articles with their work: Carl Macek and everyone else who worked on the original production of the Robotech animated series and the first release of the Sentinels made-for-video; Japanese animators who unintentionally became Robotech contributors when Carl Macek decided to use three previously unrelated anime series for Robotech; authors Brian Daley and James Luceno, who shared the pseudonym Jack McKinney as they wrote the Robotech novels; writer Bill Spangler and artists Michael Ling, Greg Lane, and Fred Perry for their work on the comics series The Malcontent Uprisings; and John and Jason Waltrip, artists and eventually writers of the extensive Robotech II: The Sentinels comics series. As with the other listed talents, the Waltrips produced Robotech material that I enjoyed immensely. Of course, I should mention original Sentinels comics writers Tom Mason and Chris Ulm. The two wrote many issues before the Waltrips took over writing the series. By the way, the comic has a scene taking place aboard the Robotech factory satellite in which Minmei tells Rick that she wrote a song for Lisa and him, setting up Minmei and Janice’s performance of “Together” at the wedding.
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But the two sources I looked at the most while working on the articles were the Sentinels video by Carl Macek and company and Sentinels Novel 1 by James Luceno. I tapped into a significant amount from Jim’s first Sentinels book in regards to the wedding, and so much that he brought to not only Lisa and Rick’s nuptials but also the before-and-after moments surrounding them has made me very thankful of the work he did on their novelization. (Before Robotech Novels 19 to 21 by James Luceno, Brian Daley wrote the odd-numbered novels while Jim wrote the even-numbered ones for the first 12 books, but for Novels 13 to 17, the odd-even arrangement was switched between the two. Jim informed me of the switch, leading to one of the updates for this Acknowledgments page. So, Jim wrote Sentinels Novels 1, 3, and 5 while Brian wrote 2 and 4 of that series within a series. Both wrote Robotech Novel 18, with Jim taking the first half and Brian taking the second half.) In addition, Brian Daley’s writing in Robotech Novel 5 gave me the name of Lisa’s mother, so I worked in the name Andrea, though I did it well after the first article debuted. Hey, articles in real life get updated, too. I made a tweak here, a tweak there, in general, but I plan to have the article remain as it is now. The only thing that will really change over time is hyperlinking more characters’ names to more finished supplemental pages. I did a few more pages since that whirlwind first year, and more are definitely in the works.
Like just about anyone with a fanpage for an animated series and/or comics material, I’ve found images at various parts of the Internet, as well as made a few scans of artwork, and I’ve retooled images. Sometimes, the retooling is a matter of using an image in a different context, and other times, I’ve used my very limited graphics skills in attempts to make an image sharper. Much of the time, both things have been done for an image. But an image that I found on the Internet of John Waltrip’s Robotech II: The Sentinels Limited Edition Wedding Portrait poster had the most repurposing by me. I wanted to give a nod to the Waltrips’ comics work on Rick and Lisa’s wedding; I ended up covering the lettering on the poster so that it could pass as a picture in the wedding album. For not being better at this sort of stuff, I apologize. I’ll post the original image sometime.
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Throughout the years, I’ve been fortunate to keep in contact with two people whose work I especially admire, and they are James Luceno and Bill Spangler. When I think of Bill, I can’t help but think of the best of the Robotech comic books. As for Jim, his creative perspective has been invaluable to me, and he wowed me once again when I asked him if he possibly had a day in mind for Lisa and Rick’s wedding. He actually did! Of course, the year was established in his and Brian’s work on the Sentinels books, but in Jim’s notes he had written while working on Novel 19, The Zentraedi Rebellion, he assigned both a month and day. Although the month can be inferred toward the end of Novel 19, he had a day in mind that was not included in the book. Jim picked a date with personal significance to him, once more impressing me with how much he invested of himself in the series. So, that explains why I have June 18, 2020, as the date for the Hunters’ wedding. I had intended to debut the first article in real time, and that was exactly what I did; I launched the article and posted about it on my Robotech-related Facebook pages right on June 18, 2020 (and right before midnight U.S. Eastern Standard Time)! By the way, I was thrilled to hear from Bill and Jim about my article after its launch. Both really liked it and had cool things to say!
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Another pro I heard from about the original article is Jason Waltrip, who had kind words about it. We had some exchanges on Facebook, and over time I shared my link to the article with him. I adored what he and his brother, John, did on the Sentinels comics, so honestly, I was hoping he would be up for a commission once I got to running the idea by him. And that commission would be for artwork to go with that second in-universe article, this time focusing on Lisa Hayes' speech at the wedding.
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Ever since I wrote the first article, I knew I had glossed over Lisa Hayes’ speech. A solid speech from Rick Hunter is in there, so it would bother me once in a while that I didn’t have one for Lisa, especially since I mentioned that she spoke about a range of things. Still, I had reasons for not writing one for her, such as time constraints of writing the article in general while learning how to use a new web template for both text and graphics. And if Lisa had a speech, it had to be very different from Rick’s by covering some different ground. Eventually, I made sure certain friends of mine would read the article after it was web-published. I got a lot of positive feedback, including input from Andrew Knyte Ahiakpor. He liked it a lot, mentioning a number of things he admired or enjoyed, but he said he would have liked to have read what Lisa said. Argh.
Not long afterwards, I decided that I would write Lisa’s speech in a sidebar, in other words, a short article accompanying the main one. More time passed, and I became determined to find a way to do it that would make it as different as possible from Rick’s speech while staying true to the weight of the moment; both Lisa and Rick had lost people close to them from the War and would remember them during the wedding reception. I also wanted the article to have lighter moments as the first one did, but of course, have these moments stand on their own and be unique. Then more ideas would occur to me, and the result is an article that is much more than a sidebar—it’s a good-sized piece on its own. So, thanks to Andrew for his part in my thought process. And thanks to Jason for thrilling me once again with Sentinels. At each stage of the artwork that he showed me until the piece was finished, I delighted in what he produced, and really, he was one of two artists that I would ever want for a Sentinels-related commission such as this one. (I think you can guess who the other artist would be.) Another person I want to thank is Peter Wykoff Walker. While he is a purist to the Nth degree as I’m an expansionist to at least the Lth degree, we more than crossed paths on more than one occasion ever since Dennis and Tom Bateman got us and other fans together to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Robotech with pros at the RT40 events that took place in the 2025 Animé Los Angeles convention. During an East Coast RT40 event that would run months later, I couldn’t help but preview Jason’s artwork for Pete as I told him that I was working on another “mock article.” Pete said, no, what I have is an “in-universe article.” I like that term, so expect me to keep using it from now on.
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Special thanks to Greg Chu, who had an exchange I remembered years later, one that I modified a lot and expanded for comedic reasons as I developed an important quote for one of the characters in the original article. When it comes to my articles that cover a day meant to be a joyful celebration for beloved albeit fictional characters, there are solemn moments that are about their loved ones who couldn’t be there because they had passed on. For whom Robotech is signficant, we have lost Robotech writers, voice actors, and more who are known to both talents and fans as the years have marched on. In recent times, some fans have lost friends who were fans, a few of them well known to fandom. Greg is certainly not known to fans at large. But like the known enthusiasts who have passed on, he was a considerable fan of Robotech, and he was lost prematurely. Whatever I gleaned from his passing that perhaps made it into the second article…his loss was too high a price for that. A vast understatement.
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As with other parts of this website, the Acknowledgments page is a work in progress, and I will be revising it as I add more content to supplemental pages. But the articles are effectively done. If you haven’t read them in their entirety yet, please do so. After you finish reading the pieces, go back and click on any names or other words that happen to be underlined.
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I already mentioned social-media pages related to what I’ve done online in regards to my Robotech interests. To check out my Robotech-related Facebook pages, go to the Links section.
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See you around. Let’s be good to one another.
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Bryant Shiu aka Mecha 8