Mecha #1
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeMecha #1 holds a genuine place in the history of American alternative comics as one of the earliest U.S. titles to openly embrace the Japanese anime giant-robot tradition, arriving at a moment when Dark Horse was still a scrappy young independent publisher making its mark on the direct-sales market. Written and edited by Randy Stradley — the same man serving as Dark Horse's editor-in-chief — the book demonstrated that the fledgling publisher could sustain full-color genre storytelling beyond its black-and-white anthology roots. As a first issue, it launched a six-part science-fiction narrative about mecha pilots defending Earth from an alien enemy, a premise that had no real American comics equivalent outside of Marvel's licensed Shogun Warriors and First Comics' Dynamo Joe.
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Randy Stradley conceived and wrote Mecha while simultaneously holding down the editor-in-chief position at Dark Horse, a dual role that would eventually prove unsustainable and contributed to production delays in the later issues of the run. Penciller Harrison Fong served as the series' de facto robot designer, creating an extensive library of mecha designs. The book was published in full color — notable for Dark Horse at a time when much of its output was still black-and-white — and its first story arc, 'First Contact,' ran across the debut issue before the series expanded into Cold War-inflected storylines involving Soviet robots and U.S. military factions.
Trivia · 8 facts
- Published June 1, 1987 by Dark Horse Comics — a full-color, 32-page science-fiction series.
- Written and edited by Randy Stradley, who was concurrently serving as Dark Horse's editor-in-chief.
- Art by penciller Harrison Fong and inker Art Nichols; colored by Steve Mattsson; lettered by John Workman.
- The story arc beginning in issue #1 is titled 'First Contact,' following a lone mecha pilot and a character named Hyer who finds himself 'on the inside looking out' on Earth.
- One of the first American comics explicitly and openly influenced by the Japanese anime giant-robot (mecha) genre; its nearest predecessors in the U.S. market were Marvel's Shogun Warriors and First Comics' Dynamo Joe.
- The series ran six issues (1987–1989), followed by a standalone Mecha Special #1 published in 1995.
- Production delays mounted during the original run, with Stradley eventually stepping away from writing duties after issue #6 due to his editorial workload.
- Dark Horse was only one year old when Mecha #1 appeared, having been founded by retailer Mike Richardson in Milwaukie, Oregon in 1986.
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