19. Battle of the Planets #1 to 12 ... Image ...

This is one of those nostalgic guilty pleasures. I remembered watching the cartoons on late afternoon local TV but honestly was never a fan of BOTP so never followed it regularly unlike say Masters of the Universe or Thundercats

But I digress

When this series first came out with its gorgeous Alex Ross covers, I had a try and must admit that there is enough in the storyline to make me give it a serious try. Seeing as how hard it is to find on the racks, I bought the first TPB (thanks for the poor production values that sees pages falling out after 1 read guys!) and in the end, got the entire series in floppies

So, covers aside, the interior artwork works a treat. It's not hyper realism nor overly manga/ anime style. But just perfect for this. And as for the story itself, we get to see the 5 kids being assembled and trained to use the fighting machines against other monstrous machines. In terms of villains, we have the classic tv bad guy who is supposedly a guy ... aliens maybe? who wears both lipstick and heels. Hahaha! I had forgotten about this. I guess they were "ahead of their time" eh?

And let's not forget all the goon squads of the bad guys ... imagine baddies with guns who couldn't defeat 5 kids with almost no weapons ... that's how pathetic they were. But that's the fun of these weekday afternoon cartoons, yes?

The only ones that still didn't make sense is why recruit the little shrimp and the tubby lard guy as part of the team. Aside from diversification, it really serves no purpose in a fighting team to get them

Ratings: (6/10)