Shogun Warriors

 

Doug Moench, Herb Trimpe & others Shogun Warriors (1980)
As a kid growing up in the late seventies, I was obsessed with Micronauts, but inevitably there was a limit to how many of those things I could buy given the economics of pocket money and that the more extravagant figures and their vehicles didn't seem to be available in the UK. I'd seen boxes of Monogram's Shogun Warriors model kits on the shelves, but they looked slightly ridiculous - exaggerated and improbable figures when compared to the Alan Bennett documentary which constituted the world of the Micronauts. Running out of vaguely futuristic stuff to accumulate, I eventually caved in and bought one out of curiosity - Grandizer, I think. I glued all the bits together, painted him, stood him amongst my Micronauts then tried to imagine what they might be talking about. I'd thawed to the Shogun Warriors, although even I had to admit they didn't really do much. They could raise their arms, turn their heads, and a couple of them were able to fire plastic missiles or even their fists, but that was about it. Not knowing what else to do, I bought the other five over the next few months, or however long it took.

 

Then I spotted a Shogun Warriors comic book in the newsagent, issue four of this thing to be specific. It was American and therefore part of a world I didn't fully understand, and it wasn't in quite the same league as 2000AD or even the weekly Star Wars comic, but there was no getting away from the fact of it featuring giant robots. I don't think I had realised they were supposed to be on the same scale as Godzilla until I read the comic book. I bought an issue whenever I saw it, amassing a gappy collection of just five or six issues determined by an unfamiliar publishing schedule and the unreliability of my being able to find a copy.

Now, forty years later, all becomes clear, not least where Danguard Ace and Combatra had sprung from and why Raydeen was the only one I recognised from his model kit. The Shogun Warriors were a line of die-cast robot figures marketed in the US by Mattel, a pantheon from which the six larger Monogram kits were drawn. Most of them began life as Japanese kids' cartoons - as is probably fucking obvious - only to be bundled together under the Shogun banner at Ellis Island, meaning that our Shogun Warriors were actually, it could be argued, forerunner to the Sense of Right Alliance, the superhero team formed when Superman, Spider-Man, Shrek, and Lightning McQueen from Cars came together in the name of justice 'n' stuff.

 

Anyway, this isn't an - ugh - graphic novel, because the publishing rights to licensed characters are apparently a logistical nightmare in legal terms, not least with the three Shoguns starring in this book belonging to different licensees; so it's doubtful that the comics will ever be reprinted, meaning my only option was to buy a stack of back issues - which was easy enough because they're still cheap and it was cancelled after issue twenty; and so here I am at the age of fifty-six reading a pile of comic books about giant robots routinely saving the world from other giant things.

I don't recall being particularly knocked out by the comic even at the time, although it seemed to have something. Trimpe's artwork reminded me a lot of Jack Kirby, seeming faintly ridiculous and simplistic to my untutored eye, and there's a lot of corn here, not least that the Shogun Warriors are pitted against bad guys who are aware of being evil and even rejoice in the same - but it doesn't fucking matter because - duh - giant robots, you idiot! In case it isn't already clear I'm hereby invoking a variation on the Godzilla defence which neutralises criticism by virtue of the fact that he's Godzilla. If that doesn't work for you, maybe you shouldn't have dropped out of law school.

Anyway, the story begins with our three main guys Richard Carson, Ilongo Savage and Genji Odashu. They all have exciting, action-packed jobs - movie stuntman, test pilot and so on - somehow making them obvious choices for Shogun operators, and thus are they spirited away to the hidden base of the Followers of the Light somewhere in the Japanese countryside. The Followers of the Light are a group of ancients, possibly immortal and not entirely human - even though one of them resembles Graham Linehan and smokes a pipe. They fought evil during the previous Chaos War then went into suspended animation, only reviving now that the sorcerous Lord Maur-Kon is back in business. The Followers of the Light have built three giant robots with which to fight evil, but the robots can only be operated by pilots sat inside their massive frowning metal heads, much like the Numskulls from the Beezer.

It's the same sort of ham-fisted pop mythology as informs the Godzilla movies, and it works because it takes itself absolutely seriously, fully expects you to be entertained, and because giant robots. If it seems pale and superficial in comparison to - off the top of my head - Thomas Hardy's Mayor of Casterbridge, then you may have missed the point, the point being giant robots. It may also be worth noting that our Shogun Warriors, aside from being direct ancestors of the otherwise fucking ridiculous* Transformers, provided a shitload of inspiration for the movie Pacific Rim, and not just the enormous robot exoskeletons. Pacific Rim is pretty much Shogun Warriors with swearing and oil stains.

To finally get to the point, Shogun Warriors may not have been the greatest comic book ever published, and it's hard to imagine it having endured beyond these twenty issues without eventually becoming repetitive, but it nevertheless had a hell of a lot of charm. For all of his simplistic lines and shapes, Trimpe does a great job of conveying sheer scale, and after a few issues one begins to realise that he isn't just doing a Jack Kirby. If the influence is obvious, not least in the exhausting dynamism bursting from each page, his figures - amongst other aspects - are significantly less exaggerated, allowing for a sense of contrast which Kirby didn't always achieve. If it's not always easy to pinpoint Trimpe's strengths, sharp contrast is provided by Steven Grant and Mike Vosburg's fill-in issue which conspicuously lacks the charm or imaginative flair of Moench and Trimpe. As with the Ramones back catalogue being similarly resistant to analysis, there's something very satisfying here, even absorbing, and to the point that it seems only natural to feel slightly sorry for everyone involved when the run comes to its end. Moench gave Richard, Ilongo and Genji a slightly more formal send off in Fantastic Four #226, finally revealing that Raydeen, Combatra and Danguard Ace had been destroyed. It made for a surprisingly depressing coda, which itself underscores the sense of idiot joy communicated in the pages of the comic during its short run. They'll probably never get a reprint, but they shouldn't be forgotten.

*: There has never been a really good reason for a massive futuristic robot from outer space to disguise itself as a truck, aside from that Convoy would have been a better movie.