Editor's Sidebar: Where we hear directly from VIZ editors about series they're working on.

I’m Mike, the editor of Gundam Thunderbolt. I’m lucky enough to edit a number of our more action-oriented seinen series, like Black Lagoon and Ultraman. I have been a fan of science fiction since I was a kid and I grew up during the first wave of Japanese anime and manga coming to the U.S. in the late '70s and early '80s (yes, I am a huge fan of Macross, aka Robotech too), so being able to work on a story that is part of the Gundam universe is like going home for me!

Gundam Thunderbolt is set in the Universal Century 0079, the original setting of the Gundam series. The United Earth Federation and Republic of Zeon forces are locked in a fierce battle for the Thunderbolt Sector, an area of space filled with the wreckage and debris of destroyed space colonies. Into this maelstrom of death go two veteran pilots, the Zeon sniper, Daryl Lorenz, and Federation ace Io Fleming. While their friends die around them, Lorenz and Fleming fight a personal war against each other. The series has a gritty, realistic tone that is reflected in creator Yasuo Ohtagaki’s precise, detailed art, complete with epic space vistas filled with massive battles, amazing mecha and compelling characters.

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The Gundam franchise itself has a long history going back almost 40 years–which might give some readers pause–“Do I need to know all the background to enjoy this?” I can confidently say that the answer is, “No, not at all!”

Despite the massive amount of background material and numerous spinoffs, Gundam Thunderbolt is a character-focused story that requires little if any familiarity from the reader in order to understand and enjoy it. This is not to say that there is nothing there for experienced fans! Yasuo Ohtagaki is a fan himself and it shows in his amazing art, and a story and characters that are true to the spirit of Yoshiyuki Tomino’s original series. Setting the story during the One Year War, the original conflict of the Gundam series, also gives it immediate authenticity.

The idea of giant robots fighting wars in science fiction has been with us for decades. Who isn’t fascinated with the admittedly awesome Mobile Suits, the humanoid war machines of the Gundam universe? Seeing them in action is thrilling and we’d all love to get into one and stomp around! But at the same time, it’s also easy to forget what Mobile Suits are really for, and that is destroying the enemy.

Gundam Thunderbolt falls squarely into the literary genre recognized these days as military science fiction. It is, at its heart, a war story, and it’s a very good one. The thing about good war stories is that they should both intrigue you and repel you. We want to be interested in and identify with the characters and their struggles, and imagine how we might react to the situations they’re put into. Would we be courageous or cowardly? Honorable or despicable? Would we live or die? But at the same time these situations are so extreme, so terrible, that you’re glad you probably won’t ever have to face them.

Through the fiction we see the terrible reality of war and what it does to people. In Gundam Thunderbolt, several characters, including one of the protagonists, have lost limbs in the war. It’s a bit shocking to see, especially when you realize that instead of sending the wounded soldiers home, they’re kept in the fight. The main characters have all lost friends and family to a war they barely understand. The losses weigh heavily on the characters, influencing everything that they do. But the war between the Federation and Zeon is a bitter and grinding conflict. In the end, there are no heroes, only survivors.

In fact, there are no clear bad guys or good guys in the traditional Hollywood sense. They’re just people on different sides of a conflict who have their own goals. Sometimes they can be heroes and sometimes they can be monsters too.

The payoff for all of this drama comes in the ferocious and kinetic Mobile Suit battles. The rivalry between the two main characters develops naturally enough. Io Fleming and Daryl Lorenz are the best pilots on either side, and as attrition takes its toll of their friends, the clash between them becomes inevitable. In the first volume we see them face off for the first time and it’s clear they’re evenly matched. It’s this rivalry that forms the backbone of the entire series.

The artwork in Thunderbolt is fantastic! Ohtagaki uses his precise line art to great effect. The mecha are highly detailed and faithful to the series’ original designs. The characters are also unique individuals and I really like the way their faces express their feelings at any given moment. Ohtagaki has an excellent sense of scale and when the view zooms out to a wide vista of a colony debris field or fleet of maneuvering warships, his inking and shading gives objects the hard shadows of being in space. I particularly like the way he transitions between panels in action scenes too, sometimes following a moving object from one part of the page to another, or zooming in from exterior to interior. For example, this spread from volume 1 – the view goes from the whole Mobile Suit exterior, rendered in harsh black and white inks, then it zooms in to the head of the MS, and the last panel is a closeup of Io Fleming. It’s all very cinematic.

Ohtagaki’s pacing shows the split-second nature of combat—when Daryl Lorenz and Io Fleming cross swords, you’re sweating it out with them inside those Mobile Suits!

Mobile Suit Gundam Thunderbolt is just the start of a new era of Gundam manga! There’s a lot more to come, so grab your g-suit and your flight helmet and get ready!