The Webcomic Future, Part 2: The Bolar Wars Extended, 2009-2015
In Part 1, I told you all about a dream project that turned into reality when I brought Star Blazers Rebirth to life at the Cosmo DNA website. And I finished with, “As it turned out, it wouldn’t be the only time.”
After Rebirth was completed in 2007, I returned to Grease Monkey and completed Book 2. It was built to be published on paper, but ended up becoming my second webcomic since I didn’t land a publishing deal for it. This convinced me that there was no longer any need to wait around for a door to open. The internet was now my publisher.
I described Star Blazers Rebirth as a dream project, and it certainly was. The chance to create my own story based on an unproduced Space Battleship Yamato movie powered my creative engine up to 120%. But there was a similar dream that went all the way back to the mid 1980s, and it comes with an admission: I’ve always had a soft spot for Space Battleship Yamato III. This was a TV anime series that debuted in the fall of 1980, following in the wake of the third feature film, Be Forever Yamato. (This is documented beyond all expectations at Cosmo DNA if you want the full story.)
From the first time I saw Yamato III, I found it very easy to get swept up in its premise; a gigantic story with multiple factions and huge potential. Yet, it was constantly under-supported and under-appreciated, even in its homeland. The series met with disappointing ratings and got cut in half by the network; a 50-episode epic was chopped down to 25. Not exactly strangled in the crib, but certainly subjected to a premature demise.
The moment I learned about that, it felt like a grave injustice to me. There were more Yamato stories that I’d never get to see. Intolerable. Someone needed to dig up the unused material and revive it in some fashion. Maybe in comics form. Well, guess what? As with Star Blazers Rebirth, that someone turned out to be me.
Yamato III was folded into the Star Blazers TV series under the title The Bolar Wars in 1985. My first attempt to get someone interested in adapting it to comics took place in 1991. Back then, a company named Westchester films owned the Star Blazers TV series and Comico had successfully published two original Star Blazers mini series. (Read about them here.) I was doing some freelance work for Comico at the time, and thought they’d be open to a proposal. We talked, but (obviously) nothing came of it.
Jump forward to 1994, and the field had shifted. Ownership of Star Blazers was now in the hands of a new company named Voyager Entertainment. My partners and I at Studio Go! landed the dream assignment of producing all-new Star Blazers comic books for them under the Argo Press imprint. If it lasted long enough, a Bolar Wars revival would become a part of it. The dream was within reach…until it wasn’t. The entire comic book industry crashed in 1997 and Star Blazers abruptly ended as our adaptation of Be Forever was underway.
But then came the internet, and with it an entire new publishing platform. From the moment I started working on Star Blazers Rebirth in 2005, the spark of that Bolar Wars dream was re-lit. In 2009, as soon as Grease Monkey Book 2 wrapped up, I was off to outer space again.
This would be a good point to back up into the vault of history and explore the details of Yamato III‘s premature ending in Japan.
The story was initially proposed prior to the development of Be Forever Yamato. Exec Producer Yoshinobu Nishizaki’s concept was to center the film around a solar crisis. Director Leiji Matsumoto advocated instead that such a large-scale scenario could be better served in an extended TV series. Nishizaki agreed, and Be Forever Yamato went in a different direction.
Exact dates are elusive, but Series 3 went into development some time in February of 1980. Fortunately (especially for me), a great deal of the material the writers developed was later published for general consumption. Taken as a whole, the original story was massive in scope, enriched by many new characters, battle scenarios, and planetary adventures.
The bulk of the character development was to occur in the latter half, along with a renewal of hostilities between Dessler and Yamato‘s crew. Both Galman and Bolar forces were to become obstacles against finding a second Earth and the stakes would be raised enormously when the solar system itself came under attack. Diligent hunting allowed me to collect all this story material and build it into a backbone for my webcomic revival. But I’m getting ahead of myself here. Back to 1980.
Yamato III premiered on Japanese TV on October 11 1980, just two weeks after Be Forever finished its resoundingly successful run in theaters. By rights, the sheer momentum of this should have delivered record ratings…but it didn’t happen. A number of theories about this have floated around, from the fact that the series simply had too much competition on TV to the ironic notion that Be Forever raised expectations higher than a small-screen Yamato could meet. Either way, the Yomiuri network gave it a month before deciding it was too risky to keep their 50-episode commitment and cut their order to 25. the shows‘s various licensors reacted by scaling back their own plans accordingly.
The effect on the series was most strongly felt in its pacing. The first half developed slowly, since it was originally constructed as setup for long-term payoff. The second half picked up speed, but a lot of the payoff had to be dropped, especially in the area of character development. Many new crew members had joined the mission only to become faces in the crowd. The finale was essentially told as planned, though highly compressed. All of this and more was grist for my webcomic. And the most accurate title I could come up with was The Bolar Wars Extended.
At left: once I had all the story material assembled, I drew up this structural guide. This gave me a roadmap to determine where the missing pieces fit into the overall plot.
With so much unused material to build upon, I knew this was going to be too big a task for one. I wanted to get others involved at the writing phase to prevent this gigantic story from slipping out of control. My choices in partners proved essential: Carol Hutchings and Derek Wakefield.
What united us was the fact that Yamato and Star Blazers were in our bloodstreams. Some portion of our brains was constantly churning through facts and minutiae. And we each had a specialty. With Carol, it’s Gamilons. With Derek it’s the EDF. With me it’s the need to pack as much as possible into a good story. Between us we got it all done. 12 chapters in six years, taking one year off due to an unexpected delay.
All the rough and finished art stacks up almost 13″ high.
The unexpected delay was the closing down of the Star Blazers website in 2012. I’d invested ten years of my life in it at that point, and I wasn’t about to let it all vanish with the press of a delete key. So I packed up all the content and moved it over to a site of my own called Cosmo DNA. I had to take a year off from the webcomic to get it stabilized, then picked up where I left off. I’m genetically incapable of leaving a project unfinished, so it was going to reach the finish line one way or another.
When I started in 2009, the Space Battleship Yamato series was coming back to life after decades of false starts; first with two movies and then a full anime reboot that began in the spring of 2012. As I write these words in summer 2026, it’s still going strong and a fully modernized version of Yamato III is cruising toward its conclusion. I’m delighted to say that it couldn’t be more different from my version. Yamato world is big enough for multiple interpretations, and I am immensely grateful that I had the chance to contribute two of them.
When I finished this project, I had done everything I set out to do in terms of rescuing Yamato stories from the netherworld. With my upcoming years now measurably fewer than those behind me, it’s my plan to devote myself to original stories from here on out; stories that cannot be told by anyone else. Meanwhile, my devotion to all things Yamato continues every month in the form of journalism over at Cosmo DNA.
The Bolar Wars Extended has a permanent home there, and is ready to be read by YOU. You’ll also find support articles that go into extensive detail on the making of every chapter. Fair warning: it gets SUPER nerdy.
Coming in part 3: pure, glorious experimentation takes me to PITSBERG
Bonus item: a promotional poster for The Bolar Wars on DVD. After I drew this, I never had to draw a master bridge shot again.