RoboForce is about second chances.
That’s the message that the Nacelle Company’s Brian Volk-Weiss had – especially considering the history behind the upcoming RoboForce animated series. In RoboForce: The Animated Series, the titular RoboForce was a series of robots built to protect the world but never got their chance due to being replaced by shinier, up-to-date units. When those same units go haywire, RoboForce aims to step up to the plate.
At Saturday’s RoboForce Emerald City Comic-Con panel, Volk-Weiss admitted that he more or less used the real-life story of RoboForce being outshined by Transformers to shape the animated series. “It’s a redemption story,” he said.
Volk-Weiss, alongside Bryan W. Adams and Matt Kravitsky, is intending to give second chances to a whole collection of action figures from the late ’80s and early ’90s with the “Nacelleverse”. This new universe consists of RoboForce, Biker Mice from Mars, Sectaurs, The Great Garloo, Cowboys of Moo Mesa, Power Lords, and Barnyard Commandos, which Nacelle recently acquired the rights to. Most of these, in addition to having a line of action figures, received a comic series courtesy of Oni Press (Biker Mice has an ongoing slated for June). There’s also an animated series in the works for them.
It seems like Nacelle is also learning the lesson that other franchises failed to heed: build a solid base, and people will come. RoboForce is that solid base; although the Biker Mice from Mars will cameo and one of its villains is a Sectaurian, the focus is on the titular robots. And it’s a pretty great cast of robots, from reluctant leader Maxx-89 to the sarcastic yet capable Sentinel to fan-favorite Wrecker. Volk-Weiss was quick to highlight that he wanted all the RoboForce stories, no matter the medium, to have “well-developed characters and story arcs” since the original RoboForce promo material was not that great.
The cover of the Roboforce comic.
Credit: Oni
But how did an obscure toy line get a second shot? Two words: Dwayne Johnson. The artist formerly known as The Rock had produced the Behind The Attraction series with Nacelle under his Seven Bucks banner; Seven Bucks’ Hiram Garcia was a RoboForce fan and set the wheels in motion for the company to produce RoboForce: The Animated Series. Clips from the series show that RoboForce is tapping into the same energy as old cartoons, from a catchy theme song to some bright, expressive animation.
One might wonder: Is there a property that Nacelle wasn’t able to acquire? Volk-Weiss said there was one: RoboCop. Yes, Alex Murphy could have actually led the RoboForce until Amazon purchased MGM and, therefore, got the rights to RoboCop. Regardless, RoboForce has a second shot at life thanks to Nacelle, and time will tell if it pays off.
RoboForce: The Animated Series premieres on April 12 on Tubi.
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