It needed to be done, desperately...
Yes indeed.
As I've been dealing with the graphic novel biz for a few years now, please allow me to interject a bit of my unique point of view here.
If you are a capable artists, yet have little or no imagination whatsoever, please resign yourself to simple fan-art or get a job working for someone else! In a single day I run across liquid gobs of horribly unoriginal crap with a modern sugar-coating of cg coloring, masking weak storylines and horribly archetypal characters with genre-appeal and generic pop-flavored artwork. An unfortunate number of "otaku" are simply and sadly, only that. Fans. Fans with little to no ability who, god bless them, continually attempt to burp out "anime" or "manga" which is generally little more than a regurgitation of the watered-down garbage that they've seen on Toonami or Adult Swim.
Which leads to another point. People, please look around out there. After the decline in the late eighties, coinciding with the arcade industry slump, I know anime became scarce(If you don't know what I'm talking about, you were either too young or not paying attention.). And when Evangelion exploded onto American shores, I know you were happy. Anime series were suddenly coming out by the butt-shovel! But just because it uses Doe-eyed girls, mecha designs, and whatever other conventions you aquaint with anime, that doesn't mean it's any good! It's a problem of pop-culture. Some good series will come out. It will be an underground phenom for a while. Then, when pop-culture embraces it, companies begin snapping up similar items as fast as they can get them to market. Even if these similar items suck so horribly that they cause rectal burning, people will buy them, because now, it's "popular", and everyone wants to be with the "popular" crowd. Hence, after EVA, you get Trigun, the Sailor Moon Re-resurgence, Chobits, FLCL, Bebop, enough DB and DBZ to make you puke, Love Hina and on and on, as a new generation embraces their version of their predecessors' entertainment, completely forgeting(or ignoring) it's roots. There are hundreds of series out there to see. Some are even good. You just have to look for them, occasionally overseas.
In summary, if you really like Gundam, or Chobits, or Raxephon(or, god help you, DBZ), that's great, but please, unless you actually have something to say, don't try to tell a story. There's already enough bad anime making it to the U.S. every day. We don't need more.
As a whole, this was very entertaining. The artwork was pretty weak, yes, but it made up for it with content aplenty. I've been waiting to see someone do this, and I'm happy now. Thank you.