Following the end of the initial storyline, issue 12 focused on the president of a large company called Megacorp hiring a cloaked figure named Agent R to lure in and destroy Astro.

Issues 16-18 featured Astro going on a rocket to space, with General Hawkins hoping to find out the reason for multiple shuttle disappearances around a certain area.

The Cybots, as it was hinted in earlier issues, were a brand of extremely advanced androids who faced human discrimination and were forced to flee to space.

and the shuttle crew try to repair Astro, King Cosmo announces that the population of Cybots will be returning to Earth, along with the members of the previously captured ships.

(Since the bankruptcy of Mushi Production in 1973, and due to the ensuing court-ordered settlement, ownership of Tezuka's copyrights came into question and would not be resolved for almost thirty years.

Despite taking quite a few elements and character designs from the 1980s series, the editors claimed that the then-newer anime "did not stand up to (the) old black-and-white version".

The comic possessed a greater level of war and robot-to-human violence, greatly differing from Osamu Tezuka's original morals.

NOW Comics was slowly reaching bankruptcy,[3] and company president Tony C. Caputo would reportedly "forget" to pay his employees, or simply cut down their payrolls.

[5] Eventually, despite rising sales for Brian Thomas's issues, the series was cancelled and removed from circulation, while NOW's version of Speed Racer continued on for a few years afterwards.