Atomic Robo Mini-Series Talkback (Spoilers)

[Al Nickerson]

http://www.newsarama.com/BestShots/Aug07/robo1cover1front.jpg

I just discovered a new and amazing comic called ATOMIC ROBO! It’s like Mike Mignola’s HELLBOY, but funnier and less Gothy. ATOMIC ROBO has Nazis, robots, and monsters. Ya can’t go wrong with Nazis, robots, and monsters.

Anyone else pick up ATOMIC ROBO?

http://i203.photobucket.com/albums/aa150/atomicrobo/myspace_bulletin_debut.gif

[Al Nickerson]

ATOMIC ROBO #2 came out today! If you're tired of reading sucky comics, then give ATOMIC ROBO a shot.

Here’s some preview pages from issue #2…

http://theforce.net/latestnews/story/Atomic_Robo_2_Preview_109985.asp

http://www.collectinghq.com/im/0011294.jpg

[Ed Liu]

Oh, good...I saw 2 titles with "Atomic" in the title at Midtown Comics today and wasn't quite sure which one was plugged here (the other was Atomic Max, I think. Maybe.)

In any event, I grabbed it for kicks and will try to say something about it when I can get to read it. For the moment, though, I've converted this thread into the comic series talkback.

-- Ed

[Shawn Hopkins]

It looks neat, and the art seems pretty great. I may check it out.

That's a cool name. But Atomic Robo-Kid is a cooler name. Anyone remember that old Genesis, and other platforms, game?

[Ed Liu]

Well, THAT was a ton of fun! I'd say more, but Chris Sims has already done my work for me (http://www.the-isb.com/?p=200):


And with Atomic Robo, it all comes barrelling through on the comics page. Clevinger’s a talented, funny guy, and when you take a script where the main character (a surprisingly genial 83 year-old robot built by Nikolai Tesla) explains how he defeated a group of gigantic insects with the phrase “I just used my violence on them” and add in Scott Wegener’s excellent art, the result is a comic that reads like pure distilled fun. Admittedly, there’s nothing in this issue that quite matches up to the scene from #1 of Robo going about his business underneath a dogpile of terrified Nazis, but it’s still well worth checking out.

So, uh, yeah. What he said. The only thing I'd have to add is the subplot involving Robo's stint with the Flying Tigers in China during World War II and the aftermath of it, which borders on the cliche but still pretty effective and leads up to a fairly poignant ending.

Really, check out the preview link Al Nickerson posted earlier. Now all I gotta do is find issue #1.

-- Ed

[Ed Liu]

Issue #3 on stands today:

http://www.edwick.com/comics/AtomicRobo3.jpg

ATOMIC ROBO #3
With a mobile pyramid and solar powered deathray wandering the Egyptian desert, Atomic Robo and the Alpha Squad are authorized for violent science. In these situations, it’s safest to assume mummies until proven otherwise.
From Brian Clevinger, the creator of web-phenomenon 8-Bit Theater.

Comments? Anybody else picking up this series?

-- Ed

[Al Nickerson]

ATOMIC ROBO #3 was as kickin’ as the previous two issues. I loved the line, "Yes, but shut up. It shot us out of the sky with a Deahtray!"

C’mon… read ATOMIC ROBO. You won’t regret it. :D

[Al Nickerson]

ATOMIC ROBO #4 came out today! Yay! :D

Guess who was the first robot on Mars? :eek:

[Ed Liu]

Atomic Robo #5 -- on stands now!

http://www.red5comics.com/img/cover/2008/c00012_200.jpg (http://www.red5comics.com/?p=241)

ATOMIC ROBO #5
Written by Brian Clevinger
Art by Scott Wegener and Ronda Pattison
An anomaly in Italy leads ROBO to a secret Helsingard lair filled with memories of battles past. But behind the “end boss” doors, protectors have awoken. “Tell me it’s not cyborgs.” “Then I’d have to lie.”

Is this the end of ATOMIC ROBO and his famed Action Science League?

If the above positive reviews, my own personal endorsement, the preview linked through the cover above, and the general awesomeness of an 84-year old robot scientist kicking the patootie out of monsters and Nazis and similar ugly things isn't enough, maybe you can also check out the list of things that the Atomic Robo creators have promised never to do (http://atomic-robo.livejournal.com/2008/02/10/), including:


No angst: Loading characters up with angst was a revolutionary move on the part of Marvel Comics back in the '60s. I haven't looked at a calendar today, but that was four decades ago. There are other emotions and motivations available to characters. Atomic Robo is not a comic that will be 100% sunshine and jokes, it would idiotic to portray a complicated life of 80+ years as a nonstop party with scientists, but we aren't going to delve into melodrama either. You are not going to see Robo mope about his lack of emotions, or pine to be human, or throw a tantrum over daddy issues, or whatever childish nonsense passes for characterization in most comics these days.

No "cheesecake": This is nothing more than Scott and I having the audacity to treat women like human beings. I mean, come on, 99 times out of a 100, there is no reason at all to frame a panel from the perspective of a girl's ass. Grow up already.

No reboots: They're frustrating, unnecessary, and a jarring reminder that all fiction is a thinly veiled series of lieshttp://i.ixnp.com/images/v3.13.1/t.gif (http://www.mechapolis.com/?p=204). The major events of Robo's lifetime were plotted years before we worked on the first page of the first issue. Anything Scott and I add to that has to fit organically into the existing framework. If it doesn't fit as naturally as if it'd been there all along, then we skip it and move to the next idea. This is a much better solution than making a deal that the character would never make with the devil he'd never deal with to change "one" thing that alters the entire universe in ways that no one in charge seems to fully comprehend or address. Ahem. Everything that happens will fit into the larger mythos; everything that happens will happen for a reason; and nothing that happens can be "undone."


There's more, but it's all good and all stuff I can heartily endorse. So, in short, this yet another comic book that all the people who say things like, "Comic Books Aren't Fun Any More" claim that they want and, inexplicably, still won't buy. Don't be one of Those people :p.

-- Ed

[Miyamoto Musashi]

They just made too many anti Nazi comics

[Ed Liu]

Phooey. No such thing as too many anti-Nazi comics :).

-- Ed

[Miyamoto Musashi]

Phooey. No such thing as too many anti-Nazi comics :).

-- Ed


Are they that much fun to read? Aren't captn America and HellBoy enough? It isn't like they needed so many heroes against Nazi's anyway because Americans fought the least and gained the biggest fortune, and Japanese love America instead of making war comics against them though they had two cities of thier country nuked by Americans

[wonderfly]

Are they that much fun to read? Aren't captn America and HellBoy enough? It isn't like they needed so many heroes against Nazi's anyway because Americans fought the least and gained the biggest fortune, and Japanese love America instead of making war comics against them though they had two cities of thier country nuked by Americans

Or maybe you could realize that a comic book about Atomic Robots fighting Cyborg Nazi's is Escapist fiction and let's NOT bring politics into this discussion.

[Miyamoto Musashi]

It's more history than politics. Anyway; the concept is ridiculous as it is, it's better for me to keep out of this thread

[wonderfly]

It's more history than politics.

To a point, yes, but commentary on which country fought and profited the most in WW2 can be filled with nationalist perspective, and this isn't the forum for that discussion.

Look, comics published back during WW2 showing heroes fighting the Nazi's definitely were used as propoganda tools, but nowadays, the Nazi's depicted in comics are used to fuel science fiction or fantasy storytelling devices, not to increase patriotic fervor.

You may have a good point: Nazi's may be overused as comic book villains, but most comics aren't trying to explore the historical ramifications of the Nazi party's rise in Europe in the early 20th century, they're wanting to tell a story about heroes kicking evil Nazi butt and saving the day from tyranny!!!

It's pure escapism, not a historical documentary.

[Ed Liu]

(serious response)
Just to add a brief bit to what wonderfly just said, the thing about Nazis is that they're the quickest shorthand method to flag someone unmistakably as a bad guy. You can't really do that with anyone else any more. In the 50's and 60's, you used to be able to slap a red star on someone and call them a Communist, but there are no Communists any more (or, at least, none that we care about). During the peak of "Yellow Peril" anti-Chinese sentiment in the early half of the century, you could tag the bad guy with a caricature of a Chinese mandarin, replacing them with a Japanese caricature for WWII. For a while, there was the two-fer of Chinese Communists, too. That kind of racial profiling is completely unacceptable today. And I don't think I need to detail to you what the problem is with trying to tag a bad guy just by dressing him up in a keffiyeh and making him talk about jihad.

But Nazis? Nobody's going to get upset that a comic book superhero beat the crap out of a bunch of Nazis, and anybody who does is going to get a big hairy skunk-eye from a whole lot of people.

This doesn't mean that Nazi's can't be overused, of course. If comic book Nazis mapped out to real ones, they would have won the war out of sheer force of numbers. Depending on how you do it, it can be lazy or just a cheat to avoid having to do much work in characterization. The nice thing about Hellboy's Nazis, for instance, is that their being Nazis is just icing on the cake. They don't have to do much for us to recognize them as crappy bad evil dudes who we'd want to see taking a giant stone fist in the kisser, but making them Nazis (or former Nazis) just means we know right off who's supposed to be the bad guy. Shorthand.
(/end serious response)

(not-so-serious response)
Plus, kicking Nazis is fun. Saying there are too many superheroes beating up Nazis is like complaining that there are too many ninjas, too many dinosaurs, too many killer robots, or too many killer dinosaur robot ninjas fighting cyborg shark pirates. Those things are AWESOME, and we can never get enough of them.
(/not-so-serious response)

The irony of all this discussion, of course, is that I'm not even sure that Atomic Robo #5 involves Nazis at all. In fact, the closest I can think of Nazis showing up directly in the series is some WWII memories that were in #2, where Robo was a fighter pilot. (EDIT: OK, I'm kind of wrong. In the just-reprinted issue #1 that I finally got around to reading, the plot relies pretty heavily on Robo beating the hell out of a LOT of Nazis in WWII.)

-- Ed

[Ed Liu]

Bumping to note that Red 5 Comics just posted 3 links to interviews (http://www.red5comics.com/?p=287) with Brian Clevinger and/or Scott Wegener, the writer and artist of Atomic Robo:

The Trades interviews Wegener (http://www.the-trades.com/article.php?id=10282)

Comics Bulletin interviews both (with pages from #6. Free, even!) (http://www.comicsbulletin.com/features/120771312364609.htm)

Newseed Comics also interviews both (http://www.newseedcomics.com/2001/01/talent-dialogue-brian-clevinger-scott.html)

I also seem to have forgotten to post the cover/solicit for #6:

http://www.red5comics.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2008/01/atomicrobo06_2x3.thumbnail.jpg (http://www.red5comics.com/?p=205)
ATOMIC ROBO #6
Atomic Robo is trapped in an underground complex, his Action Scientists are captured, and he’s surrounded by a vast army of re-animated cyborg soldiers. Things to downhill from there. Baron von Helsingard won’t let a little thing like being killed seventy years ago stop his latest scheme to destroy Robo.

I got both #5 and #6 in the last shipment of comics, and the finale to the first "season" ends with an appropriate bang. Or, really, a lot of them. Because you can't solve problems with your violence unless you use your violence.

There is also a trade of the first six issues coming in June (http://www.red5comics.com/?p=264), which I'm more than happy to double-dip for. Atomic Robo is just that cool. You want it. Trust me.

-- Ed

[Ed Liu]

What? You're STILL not convinced that Atomic Robo is the most awesome thing ever? Well, here's a chance to win one of THREE autographed copies (http://www.weeklycrisis.com/2008/06/weekly-crisis-atomic-robo-vol-1-tpb.html) of the upcoming trade paperback. The contest was so popular that it broke his submission form. See? All the cool kids are doing it. You don't want to be left out, do you?

Unfortunately, the trade is going to be a week late (http://www.atomic-robo.com/?p=243), but that just means you'll have an extra week to prepare to have your brain rocked.

-- Ed

[Kouji Tamino]

"Stephen Hawking is a Bastard"

Greatest set-up for a gag ever. After reading the issue of Atomic Robo given out at Free Comic Book Day, which was an exclusive story BTW, I knew I had to get my hands on it. However, the price tag scared me off a bit, so I didn't buy it until my recent birthday. It was worth every penny, as Atomic Robo is a great series and the book was of VERY high quality when compared to most trade paperbacks I've bought in the past.

Robo himself is like, one of my favorite characters of all time now. His witty banter had me cracking up the whole way through, and the above mentioned sight gag was especially delicious. I also loved how it jumped back and forth between decades, that really drive home Atomic Robo's age. You can almost feel the weariness in his voice at some points in the modern day chapters.

Oh, and his team is pretty sweet, too. Nice little rag-tag group he's got there. Atomic Robo definitely has a fan in me. The book was very fun, and quite hilarious. My favorite story so far would have to be the Egypt mission. Of course, there's also the chapter about his Mars mission, which I can't bring up enough. Oh Robo, you lovable smart-ass, you.