Atomic Robo: Ghost of Station X #4 – Review

By: Brian Clevinger (writer), Scott Wegener (artist), Ronda Pattison (colors)

The Story: The Tesladyne folks are getting closer to learning who is trying to kill Robo.

Four Things: 

1. This was the dreaded “transitional issue”. – Things have been busy here at WCBR and we can’t always get to writing reviews of every issue we’d like to shine a light on.  That’s a shame because issue #3 of this Ghost of Station X kicked ass.  So, wouldn’t you know that when I finally have a slot in my reviewing schedule to work in Atomic Robo, the guys hit me with an issue whose story is kinda transitioning between the set-up and finale.  And that means that I can’t gush on and on about the fun and the bombs and the humor the way I usually would (and would have for almost every issue of Robo to date).

2. A little long winded, but very funny still. – Even as this issue was transitioning, it was a little long winded because there was so much ground to cover. This arc wraps up after issue #5 and it was a little like Clevinger realized that he had to hurry up, but still had a pretty complex plot to tie up.  It isn’t bad wordiness because Clevinger is a talented writer and he can mostly power through those big word balloons, but it does affect the humor of Robo.  So much of his humor is tied up in the timing of funny moments and lots of words make it harder to appreciate the hilarity of Atomic Robo busting through the doors of a truck stop diner and telling the assembled truckers that he “needs a convoy” to disguise him as he tries to sneak into the bad guys’ lair.  Still…there is a lot of humor in this issue of Robo.  I actually snickered aloud a few times and not many comics can do that.

3. Wegener gets so much personality out of Robo. – Part of what makes this series fun is the way Wegener wrings so much personality out of Robo.  Robo is a pretty basic design, but Wegener doesn’t have to worry about drawing muscles or breasts on him so he can just focus on the body language elements of the character: eyes, tilt of head, shoulders, etc. to communicate who Robo is and how he feels.  It’s really impressive and I wish more artists would focus on these elements before focusing so much on Wolverine’s biceps (especially since most artists draw biceps wrong anyways).  All the other characters have similar amounts of personality and it makes Robo a really fun comic.

Atomic Robo: Ghost of Station X #1 – Review

By: Brian Clevinger (writer), Scott Wegener (art), Ronda Pattison (colors), Jeff Powell (letters) & Lee Black (edits)

The Story: Atomic Robo has to rescue stranded astronauts.

What’s Good: It’s just nice to have Robo back.  Atomic Robo follows the Hellboy publication practice where there is a miniseries that runs for ~6 issues and then Robo goes away for a few months.  I sure do miss the guy when he is gone because Robo is unlike any other comic I read– and I read a pretty diverse lot.  No other comic quite captures the feeling of fun/science/banter/adventure/amazement that you get from Robo.  And it gets all of that without ever having a downer moment.  Robo is kinda like that person we all know who never has anything negative to say about anyone.

The humor is what really sets Robo apart.  For example, we open on a scene of Robo chatting on the phone with someone, complaining about the design of the iPad (his mechanical fingers don’t work nicely with it) and he says, “So, this is another thing where your faulty design is actually everyone else holding it wrong?” (of course referencing the iPhone 4 antennae snafu).  Then he is called away and as he says good-bye, we realize he was talking to Steve Jobs. LOL!

And, it’s always so nicely delivered.  You could take Robo’s words and make them pissy as hell, but because they’re delivered by this lovable and slightly naive robot who is ~100 years old who is simultaneously an action hero and scientist, he just comes off as more earnest than the rest of us.  Robo is never mean and malicious because he doesn’t have to be: he’s superpowered, smart and basically immortal.  He’s kinda like what Doc Savage would be like if he never became aloof and cynical.

Atomic Robo: Deadly Art of Science #4 – Review

By: Brian Clevinger (writer), Scott Wegener (art), Ronda Pattison (colors), Jeff Powell (letters) & Lee Black (edits)

The Story: The Big-Bad is full revealed and other typically funny Robo stuff.

What’s Good: Atomic Robo is just good comics.  It is funny what an incredibly high standard I hold this series to because when I finished this issue I was actually a little disappointed because there was no brawl between Robo and anything and there was nothing that made me split my sides in laughter.  That is kinda what you expect from Robo, so when you get an issue that merely reveals a very clever villain and has 4-5 quite funny panels you kinda get bummed.  But then you remember that that is 4-5 more funny panels than you’re likely to see in most of your comics this week as realize you might be holding Robo to an unfair standard.

The choice of Thomas Edison as the villain is very inspired.  Folks who know history will remember that Tesla (Robo’s creator and father) and Edison were rivals.  Edison is the guy that all the school-kids know, but those in the know kinda seem to think that Tesla was smarter and Edison was kinda a jerk.  I love that this series has slight infusions of reality.

Robo himself continues to be very funny in this issue in a bumbling little boy sort of way.  If you’ll remember from last issue, Robo got romantically involved with Jack Tarot’s weird daughter.  As if a robot-woman relationship wasn’t weird enough, this issue has a priceless scene where she learns how old Robo really is [HINT: He isn’t of legal age…].

Wegener’s art is just so clean and effective.  He doesn’t try to make the art be anything that isn’t useful for telling the story.  Readers of this site know that I’m a huge fan of the dudes who compulsively draw thousands of little chunks of rubble or add insane detail to their panels, but I can also really appreciate Wegener’s art in this series.  It is clean and it tells the story.  You’ll never have a panel in Atomic Robo where you are confused about what is going on and there are never gratuitous splash panels.

Same Day Digital Comics

I’ve become a big fan of the Comixology app on my iPhone.  They launch their new products on Wednesdays just like a direct market store, so it’s become something of a Wednesday ritual for me to fire up the Comixology app and wait 3-4 minutes while it updates over the 3G connection.  It’s always fun to see what “new” old stuff the publishers are adding and also see what NEW new stuff is showing up.

This week, something caught my eye: Atomic Robo: Deadly Art of Science #4.  I write my pull list down on piece of notebook paper every week and quickly pulled that out of my pocket.  Sure enough, I had that same issue on my hard copy pull list.

So, Atomic Robo has gone “day-and-date” (as the kids like to say…I prefer the term Same Day Digital), meaning that they are offering the same product digitally as soon as the physical copies are available in direct market comic shops.  A few comics have done this.  DC’s JLA: Generation Lost has been same-day-digital since it launched last summer.  The Invincible Iron Man Annual was same-day-digital (although split across 3 separate downloads…Ugh!).  The Walking Dead and Invincible have been same-day-digital for a few months.  Archie is same-day-digital.

What was eye-catching was the price: 99 cents!  Ever since we first started seeing comics on smartphones and tablet computers, fanboys have extolled the virtues of the 99-cent price point.  99 cents seems to be a magic number with apps.  Fanboys have claimed that at 99 cents, we might be able to get some new readers who balk at paying $2.99 or $3.99 for a comic book.

And, they probably had a point.  A comic needs to grow its readership and that isn’t going to happen with $3.99 digital comics.  You can buy Angry Birds and get HOURS of fun for 99 cents, but a comic that you read in 15 minutes will cost 4 times as much?  WTF?  The general public just isn’t seeing the value and won’t pay that much for a digital comic.

So, why the reluctance from publishers to just release all of their new issues same-day-digital at 99 cents?  Well, we have to consider what that would do to the direct market.  For those who don’t know, the comics marketplace in the U.S. is weird.  Pretty much all comics sold in the U.S. are sold in specialty comic shops that are collectively called: The Direct Market.  The DM buys pretty much all of their books from Diamond Comic Distributors.  They buy comics from Diamond for ~50% of the retail price, but they have to order ~3 months in advance and the comics are not returnable.  Every book you see sitting on the retailer’s shelf cost them ~$1.50 – $2.00 and if they have to put it in a dollar bin, they are losing money.

So, you can imagine a retailer’s reaction to a publisher selling comics to the final customer for 99 cents.  Not only is that cheaper than the cover price of the paper copy of Atomic Robo ($3.50), it is cheaper than the retailer was able to buy copies of Atomic Robo at wholesale!

Publishers have an interesting relationship with the retailers.  On one hand, the current DM is on life-support.  Sales have been terrible over the last year to the point where a lot of local comic shops are going to go out of business.  Not all of them will die, but many will.  Eventually, there will be a robust market for digital comics, but it isn’t there yet.  The digital sales simply aren’t that significant yet.  So, the publishers have to manage this transition from the DM-only business model to a new world that also includes digital sales in such a way that doesn’t kill the DM.

If Marvel and DC suddenly went same-day-digital with all of their titles, it would hurt business at the DM retailers in the short-term.  Even though there is some evidence that DM customers and digital customers are different sets of people, there is enough overlap that at least some DM retailers would probably go out of business if they lost even a few percent of their customers to digital.  Like I said, the DM has some thriving stores, but many are on the ragged edge right now.

If the DM were to wholly collapse, then the publishers (especially Marvel/DC) are in deep shit.

Atomic Robo: Deadly Art of Science #3 – Review

By: Brian Clevinger (writer), Scott Wegener (art), Ronda Pattison (colors), Jeff Powell (letters) & Lee Black (editor)

The Story: Robo learns adventuring techniques under the tutelage of crime fighting gunman, Jack Tarot.

What’s Good: This fifth volume of Atomic Robo is showing off Robo’s early life in the early 1930’s before he became an international action hero.  He very much reminds me of a husky, 14 year old boy in these stories as he chaffs under Telsa’s strict (but loving) rules and wants to go learn about adventuring and crime fighting from the dashing Jack Tarot (and possibly love from his comely daughter).

What really makes this issue sing are the things that have defined this series since it began: Robo’s awkwardness and desire for adventure and Tesla being the ultimate geek dad.  Seriously, Telsa would be the most embarrassing dad a teenage robot could have with all his idiosyncrasies.  Just the saltine cracker eating is off-the-charts weird.   And you have Clevinger’s humorous dialog such as a scene where Jack Tarot doesn’t want to train Robo due to a misadventure they’d had the night before with a huge robot: “You nearly got me killed!“, yells an exasperated Jack.  A humble/smug Robo just says, “And I nearly saved your life!  Kinda balances out.”  There is at least one panel on every page that makes me snicker with its understated humor.

Of course, none of this would work nearly as well without Wegener’s clever work with Robo himself.  He manages to tease a lot of acting and emotion out of Robo and that’s impressive because Robo doesn’t even have a mouth or eyebrows (or many of the other tools artists can use to show emotion).  Everything seems to come from the eyes/eyelids, the tilt of his head and the basic body posture and you always know whether Robo is happy, sad, deep in thought, etc.  Love it.

Atomic Robo v5 #1 – Review

By: Brian Clevinger (writer), Scott Wegener (art), Ronda Pattison (colors), Jeff Powell (letters) & Lee Black (editor)

The Story: Robo falls in with a mysterious masked gunman.

What’s Good: Atomic Robo is just good comics.  Since I discovered the series on my iPhone via the Comixology app, I’ve read quite a few of Robo’s escapades.  They always have a very dry sort of humor that I love and the art and coloring are always top notch. I am not completely up to speed on the whole series, but when I saw a #1 of a new volume on the shelf at my LCS, I wanted to read it asap.

This particular comic is set in the ~1930, so this is a younger Robo.  Robo doesn’t really age, so he doesn’t look like a kid, but he gets to act a little like a kid and that plays well with his personality as he doesn’t really want to help with the science experiments, but is more than happy to go chasing off after a masked gunman.  That whole scene has a kid’s, “Whoa!  Cool, dude!” aspect to it that is a lot of fun.  And, the humor continues because the gunman really doesn’t want Robo to follow him, but is pretty powerless to do anything about it.  Robo is kind of a force of nature in this series, so he kinda does what he wants in a “gentle giant” sort of way.

The art is also really spot on.  Wegener is able to convey a lot of subtlety and emotion just via Robo’s body language and eyelids.  It’s really quite cool, especially when you get so used to seeing more “realistic” art that looks quite complex but has none of the emotion of Robo. It’s all about telling the story and Wegener get’s that.  I love his clean style.

I also love the publication schedule for Robo.  The creators don’t feel the need to grunt out an issue every month whether they’re ready or not.  Wouldn’t it be nice if more series did that?  Just write a issue or story arc when you have a good story to tell and have everything organized.  We should really be rewarding this type of publication behavior.