Dancer #1 – Review

By: Nathan Edmondson (writer), Nic Klein (art/colors) & Jeff Powell (letters)

The Story: An assassin on the run.

Recap/Review: Dancer #1 is a very promising start to a series.  There’s nothing too unique about the story itself.  We’ve all seen this “man alone” story where a spy/soldier/assassin is being hunted by the company/army/government that used to employ him.  That theme endures in fiction because it’s compelling and offers lots of opportunity for believable conflict.  With stories like this, it’s really a question of how well the creators execute.

The plot is pretty simple: the “organization” (it’s left vague who this group is), decides to kill their star assassin.  When they come after him, his real-life girlfriend get’s sucked into the violence.  Now they’re on the run together and she’s only learned about 15 minutes ago that her boyfriend is a hired killer.  And, there is a wrinkle at the end that I won’t spoil (but it is very good).

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.

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.

Infinite Vacation #1 – Review

By: Nick Spencer (script/story), Christian Ward (art/story), Kendall Bruns (photography), Jeff Powell (letters), Tim Daniel (design) & Jade Dodge (edits)

The Story: What if you could always buy your way out of your current reality by swapping with another you from an alternate universe?

What’s Good: What a cool concept!  From the solicits for this issue, I had in my mind some kind of Total Recall story where you could have your memories imprinted with any sort of artificial experience and it would feel as if you actually had done/accomplished the event.  I should have known that Nick Spencer was a little too imaginative and hip to just retread an old Governator movie.  I don’t think it’s too big of a spoiler to reveal the central theme for you here because it’s kinda central to the whole story.

If you’re at all familiar with the concept of parallel or alternate universes, one of the theories is that everything that can happen, has happened.  There is an alternate universe where you are the President of the USA, where you hooked up with Ms. Universe or where you have Russian oil baron wealth.  Of course, there is also a reality where you are raped in prison, homeless or dead (many realities where you are dead, actually).  Spencer and Ward’s concept is: what if you had an iPhone app that communicated with these other yous and allowed you to swap realities for a fee?  It is kind of a hybrid between eBay and the old types of commodity trading that Enron used to do.  Did you forget your wife’s birthday?  For $5000 you can swap realities with another you where you didn’t forget.  That kinda thing…

This tosses out all sorts of really cool possibilities.  Such as how does one feel self-esteem when a better life is merely a question of money?  When do you have “enough” happiness and stop trying to trade up?  What is the price tag on your own happiness?  Would you sell it to another you?  What are you willing to do to avoid death?  How can the other “yous” be you if they’re wiling to sell some happiness to you for a fee?  Shouldn’t they want to keep it if they’re really “you”?  This series promises to explore those types of questions, especially when our protagonist, Mark, meets someone who isn’t fully down with reality swapping.  If you’re into high-concept sci-fi this is a must read.

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.