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.
What’s Not So Good: Nothing really. The only people who might not like Atomic Robo are people who want everything to be epic (or at least try to be).
Conclusion: An excellent non-Marvel/DC comic that we should all support. Like all issues of Atomic Robo, this issue has “fun” all over it. This is the classic example of, “If you don’t like this, you are allergic to fun.”
Grade: B
– Dean Stell
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Conclusion