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.
What’s Not So Good: I alluded to my disappointment above and some of that is the unfair standard I hold this title to. But I still would like to see Robo fight with something. Other than this issue being a tad slow, I have no real complaints.
Conclusion: Not the most exciting issue of Atomic Robo, but this is still a comic that folks interested in different sorts of comics should be trying out. It never fails to be fun and humorous and tells some very good stories.
Grade: B-
-Dean Stell
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