After a week of Warren sitting on the pot for vaca, we get Episode 26.

“It’s a cheeky little vintage.”

I got my “FreakAngels” t-shirt a couple weeks back. It’s comfy. Same with my “No Hero” tee. I was a 30-something Avatar Press whore for two days straight! Hrm. Sounds like a 50’s screenplay.

Also, I forgot to mention Episode 25, so read THAT first, then the charming, drunken, and drugged-up Ellis ramblings of an interlude, THEN Episode 26.

I was on a no-tech vacation for a week, followed by catching up on work, and now I’ve got STACKS of comic books to read. Latest floppies, 4 or 5 trades, and arrived-while-away back issues and auctions. Yeah! This rainy weekend should be FAWEsome!

Oh man, I’ve got to catch up on the forum, too! Wonder what I missed…

“Robotika” is a self-described “far future” tale that features killer sci-fi samurai, cybernetic gunslinger action, and goal-driven RPG-like group adventure, in violent, ironic tales, peppered with fantastical creatures and bad guys. Niko is a non-speaking, pain-sensor deprived swordsman and a major badass. CG is a bald, weapon-wielding beauty, and a badass. Bronski is a one-normal-eye one-cyber-eye pistol-packing cowboy, and a badass. Lets hear it for badasses, including the writer and artist, Alex Sheikman.

Sheikman has put significant thought into his “Robotika” world here, and for the added benefit of the reader, he takes great care to dampen the shock of “Robotika”’s in-your-face wonder, way-obvious abnormalities, and not-so-implied massiveness. Sheikman pulls this kindness off through sufficient back story, serene and fluid imagery, goal-based stories, and colorful, unique, characters you can quickly start rooting for. Much appreciated. Dialogue is a bit inconsistent; it feels forced and awkward in some places, yet natural and spot-on in others. Niko doesn’t speak, and doesn’t need to, so no complaints there. And there’s an obvious excuse for CG’s poor verbal timing. Pop-up antagonists, however, really throw things off with their dialogue. The gunslinger Bronski is Sheikman’s dialogue ace, though. Yay for Bronski! And as mentioned, you really do root for the three yojimbos. Sheikman does a wonderful job of introducing the heroes, challenging them individually and as a group, and keeping the reader interested AS they gel. Niko’s moments of introspection, either externally coerced, during virtual training, or during meditation, are placed well throughout by Sheikman; giving us a way to connect to a character we’d otherwise think of as just a talented killer.

“Robotika” is artsy! A welcome detour from simple sequential storytelling. Alex Sheikman has a solid command of anatomy, motion, and fight kinetics. Niko’s silly shoes fall off at the beginning of a brawl, just like I thought they would. heh. Throughout “Robotika”, I was always eager for a fight scene to pop up—they were SO good. Zooms, symmetry, and symbolism are used extensively in “Robotika”, but in a thoughtful manner. While there’s a lot of posing throughout “Robotika”, it’s not gratuitous or unnatural. Instead, the placement of characters, in sword-swinging flight or in pensive pause, is for significant effect. There’s not much fore-shortening, as Sheikman opts for near-vs-far proximity placement of characters to create depth extremes, but I didn’t mind that. Sheikman’s style and attention to detail trumps tradition. For many an example of attention to detail, Sheikman does not appear at all afraid to draw HANDS, in all manner of poses and grips, which I TOTALLY appreciate… and immediately envy. While the rare scenery or establishing shot feels a bit cobbled together, I truly enjoyed those frames as well. A bit of a personal nag here, Sheikman leaves a great deal of space unused, and it appears as if that’s intentional, as if to tease the viewer into begging for more. Grr, I say. But what we are blessed with, contrasting those open spaces, is just wonderful.

Sheikman’s wonderful art is also rather unique, in my opinion. I can’t really put his art in a cubby of classification or artist comparison. I’ve seen bits of commentary with comparisons to Tony Harris, and I think those moments in Sheikman’s art are fleeting at best. If this hadn’t come out before “The Dark Tower”, I’d swear Sheikman was heavily influenced by Jae Lee’s recent work. Now I’m wondering if Lee soaked up some Sheikman. “Robotika” art feels very RPG-ish, and that’s very consistent with the writing, and that’s quite alright by me. Enough with the comparison, inspection, and disassembly—”Robotika”, all on its own, is just really damned good, and so is Alex Sheikman.

While you can get newer “Robotika” via “Robotika: For A Few Rubles More”, the collection of the initial “Robotika” isn’t available at HI, so I’ve linked the cover image below with Amazon. Buy, buy, buy.

Atomic Robo is a Tesla-designed Earth-saving badass robot. “Atomic Robo” is a Red 5 Comics-designed badass comic book title. Learn it, live it, love it.

Brian Clevinger spins heart-warming, humorous, and mission-impossible tales for Atomic Robo, the sarcastic and lovable, albeit physically heartless, main character who saves the world on behalf of a grateful nation. What? Not for dough? Well of course not, what would a robot spend his hero dough on anyway? Clevinger proffers “Helsingard” whom I assume will be a recurring arch-villain / nemesis. Helsingard is a brain-with-no-body “B.P.R.D”-ish antagonist, but definitely distinct, thanks to Clevinger-born, salty, intimate, non-stop, hero-vs-villain banter that tastes of history we are not yet privy to. The lines throughout are not memorable, but only because there are SO MANY that crack you up. They are carelessly quipped by the characters, and at such a rate that, while you may be immediately endeared and giggling to Robo and his supporting cast, you’re doomed to replace each dialogue moment with the next FRAME’s drop-dead funny line. Clevinger jumps back and forth in Robo’s history of adventures, taking breaks from the intimated hunt-for-Helsingard grind to bring us period tales of WWII dogfights or Mars landings. Clevinger has brilliantly succeeded in writing fresh and extreme adventure comic book tales with a wonderful hero who has impenetrable verbal wit to go along with his indestructible metal hide. I just cannot wait to read the the Atomic Robo stories scattered across “history” that Brian Clevinger will eventually bless us with.

Scott Wegener draws your socks off. The art, at first glance, is cartoon simple with obvious Mignola flavor. Pay a bit more attention, and you realize that Wegener did too. His “cartoony” ends up being not too far from “realistic”. Weapons are weapons. Physics are respected. Robo looks and feels like a robot. The expression picked up from Robo’s eyes, however, is spot on with emotes. Action sequences can be naturally followed. The framing and angle of scenes is very well matched to, if not singularly defining in some cases, mood. Wegener, on more than one occasion, totally nails “irony of the situation”. Or, “you gotta be shitting me”. Completely absent of dialogue even. Wegener’s detail is just enough throughout—this guy is a master at line conservation. While I would normally prefer significantly more blacks for lighting contrast / effect, Wegener appears to intentionally hold his blacks in reserve, so that when he whips them out, it REALLY means something. His not-so-heavy style goes well with the light nature of Clevinger’s dialogue anyway. Hrm. I’m now a fan.

Ronda Pattison, with her thoughtful and themed coloring, does a wonderful job at adding just enough depth to Wegener’s art. “Atomic Robo” owes much of its visual liveliness to her. Jeff Powell’s lettering is clean and solid, and does a splendid job of distinguishing Robo’s speech, radio chatter, and HUGE sounds. Nice touch, and a great rounding out of the team.

So yeah, this was GREAT! The “Atomic Robo Vol 1” TPB collects issues 1-6 of the wildly popular, and for good reason, “Atomic Robo”. You’ll be challenged to find individual first printing issues of this killer title. Save yourself dough and eBay frustration and just get this collected volume NOW.

The mission-to-Mars was my favorite tale of the bunch in this book, BTW.

Atomic Robo: “I know it seems like a small thing, but I’m gonna need more than FIVE MAGAZINES to entertain myself for a TWO YEAR ROUND TRIP.”

I can’t tell if Robert Downey Jr. is serious or just fucking with people, but he pseudo-rants regarding the “Dark Knight” movie, “This is so high brow and so fucking smart, I clearly need a college education to understand this movie,” and quips, “Fuck DC comics.”

Check out ”’Iron Man’ drops F-bomb on DC Comics”.

The original interview, in full context, is actually a h00t.

heh. Given that, I’m going to chalk it up to Downey Jr. just fucking with people. Good one, “Iron Man”. Maybe we can see him and Christian Bale throw down on a red carpet in L.A. sometime.

When I picked up and watched the new “Justice League: The New Frontier” movie on Blu-ray, I wasn’t sure the DC heroes reboot into the 50s thing would work. It did. I floved it. While it had quaint post-WWII American settings, the character interaction and story-telling were mature, almost adult. I think there’s a bit of profanity in that cartoon movie even.

So now there’s a comic, “Justice League: The New Frontier”, which I haven’t read, but I picked up the recently released “Justice League: The New Frontier Special” #1. Three stories, still in the 50s, centering on key DC characters, including: Batman, Wonder Woman, Superman, Robin, Kid Flash, and Black Canary. The writing is exclusively by wow-he’s-really-good Darwyn Cooke, natch. The stories are great. Simple and bubble gum in immediate presentation, but comfortably enjoyable in punchline. You feel GOOD when you read this. Not enlightened or challenged. Just GOOD. And that’s just FINE with me.

The art is well done, by Darwyn Cooke, David Bullock, and J. Bone. Dave Stewart colors all of it well, too. If you like old-school square Dick Tracy-ish chins, cartoonish figures, and silhouettes, you’ll absolutely love this. I did. Even if you don’t, I think you’ll find the art certainly doesn’t detract from the writing, and at the very least, based on the era, feels appropriate. My one complaint was that the layouts seemed a bit rushed or sub-optimal in some places. As if they may have started off as cartoon / film storyboards and were just never fully cultivated to sequential page-by-page comic book visual storytelling; perhaps shoehorned. Don’t get me wrong, it’s all still great stuff. Enough so, I’m looking to get “New Frontier” back issues now.

The first story is Batman vs Superman, and it is easily the best Batman vs Superman throw-down since 1986 and Frank Miller’s “Dark Knight Returns” #4. But perhaps, not AS good. Hmm. I’ll have to re-read each and compare. Anyway, Superman gets the order from POTUS to take Batman down, and Batman basically says, “Bring it, bitch.” I REALLY like watching Batman outwit and beat the crap out of other DC heroes and this battle did not disappoint. Well, perhaps at it’s very end. But it was a beat-down I’m going to be grinning about for quite some time. Superman was really friggin’ SCARED. Hahahaha. That fight alone was worth the price of admission for “Justice League: The New Frontier Special” #1, IMO. The rest is a very welcomed bonus.