In lieu of actual content tonight, I’ll just assume Scott or I said something insightful or interesting in one of the following interviews.

Alternate Reality Podcast and The Gigcast interviewed us back-to-back on the same night. We’re going to have to get Skype so we don’t sound all garbled and delayed and dumb on these things.

And if podcasts aren’t your bag, then newseedcomics.com has got you covered there as well.

Scott’s got some interesting thoughts on Volume 2 regarding fiction, history, and how to mix them without insulting the reader or the source material.

As should be obvious, history is a big part of Atomic Robo. We’ve always sought to present history with a sci-fi twist but without trivializing the efforts of people who lived through the real events. Scott and I both had grandfathers who fought in WW2 and these men were heroes to us – and would have been with or without their military service – so we felt a personal need to be extra careful with the World War 2 content of this volume.

Mostly, we manage to respect history when we play with it by having Robo’s adventures happen on the fringes. It’s our theory that tackling history in this way is the best way to tell entertaining stories in historical settings without invalidating the actual contributions of real persons. It also has a side benefit of being Anti-Forrest Gump Insurance. The last thing Scott and I want is for Robo to be at the center stage of every major moment of the 20th century. He’s an important person, yes, but the forces that mold history and shape the future are far larger than any single person. If he’s at the fringes of history, then he can’t be perceived as the primary motivator of it.

An example of fringe historical adventure would be Issue 1.1 (first volume, first issue). It’s a classic early anti-Nazi pre-war pulp comic. It was an easy story to do because it was entirely fictional. While the Nazis had an interest in Himalayan peoples and history, and there was genuine interest in vril-like occultism, they never built a mountain base there to research it, so we were free to go nuts. You can’t mangle a history that never happened. Conversely, Issue 1.4 put Robo right in the middle of the Viking I mission to Mars. He’s on the rocket—not exactly a position on the fringe. But nothing Robo does for NASA lessens the contributions of the scientists and engineers responsible for Viking I and II’s successes. He is literally there for the ride. It’s not a story about how Robo saved unmanned space exploration, it’s a story about how there’s nothing for him to do. The men and women of NASA get the job done at every step.

So, we had to find a way to put Robo into World War 2 without trivializing the sacrifices made by the soldiers on both sides and the civilians trapped between them. Again, our theory of fringe historical adventure seemed like the best path to take. The danger was in going too fringe. I mean, if we had Robo battling 50ft tall Juggernaut Mechanazis, that’s clearly something that never happened (like the premise for Issue 1.1), so we should be in the clear. Right? Well, we couldn’t shake the feeling that it was insultingly fictional. As if we would be saying that the real WW2 wasn’t “interesting” enough.

One could maybe argue that we were over thinking it at this point, but really, you can go to just about any other big action comic book to find aliens and giant warbots. We wanted to do something a little different. It was always our goal to be as realistic as possible. Or, perhaps more accurately, to be as plausible as possible. Yeah, our main character is a walking impossibility, but other than that we aim for plausibility. And frankly, the Germans just didn’t have the time/resources/tech to build giant robots. Intercontinental cannons and orbital weapons are another matter, of course…

In the end, we decided to give Robo missions that went alongside actual World War 2 events. Issue 2.1 concerns the Allied invasion of Sicily, Operation Husky. Robo is tasked to destroy key targets concurrent to the invasion. An interesting dualism kind of generated itself in this arc: the actual invasion is a background event to Robo, while Robo’s mission is a background event to the invasion. I just now noticed that, but I’m totally taking credit for it if anyone thinks it’s cool.

When we first started thinking about a World War 2 arc, we were talking about this exact set up for Operation Overlord and the Normandy landing. But, really, everyone does Normandy. We wanted to help raise awareness that there was more to WW2 than Normandy. Hell, there’d have been no Normandy without the costly lessons learned in Sicily, but that’s another topic altogether.

The invasion of Sicily and the Italian Campaign that followed are these fascinating, pivotal moments in the war, but they’ve been forced to the fringe of public awareness by the Hollywood-ization of World War 2 and an almost fetishistic focus on Normandy. In essence, even though Robo’s missions are critical to the success of the war effort, we’ve managed to put him at the fringe of a fringe. Hopefully, he won’t step on any toes there. Dude weights a quarter of a ton, it’d really hurt.

Most people who work in comics are comics fans. It only makes sense. I mean, you don’t become a auto mechanic if you hate cars. And this is what’s wrong with most comics. They’re written and drawn by people who think comics are doin’ just fine. If Atomic Robo has any kind of advantage, it’s that its co-creators kind of hate comics.

See, Scott and I collected comics in the early ‘90s because that’s when we were stupid teenagers. The state of the industry and the benchmark for quality in those days eventually pissed us off and we both gave up on comics. It would be years before we’d come back to them, and it would be a slow and grudging effort.

We enjoy the idea of comics and take great pleasure in a number of titles from a number of companies and creators, so maybe it’s unfair to say that we “hate” comics. More accurately, we hate the reality of the state of American comics today; what comics have become in an overall gestalt sense; what people come to expect out of a comic. We see so many titles making the same mistakes that pushed us away from comics in the ‘90s, and the tragedy is that these are wholly unnecessary elements and easily remedied. But it feels like no one ever does.

So, when we were brainstorming on what we wanted Atomic Robo to be, we came up with a list of rules. It was nothing formal, but things would come up in conversation, like:

“Man, I hate it when comics do X.”

“I know! Let’s never do that.”

“Agreed.”

So, a little while ago, I put together a list of things that Team Robo guarantees you’ll never see in one of our comics.

In no particular order, Team Robo promises you:

No angst: Loading characters up with angst was a revolutionary move on the part of Marvel Comics back in the ‘60s. I haven’t looked at a calendar today, but that was four decades ago. There are other emotions and motivations available to characters. Atomic Robo is not a comic that will be 100% sunshine and jokes, it would idiotic to portray a complicated life of 80+ years as a nonstop party with scientists, but we aren’t going to delve into melodrama either. You are not going to see Robo mope about his lack of emotions, or pine to be human, or throw a tantrum over daddy issues, or whatever childish nonsense passes for characterization in most comics these days.

No “cheesecake”: This is nothing more than Scott and I having the audacity to treat women like human beings. I mean, come on, 99 times out of a 100, there is no reason at all to frame a panel from the perspective of a girl’s ass. Grow up already.

No reboots: They’re frustrating, unnecessary, and a jarring reminder that all fiction is a thinly veiled series of lies. The major events of Robo’s lifetime were plotted years before we worked on the first page of the first issue. Anything Scott and I add to that has to fit organically into the existing framework. If it doesn’t fit as naturally as if it’d been there all along, then we skip it and move to the next idea. This is a much better solution than making a deal that the character would never make with the devil he’d never deal with to change “one” thing that alters the entire universe in ways that no one in charge seems to fully comprehend or address. Ahem. Everything that happens will fit into the larger mythos; everything that happens will happen for a reason; and nothing that happens can be “undone.”

No filler: This one’s pretty simple. Why should we devote a month of our short lives to creating an issue if it isn’t worth reading? And then why should we try to sell you an issue that isn’t worth buying? The main source of filler issues seems to be due to moving set pieces from the aftermath of one event to set up the next one. Since we have no reason to follow Robo’s life as a linear chain of events, we’re free to jump straight from one adventure to the next. Maybe Robo fights a sea monster. Maybe we follow the lives of Action Scientists when off duty. But it ain’t filler.

No delays: This one’s even simpler. The industry’s gotten so bad about delays that they have become the norm. No one is surprised any more when a comic is delayed. And when a comic has no delays, there’s that unspoken “yet” or “in a while” tacked at the end. Red 5 Comics was constantly praised, praised, merely for delivering books on time. What kind of industry is this? Think about it for a minute. Imagine if you were lauded by co-workers and supervisors just for showing up to work on time. It’s ridiculous. We could make more money if we gave you 12 issues a year, but we take a break between each mini-series to build up a buffer on the next one. We’d rather deliver nine issues a year exactly on time than promise you twelve issues and deliver one of them late.

Pick up any Big Two title and you’ve got a 50% chance of finding one, some, or all of those rules broken between its covers. Pick it up for a year, and it’s a 90% chance. This is what’s wrong with comics today. I mean, honestly. What kind of maladjust goes out of his way to read melodramatic borderline misogynist stories with incomprehensible continuities that constantly shift when there’s a story at all if it shows up on time?

It’s not that people don’t like what mainstream comics are about. NBC’s Heroes proved that. So it’s got to be something else. Do you really think Heroes would’ve taken off if every scene involving Claire or Nikki was shot at ass- or boob-level? If the events of previous episodes changed with every new episode? If the show occasionally aired an hour, or a day, or six weeks late?

You can blame cable television, and DVDs, home entertainment systems, and PC and console games for the decline of comics readership. I don’t doubt for one second that those contribute to the problem. But, maybe, just maybe, people sought other forms of entertainment because it is a rare comic that treats itself or its readers with respect.

Too bad it’s not quite as cool as it sounds.

Apparently there’s a scene in the upcoming Superhero Movie that takes place in a comic book convention where Red 5 Comics has a booth. Among the booth’s props is a 6ft tall cut out of Robo from the first printing of Issue #1. No idea what kind of screen time we’ll have, but it’s got to be tough to miss something like that.

If there was any kind of immediate feedback system in theaters, I’d ask folks to watch it. The message, “I paid eight bucks just to see Atomic Robo in a movie,” would not be a subtle one. But, alas, there is no such immediate feedback system in place.

Continuity is consistency. A finished film appears to be a consistent whole because continuity exists between camera angles, between scenes, objects within the scenes, the characters, and the plots they drive. Hell, the very motion of “motion pictures” is an illusion your brain manufactures from the continuity between individual frames.

Continuity is the clear path of cause and effect from origin to conclusion. Without continuity there is anarchy. It would be fair to say that continuity is the basic building block of all storytelling.

So why is continuity such a huge problem for comics?

Well, The Big Two have made continuity their problem. This isn’t anyone’s fault, it’s just the inevitable result of maintaining a cache of un-aging characters for five to seven decades with hundreds of creative teams overseen by dozens of editors. Today’s comics creators and editors are in the ineviable position of figuring what to do to maintain continuities that were never meant to be maintained.

Good luck with all that.

So far DC’s decision has been to nearly completely erase their existing history to reboot the multi-uni-multiverse every so often (and more and more often). They can’t be faulted for doing it the first time because, hey, it had never been done before. They couldn’t hope to have foreseen some of the inconsistencies it would cause. They can even be forgiven for doing it a second time because “Surely,” they no doubt thought, “We figured out what went wrong and this time we can make it stick!

Short version: they didn’t. The third reboot is where it’s fair for us to make fun of them for it. I guess DC’s reboot policy is, “Fool me seven times, shame on you. Fool me eight or more times, shame on me.”

Marvel’s solution tends to work better. They just quietly ignore and/or update the past as needed. Iron Man, for example, originated in a Vietnam-like war and battled Cold War-like enemies. Today his origins are tied to the Middle East and he fights terrorist-like enemies. Same actor, different stage.

Marvel recently attempted a DC-type “clean slate” reboot, in miniature, with the Spider-Man storyline One More Day, which is what got me thinking about continuity today.

If you’ve got a lot of time on your hands, check out the multi-part interviews with Marvel Editor-in-Chief Joe Quesada and see Spider-Man writer J. Michael Straczynski’s perspective from the other side.

TL;DR version – “We think we should see other people.”

To say that reaction to this story has been “mixed” would be, well, lying. The reaction is negative in a big way and by a large margin. It’s probably impossible to find out for certain, but I bet reaction would be more favorable if the story wasn’t a DC-type continuity reboot or if, at least, it arose naturally from the characters instead of spontaneously arriving care of left field.

I think part of what riles fans so much about these kinds of events is that they are meant to “solve” a particular (and sometimes merely perceived) problem with continuity when all they really do is bring to light that comics characters’ continuity is very poorly maintained when viewed with the slightly scrutiny. It calls into question the consistency of the character (or setting) as a whole. It breaks the illusion.

Atomic Robo is a reason to love comics.

Atomic Robo is one of IGN’s best new titles of 2007.

I finished the script for our FCBD ‘08 offering. Robo has to stop a global radioactive crisis in sixteen pages. Can he do it?! The story takes place in the ‘60s so, yeah, it probably turns out okay in the end.

This was probably the hardest time I’ve had with a Robo script. Turns out that sixteen pages is an incredibly awkward length. It’s way too long for a quick fire mini-comic (of the type you’ll see in the backs of Atomic Robo #3 – 6) and way too short to indulge in slowing things down for a moment as in a full length story. On average I have to write every page about three to five times while searching for the right pace between action beats, plot beats, and comedy beats. Some of this re-writing is done in my head, but either way it takes time. It was the same with this FCBD script. Then I’d get to the end of Act I, realize it was moving way too slow, and then re-write the whole Act. Repeat for Act II. And for Act III. It was a pain in the ass, but I’m very happy with how it turned out. Scott’s done a few pages already and they’re wonderful. I was so jealous of the quality of his work in Killer of Demons and Punisher War Journal #14/15 after he finished Atomic Robo #6. So it’s great to have him back on Robo again after nine months of powering up.

The issue is a bit of an experiment for us. We’re working in a more cinematic format. I tend to think in cinematic terms when scripting – my initial scripts were written in screenplay format because that’s what I was most familiar with – because I’d taken several years’ worth of film courses in my crazy college days. It’s a more regimented layout, but on the other hand it frees us up to do some interesting shots. And I feel like I’m better able to utilize the page. It’s like 8-bit trained me to get something done on every page and this new format taps right into all of that training. I don’t know if we’ll stick with it, but it’s been a fun format to work in so far.

What’s next on my plate? Why, writing Atomic Robo Vol, 2 Issue #2, of course! There’s no guarantee that we’ll see a second volume – we need you guys to support the next three issues of the current mini-series for that to happen – but it can’t hurt to be prepared just in case we screw up and succeed.

Blog thingie appears edit-able and HTML enabled. Happiness.

Marvel just opened a digital distribution service. It’s not quite what it should be, but I suppose they’ve got to figure out for themselves that the internet isn’t there to destroy their business.

Things to Fix

Things They Got Right

Just seeing what this thing does.