It’s Official

Last Updated on Saturday, 27 October 2007 12:18 Written by Brian! Friday, 26 October 2007 11:37

Atomic Robo #1 has completely sold out. Not bad for a couple of newcomers working on a new title about a new character from a new publisher. That’s usually the perfect formula for failure in this industry, so you can imagine that we’re all pretty excited by this news.

If you were unable to get your hands on a copy, don’t worry. We’ve got a second printing on the way! Here’s the all-new, all-different cover. The second printing will be available for purchase in a month or so. In the meantime, it’s two short weeks until Atomic Robo #2 hits the stands. And don’t forget to order Atomic Robo #3 (OCT073752). Issue #4 should be available for pre-order at some point this week when they release the newest Previews.

Cheesecake Factory

Last Updated on Wednesday, 24 October 2007 11:56 Written by Brian! Wednesday, 24 October 2007 11:04

The one thing that disappoints me about Atomic Robo is that it’s one of the few American comics that treats women as people as opposed to objects that exist for male pleasure/interest/attention, but it probably won’t dawn on anyone for a couple more years. There just aren’t many women for us to work with in Helsingard’s Himalayan mountain base, the Nevada desert, a newly discovered 5,000 year old pyramid, NASA in the ’70s, Mars, or an underground abandoned mad scientist’s lair. That takes us through Volume One. Volume Two chronicles Robo’s participation in a part of the European Theater of World War Two and, again, not many women there either (with some exceptions).

Part of the problem is that as a book so heavily steeped in the early 20th century and pulp stories, the eras and settings we’re dealing with were male dominated as a matter of historical fact. It’s hard to work around that. I mean, sure, we put a fully functioning autonomous bipedal robot with human-like intelligence in 1923, so we take some liberties with history, but there’s a saying I can’t quite remember about how patently absurd things are easy to gloss over in fiction, but screwing up the little everyday details will piss off everyone. Like, you can deal with cheap faster-than-light travel without causality violation in Star Trek, but you’d never shut up if they said the Enterprise’s atmosphere was 86% ammonia, just like Earth’s. People can accept Robo as a character because it’s the big lie that let’s the story unfold. They will not accept that he helped the Women’s Paratrooper Squad to kill Hitler or that velcro was invented by a woman.

We do have more women characters planned down the road, but they are unlikely to appear before Volume Four. Interestingly, most of them are antagonists. I think it relates to the largely male dominated history of the 20th century I mentioned earlier. Actual history doesn’t make room for them, so we have to “lie” to put them in the action. And the easiest, most plausible way to get them there is to make them work outside the system built to oppress them. I mean, seriously, read about how they treated the WASPs before, during, and after the war. It would be disingenuous for us to install women in places of great power within the machine of a society that saw fit to send home fallen a WASP “at the expense of her family without any traditional military honors or note of their heroism”. It’s not like this kind of thinking was an isolated event. In many ways, being a second class citizen in the early 20th century would have been a step up for most women. Looking at modern comics, I honestly question how far we’ve actually come.

I hestitate to call Atomic Robo a feminist book just because it dares to treat female secondary characters exactly how the male secondary characters are treated, but against the backdrop of The Rest Of American Comics, maybe that’s all it takes to qualify.

Atomic Robo #6

Last Updated on Sunday, 21 October 2007 10:49 Written by Brian! Sunday, 21 October 2007 10:41

Added some more reviews of Atomic Robo #1.

Just approved Jeff’s final letters today. Ronda got delayed in starting the colors (get well soon, Ronda!) but she’s on track for finishing by our deadline for submittal to Diamond.

How do you like that? Six out of six issues complete before the second one ever hits the shelves. Team Robo does not believe in delivering a late product. It’s a shame Marvel and DC don’t work like this.

Honestly, that’s being unfair. It’s suicide to produce serialized content the way we did for Atomic Robo. Scott and I finished the first issue in October of 2006 and did one issue a month until March of 2007. But since Red 5 hadn’t planned to go print until the Fall, that gave us a tremendous buffer…and a financial nightmare. Marvel pays for an issue in October, they put it out in December or January. You’re only waiting a couple months for the turnaround there. With Atomic Robo we’ve been waiting a year.

Ouch. Just, seriously. It’s been a long year.

We want a buffer with the second volume too. But it’s a safe bet that we’ll aim for less than a full year between starting issue 1 and releasing issue 1.