Coming Up In 2008

Last Updated on Friday, 28 December 2007 02:45 Written by Brian! Friday, 28 December 2007 02:45

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.

Popularity: 11%

Out Of Place Artifacts

Last Updated on Friday, 7 December 2007 02:03 Written by Brian! Friday, 7 December 2007 01:58

Since Atomic Robo #3 involves an ancient steampowered pyramid supertank motivated by a waterclock program that took 5,000 years to compute, I figured we could talk a bit about out-of-place artifacts.

Most O-O-Ps, as they’re called, just aren’t Action Science-y enough to work in a Robo story, although I really want to do something with the Crystal Skulls. Obviously, they’re fakes, but they don’t have to be in a world with a scientist robot!

Still, we like to maintain at least a nod toward plausibility. For instance, if we ignore the sheer scale of Issue #3’s pyramid tank (and the effects of corrosion and the clockwork mummy workforce), it starts to look somewhat not completely implausible. Finds such as the Antikythera mechanism challenge our perception of what ancient engineers and artisans were really capable of producing. Hell, we’re still not entirely sure how the pyramids were built. Some folks are inclined to say that proves supernatural or extra-terrestrial involvement. Me? I think that’s stupid and the simpler explanation is that we underestimate the technical know-how available to those folks. Obviously, their pyramids couldn’t move around, but these people clearly had a few tricks up their sleeves that we still don’t know about. Hell, maybe we’ve got all the tech right but we haven’t figured out how it was really used. Our ancestors had as much ingenuity as we do, it’s entirely possible that an “obvious” solution occured to one of them that we haven’t figured out yet. I mean, it took us thirteen centuries to rediscover concrete. Our ancestors were not morons.

And as much as we’ve learned about the history of Earth’s civilizations, what we know is incredibly limited. All we really have are puzzle pieces, and not that many when you think about it. Some ruins here, a few surviving epics there, etc. If people four thousand years from now had to reconstruct 20th century life based on a handful of random episodes of Friends and half a Buick, they’d have some pretty solid ideas about our technological ability, but it’d probably surprise them to learn that we had access to atomic power or that we were routinely capable of launching things into space to hit targets moving ten thousand miles an hour ten million miles away.

I’m not suggesting Egyptian Astronauts beat us to the Moon or anything, but when you compare what we can verify about ancient technology vs. what’s been lost to the ravages of time, it’s pretty clear there’s some wiggle room. And how much of these technologies have we rediscovered? Perhaps more interesting, how many have we completely forgotten about? Think about it, many technological advances were the results of pure accidents. What happens if you forget that technology in an age where illiteracy reigns? What are the odds that you’ll be able to rebuild on the work of the past? Pretty damn slim. What are the odds it’ll be stumbled upon again? Slimmer!

Let’s look at Tesla for a moment. Civilization is synonomous with plumbing and electricity. The Romans gave us one, Tesla gave us the other. Were it not for Tesla’s alternating current technology, we’d have been stuck with direct current for, well, who knows how long? Even if someone else eventually figured out AC, it may have easily been at a point after DC had become too central to the system (in terms of physical infrastructure and the politics of industry) to replace. Edison didn’t choose direct current on a lark: alternating current was a pipe dream, no one could figure it out. And yet, in Tesla’s own words on the subject, “…the idea came like a flash of lightning and in an instant the truth was revealed. I drew with a stick on the sand the diagram shown six years later in my address before the American Institute of Electrical Engineers…”

Were it not for Tesla’s innate understanding of currents, electricity would be neither cheap nor widespread. If you didn’t live in or near a city, then life today would be more like the 19th century than the 21st. A single person with the right idea at the right time can make an incredible mark on the course of history. So how many Teslas were there? How far did their works travel in those ages where it was much more difficult for information to spread and to persist? And what fundamental laws of nature were they superhumanly privy to?

We’re stretching into the realm of pseudo-science here and treading a path dangerously close to ludicrous New Age suggestions, but I think it’s clear that the ancient world holds a number, perhaps a great number, of technological secrets. Some of them, maybe most of them, have been rediscovered, but I like to think about what might have been forgotten. Maybe a mechanical genius was Pharoh five thousand years ago. Maybe his ideas were so heretical that his successor erased him from history. Maybe he knew that was going to happen, so he designed an automated weapon to strike from the grave — literally.

Well, it makes for interesting comics, anyway!

Popularity: 20%

FCBD ‘08, the Nev-R-Late Guarantee, and Reviews!

Last Updated on Thursday, 6 December 2007 11:44 Written by Brian! Thursday, 6 December 2007 11:41

I don’t know if I’m allowed to say, but it looks like Team Robo is going back to work earlier than expected. What’s the occasion? Free Comic Book Day ‘08! That’s right — no reprinted material, no D-List talent. This is an official Team Robo venture (so, y’know, C-List talent). Story’s under wraps for now but I will say that it’s our first glimpse of Cold War era Robo.

Before we ever finished our first page together, Scott and I agreed to never deliver a late product. What’s funny is that, for some reason, Atomic Robo #3 came out yesterday: a full week ahead of schedule. This is all on Diamond’s end, so I dunno how or why it happened. They really like Robo, maybe they were just excited to get it out to people? Perhaps with good reason, check out what folks are saying about issue #3.

Looks like Atomic Robo #1 broke the Top 300. In an industry where about 90% of the sales are from established creators working on established properties for four established publishers, this is a fairly significant feat for new guys right out of the gate. We couldn’t do it without you guys though. Thanks for going out on a limb and taking a chance on our weird little book. We hope to keep doing this for a long, long time.

Popularity: 4%