Atomic-Robo.com

You're showing our age with your RIFTS lingo.

Shut it, Gramps!

Hmmmm. It's not showing up on the new Diamond listing I'm looking at even as I type.

(Which I guess means "100% guaranteed, confirmed by Diamond" actually means "go ahead — flip a coin … your guess is as good as ours"?)

*sigh*

I've seen shipping lists for the 29th with AND WITHOUT Atomic Robo. Oh, man, who do I love more? The incompetent morons at the printer or the incompetent morons at Diamond?

I'm sure it'll be worth it whether it comes out on the 29th or 5/6 (or …?), but still … I can't even imagine how frustrated you guys must be.

Well, here's hoping, anyway. I know one mag I get at my LCS, RUE MORGUE, never showed up on any of Diamond's lists for March … but it still shipped. Who knows?

When I ran my shop, we actually ordered many of our magazines, including Rue Morgue from Ingrams and not Diamond. It's my understanding that this is fairly common practice.

No, you really cannot :

On the other hand some shipping lists do show Robo this week. For example.

That's a hell of a business Diamond is running over there, let me tell ya.

Diamond managed to screw the shop I work at regarding Free Comic Book Day. Apparently, 2 pages of our order form were stuck together and we haven't recieved any of the FCBD titles. They've been shipping them out to everywhere else for the past two weeks. It's up in the air whether we get anything at all. Morons.

Here's hoping we all get Robo eventually.

That really sucks.

One of the biggest problems I had with my shop when I ran it, and it still exists today, is that the store pre-dates the existence of FCBD, and as such, the owners just don't seem to understand how to make it work…though god help you if you tried to help them understand. It's gotten to the point that the suggestion has been made that they should just put out an order form and let their "pull & hold" customers just place an order for what they want, and to hell with everybody else.

In an effort to combat this, I was willing to kiss about $300 dollars of my own money goodbye so that I could "sponsor" several of the FCBD offerings that weren't from Marvel or DC…but I got the continual run-around until just after it was too late to place an order. Thankfully, Robo sells really well for that store, so I'll be able to get the FCBD issue for that.

I find it truly ridiculous that FCBD isn't actually free.

Robert A Heinlein would approve — "There ain't no such thing as a free comic book."

As the saying goes, "there's no such thing as a free lunch". I don't know if our intrepid Atomic Robo creative team got paid for their involvement on the FCBD issue (though I suspect they saw SOMETHING), there are still costs involved with making the actual, physical product. The art team has paper, pencils, inks, and so on, that they have to buy. I think it costs Red 5 money just to be involved and listed in Previews as a FCBD contributor…which is why you'll see varying levels listed among the companies (gold, silver, etc). Plus there's money involved with the actual printing of the comic. And then there's shipping. Stuff ships from Diamond via UPS, and no matter how good a cause it is, UPS isn't going to ship for free.

And they still make it to the shops for an average of about $.50 (I'm guessing…I don't have access to raw numbers right now) a book. Some are more, some are less. I'm trying to remember, but I think last year's FCBD Robo cost the store between $.50-.60 each. Much cheaper than a shop usually pays each for a book, but not exactly "cheap" either, when you're talking about dozens of copies or more of something you can't even charge for.

The whole idea is to bring in NEW readers. To give people something they haven't seen before and give them a reason to try it out. If done right, it's an incredibly powerful advertising tool. The trick is to build it up as something sensational that you can't possibly imagine missing out on. With all the comic book movies out there now, comics are closer than they've ever been to being in the "mainstream"…but it seems that particularly the "big two" are determined to put out books that are either designed for kids and kids only, or it's a tie in to their next big "event" book that you're not going to understand unless you were already gonna buy the event book when it came out.

…Sorry…I have frustration when it comes to Free Comic Book Day. It gets out sometimes.

Just curious and i know this is off topic but who is the soldier under Scottie and over Lieutenant Everett on Volume 2s cover.

I don't have the cover in front of me, but that's probably Sgt. Hovarth. Most dialog from the soldiers in the first two issues came from Everett or him.

On a completely different note, I've just seen that Robo figure/statue prototype on Nuklear Power. Any more light you can shed on that?

More info.

Big, BIG Atomic Robo fan and was pleased to see it not only this morning at my local CBS (Paradox Comics & Cards in Fargo, ND), but also on USA Today's pop culture blog "Pop Candy" http://blogs.usatoday.com/popcandy/
Just thought I'd ad a heads up for ya!

As usual, Atomic Robo is the roxx0r! No, really, big fan here, and whenever it comes out it's sure to be book of the week on my column.