Same As It Ever Was

Last Updated on Tuesday, 26 May 2009 12:53 Written by Scott Wegna Monday, 25 May 2009 10:00

Okay, so the new blog is no different than the old blog.

I shouldn’t be as uncomfortable about the move as I am. But this is like moving in with your long-term girlfriend for the first time sort of uncomfortable. Sure you love her . . .well, you’re pretty sure you love her. And she’s really awesome . . . except when she does that thing that makes you want to cave her skull in with a tire iron. And you’re never going to have more than 12″ of matress to sleep on at night ever again, and she’s going to elbow you awake when you snore. And then she’s gonna want to snuggle -or worse!- watch Breakfast At Tiffany’s, while all you want to do is play Ratchet & Clank. And then the next thing you know you’re girlfriend is pregnant, and in a fit of irrational Love you got married because you didn’t know, you thought you’d be dead in six months, fuck you modern medical science and the horse you rode in on, and now your a father and . . and . . OMG WHAT HAVE I DONE MY LIFE MY LIFE, OH GOD, MY BEAUTIFUL LIFE!?!?!?!?!

<Ahem> Ok breathe.

So yeah.

One small move that might very well change everything.

In many ways, Brian and I are as married to Robo as I am to my wife. And as married as he should be to that nice young lady Lydia. (He should have popped the question years ago. Seriously.) Hell, I think my creative marriage to Brian is more binding than my actual marriage to Dorinda. You should see all the legal mumbo-jumbo that binds us together via Atomic Robo.

Anyhoo – What the fuck was I talking about? See, this is a good example of the sort of tangents I go off on in the Monday Rant. I’m sleepy and under caffeinated and this is totally stream of conscious shit. But let me steer this train wreck back on course.

My website died last week. In three years with my web-host I’ve had very few issues and they have always been great. I love them. But it made me think, and the think I thunk was that between my website and this one Brian and I were doing a lot of the same work more than once. And when you’re as busy as we are that’s just fucking stupid.

So in the interests of a more efficient Roboverse, here we are.

Because the website went down, my schedule of events got a little screwed up. But we’re all going to participate in a bit of mass self-delusion for a moment and pretend it’s last week.

Podcasts are what I wanted to talk about. Podcasts seem to be everywhere these days. And almost a month ago, after Brian and I did a series of podcast interviews, I started seriously listening to them for the first time. And a lot of them are really great. I don’t mean in terms of professional recording quality — although quite a few of them are VERY well done. I mean more in terms of the enthusiasm that the people making them bring into the mix.

I had avoided podcasts about comics for a long time. I figured that it would be a bunch of Fanboys spouting off about Green Lantern and Wolverine, and how this summer’s “big event” was really going to shake things up unlike every other “big event”, and knowing damn well that the status-quo wouldn’t be shifted one millimeter. And basically I was right. These dudes actually read Previews magazine at you. That’s like having someone read the phone book. Or watching paint dry while you read the phone book. In Spanish.

But there are also many shining examples of excellence in podcasting, which I will get to in a minute.

Geek Syndicate (my favorite) has never been short on the Robo-love. Barry picked up v3.1 and has now placed such demands on us that there is no way we cannot fail him now.

I found this Comic Geek Speak podcast completely by accident while searching for more stuff to listen to while I work. Of course, I didn’t work at all while listening to this. They reviewed Atomic Robo v3.1 and loved it.

Did I already post the page-by-page look at v3.1 we did with Major Spoilers?

It was the Major Spoilers interview that finally prompted me to purchase a couple bucks worth of equipment and software so that Brian and I could do the first Atomic Podcast. There was nothing wrong with the MS interview — not at all! The guys were great. But I’ve noticed that during phone interviews I spend 95% of my mental energy trying to follow the conversation (which is often hard to do because they are using Skype to call my land-line and the quality is always crap), 9% of my brains are required to actually register when a particular question is directed at me, and then a measly 1% is left for me to formulate and regurgitate an answer. The net result being that we often sound like bigger idiots than we actually are and we never get to give the answers that we want to — either because we’re too overwhelmed to remember what it was we meant to say, or because the conversation drifts away from us.

For example, I’ve heard more than once on a podcast, or read in a review that, “Wegener reacts sort of harshly when you compare Robo to Hellboy.” Well, no. Not really. Okay sort of. But how do I explain it? Well, the Atomic Podcast seems the easiest way. After two recording sessions and hours and hours of frustrating editing I realize that just learning how to operate a shortwave HAM radio and taking a class in semaphore signals would have been easier.

The point is, we now have a more effective way of saying the things we want to say about Atomic Robo — even if it is a shit-ton of work. We might try to do one ‘cast a month, though the next one will come quickly as we want to introduce people to the rest of Team Robo.

I’ve gone to the trouble of listening to about two dozen podcasts in the past few weeks so that you don’t have to be bothered. The thing I like most about them is the hugely positive impact they have on my productivity. Normally while I work the internet sits there, staring at me, like one big fucking distraction. I can’t turn it off, because that is where I get my reference images for Robo and how Brian and I communicate. But god help me if I feel like being distracted. However, if I throw a podcast into iTunes my mind does this crazy thing that I haven’t experienced since college when Mike Lynche gave me this tab and told me to put it under my tongue. I get hyper-focused and I just blow through my work. Yesterday Dorinda took the Widget to see Night At The Museum 2 and while they were gone I tuned into Indie Spinner Rack and the next thing I knew I had a page and a half of dense, detailed Atomic Robo sitting in front of me.

By the way, never put anything that Mike Lynche gives you under your tongue. In fact, just don’t talk to him if you can avoid it.

Here’s a list of the podcasts I’ve been listening to on a regular basis. Check a few of them out. You can subscribe to all of them via iTunes.

-Geek Syndicate. This was the one that got me hooked. Dave and Barry are awesome. Even if they can’t say my name in their mush-mouthed East-London accents.

-Indie Spinner Rack. Join Charlito and Mr. Phil as they play Dialing for Ditko and bask in their love for Indie Comics. This is a must listen for anyone curious about the world of Indie Comics.

-Comic Geek Speak. Great bunch of guys who have such a wealth of knowledge that they can talk about Superman and Strangers In Paradise with equal ease. You can tell these guys love the medium of comics.

-The Comic Racks. I don’t think I like a single thing that Iz and Stace-Bob like. But they are two of the funniest women on the internet.

-Quiet! Panelologists At Work. Matt and Jon take a big steaming crap on comic in general, but do it in such a way that it’s obvious how much they love the idea of comics. Basically, they are a British version of Brian and me. They’re not mean about it. They just call a spade a spade.

Okay I’m done.

Lets wrap it up with some RANDOM SPLENDOR!

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