Robo 6.5 — GET IT!

Posted by | Published on February 8, 2012
robo-6-5-get-it

At long last, the fifth and concluding issue of Atomic Robo and the Ghost of Station X is now available! Pick it up locally or online through our semi-official retailing partner, Midtown Comics.

A note to our non-print digital customers! Issue 5 may be available this week? Possibly next. It’s an issue with Diamond and the way day-and-date is processed and blah blah blah. Point is: we’ll let you know when it’s available as soon as we can. I’m stupid and wrong, it’s available now!

Ghost of Station X was the hardest batch of Robo stories I’d ever written. It was the first time we consciously included a B-Plot, and balancing its mystery with the A-Plot’s mystery was a hell of a juggling act. I made missteps in every issue, but the team pulled off one of our best volumes yet. We put Robo through a doozy of a wringer and we didn’t let him out of it for five straight issues.

Thing is? We’re not through with him yet. Actions have consequences. Before we get to that though, you’ve got Atomic Robo and the Flying She-Devils of the Pacific coming later this year. We promise a hell of a jet pack joyride on that one.

The Reviews:

Comics Should Be Good

cxPulp

Direct Geek

Team Hellions

J-Run

Comics Bulletin

Posted in comics, volume 6 | 58 Comments
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  • Hypocee

    Something I only thought of today (I’m not too quick on the uptake) – as a living model “computer”, electronics engineer and theoretical physicist/ mathematician who worked with high security clearances in the European theater, there’s basically a 100% chance that Robo personally met Alan Turing at some point, quite aside from professional correspondence. Now, here’s his ghost face with another mind behind it. Was that any part of your writing in 6.5, or just fanon/coincidence?

  • http://www.nuklearpower.com Brian!

    I think we tend to underestimate just how top secret Turing’s work was. Consider that we didn’t even know he’d worked on code breaking until the ’70s.

    So, I’m afraid they never met. It seems likely Turing would have corresponded with Robo, but that would’ve been cut short when Turing became the most top secret brain in the world.

    Turing would have certainly been an early champion of Robo’s personhood.

  • Hypocee

    Belated curiosity – is “Phase 5: Fo-” supposed to be obvious/suggestive? I don’t read it.

  • http://www.nuklearpower.com Brian!

    Not really. The full word was probably “form” and no one knows what came next!

  • Hypocee

    Groovy, thanks for removing one more little splinter from my mind.

  • Hypocee

    I keep thinking about Ghost, which though annoying is a great sign I guess. How did Sparrow 1943 know about ALAN? Did Turing tell her about him, or she find out on her own, because she was The Effin’ Sparrow? Presumably her note was addressed to the next or future Sparrows, but she didn’t just tell them about the supermachine at the heart of Britain’s greatest secret…and why did she think Robo would know anything about it, especially given her impression of his competence?

    Find out in Real Science Adventures # blahdiblah?

  • http://www.nuklearpower.com Brian!

    Those are the kinds of questions you are meant to ask. 

    The most plausible answer is that The Sparrow of WW2 would be “in the know” when it came to Bletchley Park. Everything Turing did with math and computers became top secret in the wake of the war, but those are the kinds of secrets the then current Sparrow would likely have access to. She’d have also known exactly how secret that info was meant to be, and it’s most likely she died before Turing’s work was de-classified, so she’d have been intentionally vague about any hints she left behind.

    What she knew, exactly, is unclear in Vol 6. But I think we’re meant to understand she knew something connected with Turing was brewing at Bletchley. If it ever became a problem, her plan for future generations was for someone to get a hold of Robo.

  • Hypocee

    Just because my text wasn’t clear, it always made perfect sense that the note would be a cryptic reminder; by “tell” I imagined Sparrows would literally brief their successors/apprentices/offspring face-to-face on some serious secrets. On further consideration I’m probably assuming a lot more order than exists in their order, given that a Sparrow’s end is likely to be extremely sudden.

    Yeah, the situation makes a lot more sense with my mental image of a full after-the-fact conspiracy erased and her only writing a suspicious note in media res. Something’s up with Turing, keep an eye on it and maybe investigate someday…oh, he’s died now, guess that’s all right then.

    The note still doesn’t seem quite right to me; given Robo’s world, “ask Atomic Robo about any sufficiently weird problem” is the default behavior, so actively advising your compatriot to do so reads like he should have specific knowledge of the subject. Though I get that there’s a level of respect between two people who have saved each other’s lives multiple times in just one handful of minutes, I also read her low opinion of Robo’s competence and professionalism as genuine, especially since she evidently continued to get along poorly with him for the rest of her life. It seems like the “ask Robo” part could have been entirely left off without changing the story.

    But then, I fully recognize that I’m picking a nit in retrospect. The note had lots of other functions in the story and mood, and served them beautifully. My major hurdle was Sparrow Present Day not knowing about the Invisible House, which was the result of my jumping to a mistaken conclusion.

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