For Everyone

The guiding principle behind Atomic Robo comics is accessibility. It’s why we work in mini-series format instead of a monthly model. It gives you story lines that are easy to navigate. And it lets us tell the stories we want to when we want to. And it means a new reader can start with any volume and read the rest in whatever order he or she is able.

But it goes beyond just making the comic book easy to follow. It also means making a comic book that doesn’t exclude readers. Our promise is all about that really. Everything in there is a specific effort not to push people away.

Here’s a letter we received recently.

So, this is probably very old fashioned of me, but I just wanted to write you a short little note to tell you how much I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE, LOVE Atomic Robo.

I’m still very, very new to the series – I picked up the FCBD comic after having read last years and enjoying it, and after this year I really couldn’t get enough. REALLY. I went right out and got Volume 1 and the boyfriend and I read it together (he does a great Robo voice) and we’re getting ready to get Volume 2. It’s great.

I never really thought I would like comic books, but Robo really sucked me in and has gotten me hooked. I love seeing things try to attack him and fail (since he’s, y’know, a giant motherfuckin’ robot), I love the use of SCIENCE, and I especially like trying to figure out what all these noises would sound like for real. (My favorite comic book noise so far remains “WHUD!”)

Oh, right – and i especially love Doctor Dinosaur. Actually, I would probably read an entire series of comics with just Dr. D. I’m also extremely, extremely curious what he keeps in that cooler.

So thank you, thank you, thank you. Thank you for being my first proper introduction to comics and creating a character that I really, earnestly want to know what happens next to. He’s just SO COOL. I genuinely, earnestly feel like a little kid in regards to this – if there was an Atomic Robo lunchbox, I would want it. If there was an Atomic Robo cartoon, I would seriously wake up every Saturday morning to watch it. Seriously. It’s so great.

Anyway, this concludes my fangirl letter of the day – I just genuinely wanted to tell you how much I enjoy reading this comic and how much I’m looking forward to reading the other volumes. Thanks for putting something so awesome in to the world.

We get letters like that every so often. And they mirror what folks tell us at every convention we attend. We love hearing this stuff because it means we’re on mission.

I think there’s a perception that making an effort to be inclusive means artlessly shoehorning a bunch of unnatural “politically correct” material from a master checklist handed down from the Office of the Liberal Elite.

First of all, the OLE doesn’t hand those out, you have to request them. Second, you don’t need the list anyway. Just stop going out of your way to do things like this:

One “defense” for not making the effort to be inclusive is, “Aw, but man, I don’t want to have to think about this stuff, I just want to read/write stories.”

And, y’know what? We’re sympathetic to that. Thinking about it can be really taxing, confusing, and depressing. Imagine if you had to think about that stuff all the time. Perhaps due to being not white? Or not male? Or not straight?

We want our dumb robot comic to be the easiest thing in the world to enjoy, and that means it doesn’t get to make anyone feel icky when they read it.