Word Balloons: ‘Robo' is ‘more person than machine'
Word Balloons: ‘Robo' is ‘more person than machine'

By Matthew Price Comments 0
Published: October 12, 2007

A blue-collar, Nazi-fighting robot stars in one of the debut titles from Red 5 Comics, as "Atomic Robo” arrived on stands Wednesday.

Writer Brian Clevinger, who writes the online humor strip "8-bit Theater,” said he's been working on the character of Atomic Robo for almost 10 years.

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"Atomic Robo” is one of the debut titles from Red 5 Comics.

"I just kept reinventing him to be the perfect excuse to write the kinds of stories I'd love to read,” Clevinger said.

Fortunately, Clevinger said, they became the kind of stories his collaborator, artist Scott Wegener, would love to read as well.

"Atomic Robo is everything I love in comics, movies and video games,” Wegener said. "It's a big mess of action, adventure, science fiction and humor. The plans we have for future Robo stories will involve some serious issues, but Robo as a character ... never takes himself too seriously. At its heart it's a book about optimism and excitement.”

Wegener was the spark that helped finally bring "Atomic Robo” to life, Clevinger said.

"When he came on board, everything clicked,” Clevinger said. "I may have laid the foundation, but Scott put up the load-bearing walls.

"We've ended up with a fun amalgam of the Ghostbusters, Indiana Jones, Buckaroo Banzai and a robot.”

Wegener designed Robo to look different from the usual robot characters, but it took several attempts.

"Drawing robots was not something I'd ever really done, and I found the idea of the main character being one rather intimidating,” Wegener said. "I have a strong love for those ‘everyday Joe' kind of characters, and I didn't think we could do that with a robot. It took a long time to get Robo looking like he does now.

"Somewhere along the line I started incorporating little gestures and ideas from a character of my own that I was working on at the time and the two merged into what we have now. Suddenly we had a 'bot who was more person than machine.

"Though Robo would go through one more major aesthetic overhaul it was at that point, when I put him in his baggy cargo pants and WWII GI boots, that we knew we'd finally come up with something that both Brian and I really liked.”

In "Atomic Robo,” Robo is invented by Nikola Tesla in 1923.

"Our comic is the story of this robot's life and adventures through the 20th and 21st centuries,” Clevinger said. "He fought in World War II, helped with the Viking mission to Mars, advocated for civil rights, and that's just the tip of the iceberg.”

Robo is also the founder of Tesladyne, an organization devoted to advancing science.

"Over time, they also got into the business of defending the world against all manner of weirdness,” Clevinger said. "Robo's world is very much like our own, except that it's a little more susceptible to old pulp sci-fi logic.”

•Next week: More from "Atomic Robo” creators Clevinger and Wegener.