Talent Dialogue: Brian Clevinger & Scott Wegener (Atomic Robo)

Of the come-from-nowhere surprise successes of the last six months, Atomic Robo may be our favorite. Its accessibility, humor and charm make the book enjoyable for a very wide breadth of readers. Robo is sci-fi enough for the geeky types, historically conscious enough to intrigue the intellectual crowd, funny enough to tickle the average joe, and cute enough to be suitable for kids. This type of broad appeal is rare in comics these days. When it does surface it usually is at the cost of quality -- reaching out to all but getting a firm hold on none. Robo, however, manages to not only have something for everyone, but to also be incredibly fun and fulfilling at the same time.This is the type of title that fills voids you didn't know were there. Shame on what you're doing to yourself if you've not read this yet.

Initially planned as a six issue mini series with a possibility for future runs, the title's popularity has far exceeded anyone's expectations. Its 'hit' status has put smaller publisher Red 5 on the map and ensured readers that they'll be getting a lot more riotous Robo goodness in the near future. Brian Clevinger and Scott Wegener, words and art respectively, are the puppeteers of this wonderful madness. Gentlemanly as they are they've agreed to take some time to share a few thoughts with us on the book, and about the comic landscape itself. They, like Robo, have quite a bit to say.

TOM MATTSON (Newseed): Let’s start off by just getting it out in the open – the book isn’t crap. Everyone says so. Now, we’ll get into Robo specifics more in a moment but first – one or both of you have said there was some initial concern early on that maybe everyone else (readers) wouldn’t think this concept is as fun and cool as you do. Publishers turned it down repeated times, assumingly because they didn’t see where it would fit in the marketplace. Yet, despite all you peoples’ doubt mongering, the book is finding an enthusiastic audience that’s growing by the day. From where you’ve come to be sitting now, your own initial fretting aside, do you think publishers have an accurate image and/or understanding of who comic readers are and what they’re interested in? Do you see potential or existing corners of the market that the industry just isn’t capitalizing on, or could radically expand?

SCOTT WEGENER: I think that publishers understand what their particular audience wants. But I don't think there is a single publisher who could say that their audience encompasses the entire spectrum of comic book readers. Are their areas that could be expanded on or improved? Sure I guess. But it’s not something I feel qualified to talk about. I have enough trouble just making my own book as good as it can be.

BRIAN CLEVINGER: I think publishers have a good idea of the audience they think they want. But considering how difficult it is to just get accurate sales numbers on a given title – much less to what kinds of customers those sales are going – I don’t think any publisher actually “knows” who its audience is.

There’s definitely whole swaths of the population out there right now who would get into comics were it not for all the barriers traditional comics titles and publishers have erected in the last twenty or thirty years to keep them out (among them, incomprehensible continuities, rampant sexism, unreliable street dates, schizophrenia between MEGA-EVENTS and reboots, etc.) . I’ve been saying this for years now, and it’s not a new idea, but comics are really in their second golden age. Think about it. When was the last time we had this many viable publishers? Or such diversity in titles? Yeah, okay, The Big Two and superheroes still dominate the market. Granted. But this is the first time in forty years or so since we had so many kinds of stories by so many publishers. Superheroes and the Big Two still dominate because they’ve had such a strong head-start. All we’ve got to do is produce material that will appeal to people outside the current insular market and make sure they are able to find out about that material. Even ten years ago that might’ve sounded impossible, but that’s what the Internet is for.

Which, admittedly, is trading one kind of insular market for a larger insular market, but whatever!

Whatever indeed! I do think about all this actually, and I’m stoked that you do too. And even though the idea may not be a new one, I think it has more weight and reality now than it ever has before. The biggest observations being the increasing number of viable publishers and diversity in titles, as you mention. I could name a dozen non-superhero books the average citizen could enjoy. That’s never been true before. Not only that but more of them are showing up (like Robo) and very often they’re sticking. I feel we’ve reached a point that comics are mature enough that they’re ready to step further into the mainstream public spectrum.

The biggest issue though, and you hit right on it, is finding ways for people to learn about the material and know that it may not be what they expect. How do we say, ‘look what comics are doing,’ in a way that gets the attention of the non-comic-reading public? What needs to happen for them to see that this diversity in titles is growing, and if supported will continue to do so? And that is what the Internet is for, but damn it’s a big place. This discussion, for example, appears on the Internet but will probably be seen by only two or three people who don’t already follow comics. So where/how do we do this? People aren’t coming to the comic experience – we have to take it to them. Does this put it all on sites and publications that primarily have covered other media (music, film, etc…) to absorb comics into their lineup of worth-covering topics? Is it just a waiting game until these voices may eventually decide to start putting comics in front of their audience?

BRIAN: It’s going to be an uphill battle, there’s no doubt about that. I mean, the Spider-Man movies are some of the most financially successful pieces of media ever produced in all of civilization. But did it affect the comic’s sales? Spider-Man performs about average for a Marvel or DC A-Lister, so no. But things like successful superhero movies are reminding people of these characters and getting them used to the idea that it’s okay to like them. And sci-fi shows like Heroes or Lost, whether or not they’re any good, are bringing comic book-like tropes to mainstream audiences. This isn’t something that’s going to happen overnight, but I think we’re on the right path to getting comics more read by more people and (most importantly) more kinds of people than has been the case for the last few decades.

But clearly there’s an audience out there for comics. Millions of people read webcomics. The public’s interest in reading comics is there. It’s just a matter of tearing down the barriers and producing material they want to see. It’s not that comics or print comics are in danger, it’s that the superhero genre reached its saturation point ages ago, but it’s only recently that a serious effort has been made by publishers to explore other storytelling avenues.

SCOTT: In 1954 a gaggle of uninformed, close-minded, idiots really did comics a great disservice. When the Comic Book Code was voluntarily adopted by Marvel and DC, (after a dozen or so non-compliers were ruthlessly crushed), comics were pigeonholed into being “just for kids” for almost half a century. But look at where the medium went in other parts of the world. Japan and Korea are two obvious examples. Mostly we get bombarded with their terrible kid stuff, like Naruto and Dragon Ball Z, but there is a manga or anime for everyone out there. And even that’s mostly due to our warped perception of what comics and animation are all about.

But sequential storytelling is one of our oldest forms of recording history and passing on myths and legends. Ever seen prehistoric cave paintings? Or the inside of a medieval Catholic Church –full of pictures to pass on the stories to an illiterate congregation.

I think with the rise in popularity of graphic novels and their ability to bypass Diamond’s retarded system of distribution by going straight to bookstores we’re seeing comics gain a little respectability. The Internet is probably our best tool for showing people the diversity that comic books are capable of, but not by making new comic book websites. I think the trick will be to start integrating it into the much larger pop-culture community of the web.

Looking at Robo more specifically, as the title transitions into a future of self-contained minis, how much do you find your thought process to be changing in regards to the project? Are your motives, goals, visions, and work processes much different than they were a few months ago?

SCOTT: No not really. We decided within the first week that mini-series were the way to go. With a monthly book you inevitably get stuck in a grind at some point or another. You have to get a book out, but you've really got no story to tell, or its just filler to get from one big "event" to the next. Because we are only four people, (because this books would not be what it is without Jeff Powell doing lettering and design and Ronda Pattison on colors), it’s a lot of work just to get the stories done that we feel are worth sharing. I won't waste my time on a bogus issue. I don't have time for that.

Another point to consider is how the mini-series format compliments Robo's overall story. Each future series will focus on a particular time in Robo's life, so we can visit different decades (in no particular order) and then move on to another time period without confusion. It also helps structure the larger story for us I think. It’s easy for me at any rate to know that Vol.2 is the World War II series, that Vol.4 is the Jet Age and rocket-pack wearing air pirates series, etc.

BRIAN: And future volumes won’t necessarily be self-contained in the traditional sense. The second volume focuses on World War 2, but it’s not one continuous story. Instead, we’ll see a series of “smaller” adventures that are linked to one another but are also kind of independent to one another. The idea is that any individual issue will be the perfect jumping on point for new readers while simultaneously adding to the mythos for regular readers.

You mention that you’re ‘only four people,’ and how important everyone’s contribution is. How much effort went into finding the right letterer? A bad one can ruin a comic, and a good one unfortunately tends to fade unnoticed into the background. Powell though stands out as you read as being notably great. Was he just a happy accident?

SCOTT: Actually, like everything involving Atomic Robo and our entry into comic books, it was just serendipity. I went to high school with Jeff. It had been something like eight years since we'd last spoken and I had no idea if he was still doing comic book work or even where he lived or how to contact him. It was a lot of work tracking him down but damn was it worth it! Not only do we have a guy on our team who is head and shoulders above most people in the industry, but I've been lucky enough to become friends all over again with a really great guy.

I know that inkers gripe a lot about being under-appreciated, but I think being a good letterer has got to be even worse. Like you said; when Powell does his work well, no one notices it. It’s not just that it becomes invisible, but it actually helps direct the visual flow of the page in the same way that the art does.

BRIAN: I’m pretty much completely in love with the work Jeff does for us. It’s not a coincidence that I have him letter our back up comics too. I just cannot stand to see Robo lettered by anyone else. Plus, not only does he do an amazing job, but he puts up with my constant revisions. The poor guy probably has to letter every page twice on average, but he never complains and he always puts 100% into it.

I’m curious also, sticking with the early days, did Robo’s voice and attitude change at all after you guys finalized the character’s initial design? His sketches grounded him, in more ways than one, which certainly changed Robo’s in-action abilities, but did the look effect who he was as a personality? And as a side note, can we expect to see Robo’s design undergoing any changes in the upcoming minis?

SCOTT: Well for me there were no preconceptions of who Robo was. The initial concept was Brian's brainchild, and despite his ability as a writer, his ability to explain his idea in a way that I could wrap my brain around turned out to be pretty difficult. Partially this is due to my inability to absorb words with three or more syllables in them. Partially it was due to Brian's ability to leave out small, yet crucial points -the fact that Robo should be able to wear clothes for instance. Haha!

I know that at some point the sketches I was sending and the feedback and ideas I was including altered Robo to some degree. Enough that Brian made me co-creator, but that's something he can speak to better than I can.

BRIAN: Scott’s responsible for getting Robo back to his roots. I’d been working on the idea for about ten years at that point, so there was baggage from earlier iterations. Like, he had jet boosts and blasters in his arms. And, it’s funny, because in the story notes I had worked up, he almost never used those things. So, Scott’s big idea was to get rid of them anyway. I resisted at first, but the more I thought about it the more I realized he was right.

But the core of Robo’s personality was always fairly set in stone. I mean, he grows and loves and hurts and learns and everything over time. That’s just a natural progression. But who he “is”, that’s been constant. I had the major events of his history figured out years before we worked up a character sketch. So, the changes in his design had no impact on what happened to mold him into who he was.

Robo’s central personality trait, to me, is a kind of delighted arrogance. He’s not a robot character who pines to be human. He thinks humans are great, all his best friends are human. But he really enjoys being a robot – not in a wacky Bender way, I guess it’s more a vanity. He knows going into a situation that he’s super strong and super tough. It makes him a little impatient, a little reckless. There’s a line in Issue #2, “I just used my violence on them.” That’s Robo. It’s not that he lacks the imagination for more nuanced solutions, he just knows that most of the time the fastest way to defuse a dangerous situation is to punch the guy in charge until the crisis is averted.

As for changing his design from what it is now, it just wouldn’t work. There’s the vanity I mentioned. We haven’t had much of a chance to portray it yet, but Robo considers himself to be quite handsome. So, he’d see no reason to change how he looks. And I am of the opinion that there are character designs that you just do not screw with. You ever notice how no one can come up with a Spider-Man design that has the impact and staying power of the original? They got it exactly right the first time. That’s how I feel about Robo’s design. He looks as good in the 1920s as he does in the 2020s. Changing it just wouldn’t make sense.

Brian, Scott has observed that looking back he can see his art improving considerably throughout the opening run. Do you feel you’ve gone through the same type of growth in your writing?

BRIAN: I’ve been writing comics professionally for about six years now. So, while I’m constantly trying to improve my craft, and I think I’ve gotten better at writing Robo comics specifically, the improvement isn’t terribly profound. Robo kind of hit the ground running because I was able to skip a lot of the mistakes first-time writers make because I’ve been at this for a while. It’s mostly in stuff you guys never see. Like, it’s been a while since Scott verbally slapped me around for scripting panels that can’t be physically drawn.

Do you find you’re scripting panels with less visual description than you may have before? Focusing more on the plot and arching narrative than explaining the picture you see in your head? When you became co-creators did you push the imagery ball further onto Scott’s court?

BRIAN: I’m pretty sure Scott wasn’t technically a co-creator until we were half way through at least one issue, but I’d been thinking of him as one since fairly early on. I thought his art was terrific and from sketch one of day one he had a drive to do things “right”; to make our comic as good as it could be. And it wasn’t so that people would think Scott Wegener was this great artist, or for the sake of the comic book. It was out of respect for Robo himself. Even without knowing the character that well, or being familiar with the history I’d plotted out by that time, he really got what the character was about. So, from the very start, I trusted him as an artist to do things the right way.

That said, my scripts did include more detail early on. We’d never worked together before and I’d never written a comic book script before. So, I figured, hey, better to err on the side of giving too much information, right? I’ve scaled back the details since then if only because I have a better idea of how Scott works. I’ll go into heavy detail if there’s vital information about a scene for the purposes of plot or a gag, but beyond that I give a rough sketch and let Scott fill in the blanks. And, hell, half due to my own inexperience and half due to my trust and respect for Scott as an artist, I pretty much consider my scripts to be guidelines anyway – I know he does! If he can think of a different layout that captures the spirit of what the script says, I’m happy to see the change. It’s a policy that almost constantly bites me on the ass, though. I end up re-writing about half our pages to accommodate the alterations (sometimes minor, sometimes major), and at least once per issue Scott will change something without thinking about how it impacts the timing of a gag. I shouldn’t complain, though, because in the end the re-writes have more zing than the originals.

SCOTT: I would agree with that more or less. It took a while but Brian and I have a pretty good working knowledge of each other now. And the fact that he trusts me not to screw up too badly by keeping his descriptive work brief makes me work just a little bit harder to keep that trust. Plus, like he said, I deviate from the script in every issue to some degree or another. That’s certainly not out of any disrespect for Brian’s work. It’s just that some things work better in writing than they do as an image on the page. And there have been a dozen times where we’ve been working on something and I’ve said, “Hey it would be great to do *this*, and then have Robo say –blah,blah,blah.” If we do decide to integrate those little moments into the story Brian always has to rewrite what I suggested, and it always comes back a little different, and much better. Because, hey –he’s a writer. Its what he does, right?

In Volume 2 the scripts have gotten much less dense –but that’s because we both developed the overall concept together. On Volume 1 everything was written already –except Issue #1 for some strange reason. So this time out there were months of talking through it all, developing ideas and characters, etc. I even went so far as to write an entire issues. . .well, “write” is a strong word. I plotted it out and would leave things like; “PANEL 4 –Robo punches Nazi in head and says something sarcastically Robo-like.” Or, “ROBO –blah. blah. Jerk-face, blah.” Brian took the one or two not-awful ideas I had and turned one 22 page cliché into 2 kick-ass issues.

But yeah, the script as it comes to me now is a lot more streamlined than in the beginning.

BRIAN: He’s not exaggerating about that, by the way. Scott handed me a script that literally had whole pages of “Robo says something funny here.”

Scott, tell us about the self imposed sequential art boot camp you’ve been plowing thru the last few months. Pretend we’re all really intelligent, well educated, on the level, and into technical jargon. What new elements specifically about cinematography or whatever have you adopted to your style of story telling?

SCOTT: Sequential storytelling is freakin' hard. I have learned a whole new level of respect for other comic artists. Before Atomic Robo #1, I had exactly two comic books and two very short stories under my belt. Each and every page was a struggle to complete and they all left me feeling unsatisfied, but not understanding why I felt that way. I had NO IDEA what I was doing. I taught myself to draw, so I figured that if I looked at a bunch of comic books I could figure that out too. I would literally flip through my pathetic comic collection, (which was made mostly of Hellboy, Appleseed, Golden's run on The 'NAM, and Moeller's 2 Iron Empires mini-series), looking for panels that sort of showed what the script called for and aping what I saw.

That turned out to be a giant exercise in frustration though. Copying something and comprehending it are two very different things. When I wrapped up Robo #1 I was just plain angry. I thought it looked like shit. So it was off to the book store and several weeks of do-it-yourself art school. I actually found all the books about "how to draw comic books" to be a total waste of time. Unless they come from Ben Dunn and they are about Manga, or Ben Caldwell and they are about cartooning, then they aren't worth a wooden nickel. But four books saved my life: "Setting Up Your Shots", "Grammer of The Film Language", and Don Bluth's "Art of Storyboard". "Perspective! For Comic Book Artists" was another life saver.

I guess if I can put aside my self-loathing, the early Robo art was functional. It was at least on par with a lot of other small-press books. It got the job done. But I'm a competitive person, and I'm not happy with just "getting the job done." And Robo was instantly something that I fell madly in love with. So I keep pushing to improve artistically, and try to effectively use the new storytelling language I've been learning. When I wrapped up the Atomic Robo story we are doing for FCBD I finally felt that the art was good enough for the book. Its not as good as I want it to be, but I was able to sit back after the FCBD story and feel satisfied with what I had produced. I saw where things had improved and where other things still needed improving. It’s been a very frustrating yet rewarding experience.

Something that I found incredibly informative was an exercise I was doing in which I would find a bit of art I really liked -- preferably by an artist who's style was totally different from mine -- and I would copy it, often dropping Robo into the picture in place of their character. Now just before I said that copying something doesn't mean you understand it, so while I was doing this I would really pay attention to what was going on. What was it specifically that I liked about these pieces? How is the artist using light and shadow? What can I find in here that I can adapt and integrate into my own work? etc.

Its sort of the Luke Skywalker method of teaching yourself to be a Jedi. It's giant pain in the butt, and half the time when something works you're not sure why, but every so often your have a little "eureka" moment, and that lightsaber jumps into your hand and you chop that mutha'funkin' Wompa's arm off and for five seconds you celebrate your own awesomeness.

I keep telling my wife that my next wife will be rich so I can go to art school. =D

There’s more than one manga reference mingled in there. A lot of English readers may not realize that manga they see translated in their countries is only a tiny sliver of the huge wealth of works spanning all age and interest groups that’s released in Japan. There are some striking things happening in a lot of those series, but most of those mature titles aren’t licensed and translated overseas. Some are. The point, which I’m getting away from, is that there’s some very impressive manga out there and things we can learn from them. As someone who has read manga, and is clearly pulling from it – what do you see there that American comics aren’t doing yet? And Brian, tying back in with what we were talking about earlier, as far as expanding the US comic market, would a different format like the cheap newspaperish manga weeklies in Japan have a place here?

BRIAN: American publishers have tried it. There just isn’t a market for those comics. Odd, isn’t it? Manga sales are through the roof, and you’ve got to figure at least part of that must be the format, right? But publishing Captain America or Batman or whatever in that format has always been a huge failure. The success of manga in the American market is almost entirely due to manga being perceived as something “different.” These aren’t just tired old superhero titles. These things are new. And, yeah, they’re every bit as formulaic as your standard superhero fare, but at least they’re new formulas. Manga is successful because it’s printing so much material that isn’t standard superhero stories. Manga runs the gamut of genre and styles. It’s already where American comics should have been years ago but are only now slowly crawling towards. I just hope we get there in time.

SCOTT: To a certain extent, manga and American comics are apples and oranges. Not so much in what they are, but in terms of what their audiences expect from them. It’s also a matter of what manga can do vs. our comics. I mentioned the Comic Code earlier and it comes right back to that. It basically gave American comics Downs Syndrome, and while comics owe a huge debt to the superhero genre for keeping comics alive during a time when “right-thinking” people wanted them all banned forever, those same superheroes now sort of hold us back. So I think it’s important that we continue to diversify what American comics have to offer.

The Atomic Robo web presence is particularly fun and immersive. You’ve expanded the concept of back-matter and bonus material past the physical product and into an ongoing online community. ‘Closing the gap,’ between the digital and print worlds, I believe is how one of you described it once. How much stock and labor do you intend to place in this effort? Where would you like to run with it? Have you found that you’re discovering new and different opportunities to communicate with your audience?

SCOTT: Are you writing these questions from the future? Because I don't think our website is doing all that just yet. Right now Atomic-Robo.com is little more than a fancy blog with a few doo-hickies tacked on. (That's a technical web design term.) Eventually I think that RoboDotCom should be an extension of the comic books. It’ll be a place where you can find supplemental material, info about the real-world influences for stories, background information on characters, technical files, and comics. Like a giant RPG source book for our comic. I'd also like to see a message board community. Mike Oeming -the artist and co-creator of POWERS- has what I consider to be the best example of people brought together by a comic book. People on the forum are very different but there is at the very least this one thing which they share in common, and it’s just a very lively, caring, and amusing group of people.

BRIAN: When it comes to building a readership, it is folly to ignore the Internet. We’re still limited by our complete lack of a budget or technical know-how, but we’re having a good time with Atomic-Robo.com. It’s mostly commentary on the creative process, comics in general, the typical creator blog stuff, really. There’s also a timeline that I add to when every issue comes out. My “big” plan is to include a wiki so readers can expand upon the timeline and find all the little ways the events of Robo’s life are interconnected.

I concede Scott, that perhaps the site isn’t doing all that just yet – but the talk is impressive and has me intrigued. I actually meant to mention the timeline earlier when Brian was talking about how the mini-series help structure the larger story. The more I think about it the more possibilities I see in such a thing. It seems like using the Internet really gives you an opportunity to have Robo be two books. ‘Hey everyone, here, have a bunch of fun shit to read. Oh yeah and if you’re into it – there’s a big picture, which you can look for in the book and follow online.’ The print comic gets to be a bunch of fun romps that anyone can pick up and enjoy at any stage, but for those looking to have an on-going story and meta-narrative they get to see it all pieced together sporadically on the timeline. Knowing that you’re looking to use a wiki format, can we expect to see quite a few subtle references, easter eggs or parallels between different the different time periods in the Robo comics themselves? Do you see yourself eagerly wondering if anyone will notice such-and-such sneaky little connection?

BRIAN: Ha, there’s already easter eggs in the first volume. A background detail from one issue gets a brief highlight in another. Even if you notice the parallel, there’s no clue (yet) about what it means. Ideally, it’s the first hint for a video game plot – hubris much? – but we could do it in comic format if the world is stupid and no one wants to make millions of dollars by making a Robo video game. I’ve got a couple other easter eggs planned, but in general we prefer to link things up a little more directly. Scott and I are huge fans of James Burke and his whole thing is the interconnectivity of history. So, yes, you can expect for things in one era to have impacts in another. It should be a more subtle effect than you’re used to seeing in comics. Since Robo’s continuity is effectively immune to everything that’s wrong with the continuities of every mainstream comic book character, we’ve been freed to build his history organically. It’s much more cohesive and natural than what you get out of most comics simply because we’re not 50 different creative teams working under a dozen different editorial philosophies spread over 70 years.

SCOTT: Ah James Burke . . . I reread his book Pinball Effect on the flight to and from MegaCon last week, and all this week I’ve been watching his old TV series while I work.

Generally speaking I’m too stupid to figure out the Easter eggs on the DVDs that I buy, so I don’t care too much about the website in terms of them. What I do love however, is knowing the story behind the story. How do things interconnect, what was the creative team thinking when they did A, B, and C, and also the technical bits; like a schematic of Robo’s innards, or what makes the Science-Tank a “Science-Tank”?

Ooh, schematics would be very cool. Alright, now some important stuff though. Indy 4. Thoughts? Have you seen the trailer?

SCOTT: I was gun-shy after the recent Star Wars movies. And if there was one thing I loved more than Star Wars as a kid, it was Indiana Jones. I was totally negative about Indy 4 until I saw the trailer. I am still nervous about it but a lot of my faith has been restored. And Spielberg always makes a good movie. It still irks the crap out of me that Hollywood has to keep recycling these old decrepit actors, but it was nice to see Mr. Ford looking fit and sober when they rolled him out of the stasis chamber.

BRIAN: Cautious optimism. The trailer, while pretty cool, felt a little off.

Spielberg’s presence does bring a degree of comfort though, I agree. Have you seen anything good on the big-screen recently? I unexpectedly got the opportunity to see There Will Be Blood before it leaves theaters, and I’ve been wondrously haunted by the experience since.

SCOTT: Between my 7 year old daughter, my wife's 80 year old father, and doing the art duties of two people for Atomic Robo, nights at the movies are a thing of the distant past for me. The last thing I saw was "B Movie" with my kid (it was surprisingly good) and before that i think it was Return of The King. Though considering how expensive the movies are these days I don't really miss it. I watch TONS of movies on the computer while I work. In fact I have a date with Forbidden Planet tonight. YAY

BRIAN: Yeah, There Will Be Blood was quite a movie. Lydia and I saw it weeks ago and it still comes up in conversation. I maintain that Daniel Plainview was the 19^th century’s Larry David.

Both are out of place in the world and can’t handle…these people. Anyway, thanks a bunch guys! You have anything else you want to get off your chest before we wrap?

SCOTT: Only to say thanks. Thank you to everyone who has been reading Atomic Robo. Brian and I love working on this book and we hope it shows. We really appreciate all the support and we hope to be bringing you more Robo stories for years to come.

BRIAN: Thanks to everyone who’s taken a chance on us so far. We hope we’ve made it worth your time. Also? Everything in this interview is a lie. Scott couldn’t draw a conclusion. I do all the art.

Atomic Robo's entire initial first run has been re-printed by Red 5 and is currently being re-solicited for ordering thru Diamond distributors. If you were sleeping the first time around this is an unusual opportunity to retroactively not miss out. Order codes listed below. Also keep an eye out for the upcoming trade release of these issues and get your orders in now for the second volume of the series -- 'Atomic Robo and the Dogs of War!'

Diamond Codes for Atomic Robo Reprints:

(USE JAN088148) ATOMIC ROBO #1 (OF 6)
(USE JAN088149) ATOMIC ROBO #2 (OF 6)
(USE JAN088150) ATOMIC ROBO #3 (OF 6)
(USE JAN088151) ATOMIC ROBO #4 (OF 6)
(USE JAN088152) ATOMIC ROBO #5 (OF 6)

Official Soon-To-Be-Ambitious Atomic Robo Website: Link

Wegener's Homepage & Blog: Link

Clevinger/Wegener Interview w/ Comics Bulletin: Link