Atomic Robo

Posted March 5, 2015 at 11:00 am

You might have missed it, but I shared some behind the scenes Secret History of Atomic Robo on Twitter yesterday. It's the story of where we came up with this issue. There's eleven tweets in all, numbered for your convenience, and they start right here!

Meanwhile! Did you know we take questions from our Patrons and answer some of them every week? It's true! Here's the latest pile of questions that get answers.

Ahoy!

I have two questions I was curious about and hoped you might answer in your mailbag one week.

(1) Do you guys have any favorite real or fictional robots?

(2) Did teen Robo ever make a mixtape for someone he was crushing on? If so, what was on it?

Thanks!

Vanessa L.

I suppose it would be unfair to mention Atomic Robo for either part of that first question, so let’s take him off the table.

Favorite real robot, for me, right now, is the Curiosity Rover. Chang’e 3 is a close second just for how its mission ended. It might take a robot mission to Europa or Titan to trump these guys.

Fictional robot is a toughie! Might have to go with G1 era cartoon Optimus Prime.

Did they do mixtapes when Robo was teenagerish? I think he kinda jumped over that stage of development anyway. Like, he was activated and already late teens or early twenties. Maybe a bit childish, especially for that era, but hell, the guy just needed some life experience!

Will we ever see the origin of Robo's bug phobia? Will we see more undead Edison? How about Ada Birch?

Ben

Edison? Oh my, yes.

Ada? Well. People who are not explicitly in Volume 10 might be dead. Or alive! We’ll make the call on a case-by-case basis when the time comes. I’m inclined to side with most of these guys living. It should be more interesting to see how familiar faces have adapted to the new status quo we’ll introduce than to just kill a ton of the cast off panel.

I don’t think there’s a definitive “origin” to Robo’s bug phobia. I tend to think of it as something that developed over time. The rest of us, we have skin and hair to keep things from getting into us and we have immune systems to destroy the few things that get through.

Robo does not! So, for him, I think it’s just the idea that it’s statistically inevitable that things are going to get into his body where they will be crushed to death and their gross bug goo and organs will be gunking up his insides and there’s nothing he can do about it other than try not to OBSESSIVELY AND VIVIDLY PICTURE THAT GOING ON ALL THE TIME.

Harder than it sounds.

First off, thanks for making such a great character and such awesome stories. I have been buying single issues, trade paperbacks, and electronic issues and whole volumes via Comixology. Atomic Robo is really one of the best books out now, and I'm grateful to have come across it. So, on to my question now...What kind of failures, or setbacks have you guys run into prior to your Atomic Robo success? Thanks for your time!

Jonnie

Well, Atomic Robo was rejected by every publisher we approached. Before that, my dumb novel was rejected by every publisher I approached.

The default state of this business is failure and setback. It's why when there's a success, it gets franchised to hell, i.e. Wolverine being in every Marvel comic book, then it was Deadpool, now it's putting "Avengers" on the cover, etc.

Failures and setbacks are discouraging as hell when they hit you, and after enough of them they make you want to pack up and quit. But they're a sign that you're participating. People who don't try don't even get to fail. Failures and setbacks are a step up. Everyone who is succeeding in this business is failing. Almost every single corporate gig I got after my success with Atomic Robo went belly up before the first issue was released. This new The Phantom mini-series from Dynamite is the first one in five years that might actually come out in full.

You just don't hear about the failures. No one puts out a press release for My Pitch Was Rejected because that's not news. Because, again, failure and setback is the default state.

Are there any plans to do stories of the original Ironhide? I would really be interested in learning about him.

Steven

So, some years back we got the idea to do Tesla’s 11. Step 1: who the hell is on that team? That was largely a matter of researching a bunch of cool historical scientists and adventurers to find a batch of them who would be alive and at an appropriate age within a plausible window toward the end of the 19th century.

We only came up with seven. And we had to cheat for one of them -- Wong Kei-ying died in 1886 but we figured, hey, why not fake your death and come to America for a while? We're lucky to be able to use history as a guide without being shackled to it.

Anyway, seven characters instead of eleven. Just as well since it’s hard enough to satisfactorily share screen time across just that many characters.

An unintended side-effect of this "wide net" approach to the casting call was accidentally inventing prior action science teams! See, a lot of the cool historical scientists and adventurers we looked into were born too early to make the cut for Tesla’s late 19th century team. So, you start to imagine different teams they were on. Mid-19th century. Early 19th-century. And their American, European, Asian, and African contemporaries. And then you keep working backwards. Renaissance, Crusades, Greece, Sumeria.

Uh, where was I?

Right, the original Ironhide. Like I was saying, we totally made room to tell that guy’s story, and a few dozen others, by accident. We already have some vague thoughts about what to do with the first Ironhide. But our Real Science Adventures spin-off series is in something of a limbo. It’s a matter of figuring out when, where, and how to make them. I think it's just to early in this new Webcomic Phase to tell how that stuff will play out yet.

Fill the aching void in your life

Posted February 24, 2015 at 01:00 pm

I'm not saying that your life is woefully incomplete without these latest additions to the Teslayne Online Shop, but I am thinking it.

First up, this delightful sticker series! These suckers are perfect for laptops or iPads or anywhere you find a flat surface.

Next, we have the classic Robo + Bomb image you all know and love. Check out that son of a gun.

And finally some nice juice propaganda that definitely isn't printed with human blood haha where'd you get that crazy idea?

MAILBAG FOR FEB 19TH

Posted February 19, 2015 at 12:00 pm

You've got questions. We've got answers. Let's dive right into it!

In light of no 'No Retcons or Reboots' part of the promise is there anything in the earlier stories that you wish you'd done differently, but now have to stick with, and has any of this changed how subsequent stories would have developed?

Mark

Not really! I wrote a meandering blog post earlier in the week that touches a bit on why that is, but it doesn’t say so explicitly.

Basically, it’s another advantage of telling stories out of order. As Scott and I learn more facts about Robo’s world, we’re able to insert facts and events into his past to reinforce those facts. The reader's experience, then, is merely one of new ideas being added to a body of information rather than having those ideas remove old ones.

If we think an established fact needs to change, there are two choices. The first is do nothing. Just leave the old version alone and try to find a different way to incorporate the new ideas into the established past. I can't think of when we've had to do that, but I'm sure we have. Y'know, part of the creative process that no one really talks about is how subtractive it is. You'll come up with ten ideas that sound great but then when you get in there and turn those ideas into the story, you turn up all kinds of difficulties with them. I think the worst thing a writer can do is to fall in love with an idea. You have to cut without remorse and without pity. I'm sure at some point, at least one of the cut plots, or characters, or ideas we've come up with in the last seven years was cut because it would've require a retcon.

The second option is something we use constantly. It is, in a sense, the very essence of episodic fiction. We present new facts -- whether in the past or the present -- that cast a different light on the old information.

This is pretty easy for us since the series bounces back and forth in time. A lot of information is given to readers from characters talking about their own understanding of what has happened or what will happen. And that’s the key, really. Because all it means is showing that character’s understanding of those events to have been incomplete.

Best example: way back in Volume 1, Issue 1, Helsingard talks about the Hollow Earth. This was when we weren’t yet sure how closely we wanted Atomic Robo’s world to match our own. Hell, we didn't even know if it there was going to be a second volume, so maybe it was something we didn't have to think about at all. Well, spoiler alert, we kept making comics and it turns out we were more interested in Atomic Robo’s world matching ours as closely as possible. And that means Hollow Earth is right out of the damn question.

What do you do? Well, you make it so that there is a “Hollow Earth” but present new facts about it. Instead of the Earth being literally hollow, you posit that there are several subterranean cave networks located around the world. They are enormous and separate from one another. They have their own ecosystems based on billions of years of divergent evolution guided by environmental factors unlike anywhere else on Earth -- hell, unlike each other as well. Each “Hollow Earth” instance can then be its own minor interior alien worldlet, and what happens in one of them has no influence on the others.

Big cave networks, even if implausibly large, don’t contradict reality as we know it. And Helsingard mistaking one of these networks for the full extent of Hollow Earth doesn’t contradict revealing more Hollow Earth caves, or the denizens of those caves being very different from anything Helsingard described.

Boom, problem solved.

See, most comics are subject to retcons because they’re depicting an eternal “now.” There is no future, not really, just the illusion of one and, in its place, a “now” that is updated forever. And while that has a lot of unintended side-effects on a narrative, one of the more glaring ones is that the story’s own past can never connect to its present without constant reinvention of the past to match the newest “now.”

That’s a lot of weird words, so here’s an example: “Spider-Man was bitten by a radioactive spider,” is an established fact of the past, but the how and when of that bite is constantly changing to match the newest “now” of Spider-Man. So, 1963’s Peter Parker was bitten by that spider in 1963, but 2015’s Peter Parker was not because his past has been continually reinvented to match his newest "now." That’s one of the reasons we keep getting new versions of old origin stories in comics and film. It’s an attempt to give the newest “now” its own past back. And we've already seen how ludicrous this can be outside of comics -- Amazing Spider-Man's origin movie when Raimi's Spider-Man origin movie is right there.

We don’t do that with Atomic Robo. We have stories that take place “now” of course, but they’re firmly rooted in a specific time and place. They will soon be the past because the future of Atomic Robo isn’t an illusion as it is in most mainstream comics. Atomic Robo's future, just like the real future, simply hasn’t happened yet. All we have to do is wait for it to unfold. So, 1963’s Atomic Robo could be bitten by a spider, radioactive or otherwise, back in 1963, and that fact will remain true for 2015’s Atomic Robo. And it will still be true in 2020 or 3020. No retcon needed.

We worked out a vague timeline of Robo’s life from activation to the “now” of 2006 when we were doing this. It wasn’t as detailed as the current timeline because we couldn’t know where Robo and his world would take us as we worked on it. But the major events were mapped out. This gave us enough structure to start writing stories with enough room between them to let us flesh it out new ideas about how to populate the blank spots of that structure as we came up with them over the years.

What happened between Robo and Hawking?

Sterling

We get this one a lot. My original idea is that they were romancing the same lady and that drove a wedge between them.

But then we came up with Zorth Cartography in this very volume, and it’s an element of the setting that keeps finding places to crop up. So, now we’re thinking that instead of competing for love, they were competing for scientific theories to explain black holes.

Hawking’s theory “won” and Zorth Cartography faded into obscurity. The two have been bitter rivals ever since.

What plane makes up the She-Devils’ mother ship. Is it a Sunderland or a Martin PBM Mariner?

It is indeed a Short Sunderland. Specifically the Mark IV, a.k.a. Short Seaford. I think. I’m sure Scott will correct me if he actually reads these things.

I seem to remember hearing that a lot of the Action Scientists are based on people Brian and Scott know. Is there any list of who people are inspired by? Or even just who are inspired by real people if privacy is an issue.

Ben

I didn't think there were too many until I started answering this question.

You actually just saw the first time it happens. Dr. Lewis and Dr. Martin are based on Brian and Scott. The new faces you see in Volume 4 are all based on people Scott knows. My favorites there are Ben Robbins (the Guardian Green) and Terrence (the Winston) with honorable mention, because I only met him once, to Robo's assistant Jerry based on A Different Brian Whom Scott Knows.

Helen's design in Volume 5 is based on Scott's wife. Powell down in Exotic Ballistics in Volume 6 is based on our very own letterer, Jeff Powell. All the She-Devils in Vol 7 are based on real ladies we've met through our comics work. Atomic Robo's "heart surgeon" is based on Phil our real life nuclear scientist buddy and Weirdness Consultant.

Writing History Backwards

Posted February 16, 2015 at 04:00 pm

The most interesting part of writing this comic has been watching it inform itself.

This sort of thing happens with all stories, I think. The act of writing out a story will take you down paths that never would've occurred to you. It's why you always hear "write every day." It's not just a PRACTICE PRACTICE PRACTICE mantra, though it is that too, but it's because the writing is where all the work is.

Like, you can do *~world building~* until you're blue in the face, but that's not the work. To put it into terms of having a "real" job: worldb uilding is, at best, meticulously planning the route you will take to get to the office. It is literally the "thinking about going to work" of writing.

I mean, sure, there's a time and place and use for it. But I see so many people out there who don't know they're trapped by their own world building. They become so fixated on the world building itself that the story will never get written.

And I just want to explain to these folks, y'know, most of your world building happens by writing the damn story.

Now, fair warning, doing that means sometimes you'll have to delete something or re-write it. Oh, dear!

Uh, let's bring this back to its point: Atomic Robo the comic book informing its own premises. It's got to happen with every story, hell it happens to everything I write, but I think Atomic Robo is extra susceptible to it because of how the series interacts with time.

We're not tracking Robo's life in chronological order. So, time is already juggled up a bit. And then we can drop flashbacks into any story. And while that probably sounds simple on the surface, actually doing it is a bit like juggling chainsaws that are also juggling knives. It's why we have a timeline. That's not for you guys, it's to help us keep those chainsaws in the air.

So, with the setting being revealed to readers back and forth through its own time, we're given a little wiggle room to expand and contract the facts of the fictional setting as our ideas about them evolve while we move inexorably forward in our own time.

Hang on. Did that make any sense?

What I'm saying is: we can hint at ideas and drop plot hooks in, say, one volume that takes place in 2005, and then in another volume released years later that takes place in 1960 we can show you the payoff for those old story seeds, and we can do it with a greater understanding of the setting than we had back when we planted them. We'll have found more ways to hook the original idea into the setting in the intervening years of writing stories.

I'd cite some examples of this, but the earliest one I can think of happens across Volumes 4 and 5 and we haven't shown those to you yet. Technically there's stuff in Volume 1 that qualifies, but the payoffs for those don't hit until Volume 9, so no joy there either.

I'm probably thinking about this stuff because I'm re-reading The Shadow From Beyond Time as it comes out while also writing our eleventh volume, The Temple of Od. Most of Shadow happens after Temple, but the weird setting ideas that get expanded upon in Temple originate in Volume 5.

Chainsaws!

MAILBAG FOR FEB 12th!

Posted February 12, 2015 at 04:25 pm

Welcome to another Weekly Mailbag! Where our Patrons ask questions and then, as if by an ancient and nameless magic, they get answers. Let's get to it!

Hi guys,

How important are current events to ideas for future volumes?

Thanks,

Josh

You may have noticed that almost all of our stories are historical. All of Volumes 2 through 5, then 7, and 9. Even the “present” parts of Volume 1 technically take place in 2005 or 2006 even though they were published in 2007 and 2008. Only Volumes 6, 8, and soon 10 take place firmly in the present. Generally the same day or week of their first issue’s release.

Weird, right? Did we do that on purpose? Yes! It’s dangerous as hell to work in the present when one of the central conceits of your ongoing story is that it closely mirrors the real world. Regular comic book production schedules make this difficult enough. You’ve got to have scripts done like four to six months before publication. A lot can happen in that time! And it’s even worse with Atomic Robo because I like to stay one volume ahead of Scott. That means any “present” storyline is written at least a year in advance.

As a result, we have to structure “present” storylines so they can acknowledge reality and feel current, but they’ve also got to be agnostic enough about how reality intersects with the story that we aren’t completely derailed by unforeseen events.

We’ve found it especially helpful to tell “fast” stories in the present. That is, adventures that go from start to finish within one week.

Volume 6 happens in a few days. Volume 8 is probably 48 - 60 hours max. There’s a couple parts in Volume 10 where we have to jump a month ahead, so that’s got me a little worried. There’s also one huge plot point that seems increasingly less plausible as certain international events unfold. But it should be manageable with a little dialog magic no matter how things play out -- there’s that agnosticism, re: how we emphasize our stories’ intersections with reality.

Doing these “fast” stories keeps the action buzzing along so something interesting is always happening. But it also minimizes our window for getting screwed by current events. Yeah, it may take five months for a storyline to unfold to the audience one issue at a time, but if the whole thing takes place within the the first week of that first month, then it doesn’t matter if no one in the comic talks about The Big News That Everyone Should Be Talking About that happened during Months 2 - 5 because it hasn’t happened for the characters yet.

Then we dive back into the past with the next storyline so we can come back to the present following that one a year or two later. Doing this is just fun for us so we don’t get too bored with any one era. But, secretly, it also helps us to manage the problem of The Big News That Everyone Should Be Talking About. It lets our readers dip into the lives of these characters, so it feels more natural to catch them between these moments of our current history.

Is there anything fluffier than a cloud?

Just kittens.

If Atomic Robo were to be made into an animated series/film, who would be your first pick to voice Robo? Or Dr. Dinosaur? Or Jenkins? Or any of the other Action Scientists of Tesladyne?

Pat C.

It took us a while to figure out Robo’s voice. But Scott and I settled on Ron Livingston. It probably sounds like an odd choice, but think about it. Office Space had a great script and cast, but the whole film depends on the subtlety of Ron’s comedic ability, both as a straight man and as the joke guy. His performances in Band of Brothers and Boardwalk Empire (among others) proved that he can bring the world weariness, and most importantly do it without getting maudlin about it.

And that’s what you need for Robo. Someone who can knock out a snappy line without overselling it, and someone who can experience an intense loneliness without falling prey to it.

Doctor Dinosaur, I don’t know. But it should feel like Mark Hammill’s Joker doing an impression of Cobra Commander.

Jenkins. That’s tough. He’s got to sound like a bad ass without overdoing it or sounding like every Generic Space Marine With Stubble video game protag. Clint Eastwood is too old and weird. If Liam Neeson could turn off the accent, that might work.

MERCHANDISING!

Posted February 10, 2015 at 02:15 pm

As you may or may not remember, we threatened you with new items in the Tesladyne Shop last week. And we have made good on those threats.

First up, we have the Camp Atvatabar T-shirt available in, like, several sizes. It looks so good even you will look good in it.

Then there's the Dr. Dinosaur Sticker Sheet. All proceeds from this item, like all the Dr. Dino merch, will go toward some kind of research fund blah blah blah probably something to blow up the sun. It's hard to get straight answers out of him for some reason.

Don't forget about the Dr. Dinosaur Button Pack. Stick them on to people you love. Or hate. Whichever. Just don't come crying to us when they start crying.

And the Dr. Dinosaur Poster. Are you sensing a pattern here? Like, maybe it was a terrible idea to put Dr. Dinosaur in charge of the Tesladyne Shop? Or that he's pushing out all these items with his jackass face on it because he's a vain jackass? Or that thing about blowing up the sun?

Lastly, there's my personal favorite, the SPACE poster. Get it before Dr. Dinosaur realizes we put something up for sale that won't earn him any royalties.

Mailbag for Feb 5th!

Posted February 5, 2015 at 12:00 pm

Time for another installment of the Weekly Mailbag where we take questions from our Patrons every week, or whatever, and answer them!

On to the questions! And, I guess, the answers!

Dear Tesladyne,

I just realized that in the Atomic Robo timeline, Nikola Tesla dies the same year that Marconi loses some of his patents based on Tesla's work. How does their dispute play out in a world with lightning guns and war zeppelins? What nastiness is Marconi up to before he turns his focus to Science City?

-Tom D.

This is one of those answers that's gonna need a quickie history lesson in front of it. Surprise, that happens fairly often with Atomic Robo.

Okay. Marconi is mostly known for “inventing” the radio. He did this by taking something like seventeen devices patented by Tesla and assembling them in ways previously and publically described by Tesla himself. This is like putting together bookshelves from IKEA and then claiming to have invented the bookshelf. Marconi lost the radio patent eventually, but the damage had been done and today everyone thinks of him as the father of radio.

What most people don’t know about Marconi is that he was into fascism. Like “pals with Mussolini” into fascism. Member of The Grand Fascist Council into it. So, yeah, just a super guy all around. Our version of Marconi plays this up by claiming that his death was faked in 1937 to allow him to direct the efforts of the Axis Space Program secreted away in the remote mountains of Venezuela.

If this sounds completely insane that’s because it’s one of the more obscure, but I assure you absolutely real -- UFO conspiracy theories I’ve come across. It was so absurd I knew we had to incorporate it into the history of Atomic Robo.

And while doing this with Marconi gives us fun stuff to play with like the secret Nazi space station and the hidden ruins of Science City, it doesn’t do much to affect the Marconi vs. Tesla shakeout because everything Marconi is getting up to post-”death” is totally secret and evil. I think canonically it's not even discovered until the 1960s.

He does manage to launch a secret Nazi orbital weapon in the final days of the war, so that's kind of cool. We get a hint of how that worked out in Vol 8 and we’ll get some more details on it soon.

By now, any alt history nerd worth a damn should be asking, “Hold up, why make Marconi the head of your space program when you’ve already got Von Braun?”

Because Von Braun’s experimental chemical rocket designs had already proven themselves essentially sound by 1934, and that made his work too valuable to the fatherland's build up for war. As per the completely insane UFO theory above, Marconi started working on anti-gravity, obviously a lateral move from radio. So, when Italy joins the Axis Powers in 1937, part of the deal is to give Marconi the freedom and funding to perfect this technology and launch the ultimate space weapon. Hence: faked death + secret South American space port.

If there was to be an Atomic Robo anime series, which studio would make it and who would direct?

Jon S.

HAHAHAHA you’re stupid for asking this stupid question because all of anime is stupid!

Except for the ones I like. Obviously.

But it’s Evangelion era Gainax for maximum “?!?!?!” Because why entertain an audience when you can baffle them into rage?

Question about Atomic Robo history.

My first exposure to the tales of Nicola Tesla came in 1984, when OMD released their wonderful song, Tesla Girls:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GH7MwYBdSvM

Now I'm wondering if Atomic Robo was involved in that song in any way. Did he write it? Was he aware of it? How does he feel about it? And just what WAS Robo up to in the 80s?

Thanks for the great comics, guys!

Rick N.

I figure Robo is barely familiar with most media of the last fifty or sixty years. So, uh, nope! Sorry.

As for what he was up to in the ‘80s, you’ll see! Uh, eventually. Volumes 10, 11, and 12 are already accounted for, but at some point after those we’ll get into the ‘80s with Atomic Robo and the Soldiers of Fortune. The idea for that one: write a love letter to all the action / super vehicle shows of the 1980s.

Hi guys,

One of my favorite things about Robo has been the use of real historical figures and events to add verisimilitude to the world you've created. Have you had a particular favorite person or event you've researched for a volume?

Thanks,

Josh

The cop out answer is all of them. You can’t help but become fascinated by the likes ofBass Reeves, or Edison, or Tesla, or Houdini, etc. Atomic Robo comics are a way to get paid to read up on the historical people and events I want to learn about anyway. I mean, really, that’s the whole point of being a writer.

Robo’s a great excuse to learn about Western history.

Infernal Affairs is a great excuse to learn about Chinese history.

We’ve got a couple Big Crazy Space sci-fi projects on the far horizon, probably nothing you’ll see until 2016 at the earliest, but those have been great excuses to learn more about the extremely strange and exciting frontiers of astrophysics and cosmology.

But!

If I had to pick a favorite, and for this question it seems I must, it’s probably Annie Oakley. She was a real firecracker.

That's it for the mailbag this week! If you're reading this right now, and it looks like you are, then we're already taking questions for the next installment. We can't do this without you, so hey, get on it.

CONSUME! OBEY!

Posted February 3, 2015 at 02:00 pm

There's one part of the new atomic-robo.com experience we haven't talked about yet and that's The Tesladyne Online Store.

Whaaaaaat? Yes. Look, there's a big graphic and everything:

We've got a few items for sale that ought to be seem particularly desireable if you missed out on a certain Kickstarter campaign. We'll be adding new stuff all the time. ALL THE TIME.

Well, not now. But soon!

1,000,000 and counting

Posted February 1, 2015 at 11:00 am

Well, you only went and done it.

Atomic Robo the webcomic hit one million pageviews Saturday afternoon.

One million. You did that in just ten days. Oh wait the site was dead for three days while we scrambled to upgrade everything because you guys killed the original server.

We couldn’t have bounced back so fast without our partners at Hiveworks. They got us new servers and built us a new site. In a weekend. They’ve been fantastic.

Where do we go from here? More pageviews! Swimming in them! Drowning in them! Coalescing into a star from a nebula of them! Collapsing into a timeless gravitational singularity of them!

Okay that got weird. Let’s just keep giving you guys more free comics, and you can keep reading them, and we’ll see where that takes us. Together! (awwww)

We’ll wrap up The Dogs of War this week and hit you guys with the debut appearance of Dr. Dinosaur on Friday. We're following that up with The Shadow From Beyond Time next week. For those of you new to Robo’s adventures, strap yourselves in, ‘cause it’s about to get Lovecraftian!

WEEKLY MAILBAG

Posted January 27, 2015 at 03:45 pm

Welcome to our first ever Weekly Mailbag! Where Patrons submit questions and then we pick some of them and publish the answers for all to see. And we’ll do this every week. Or every other week? It kind of depends on your participation. So, y’know, get on that. We're now taking questions for the next installment.

Enough! Let’s get to the questions...

Has Tesladyne employee attempted using lab equipment (lasers) to emulate Superman using his heat vision to shave?

If so, who and why did they think it was a good idea?

Kyle M.

We live in the era of safe laser hair removal thanks to the noble sacrifices of a few brave men and women. There’s a plaque somewhere.

I'm curious about character development. When creating, say, a new Action Scientist, do you start with a sketched silhouette, which will inform the personality and motivations? Do you write a fantastic pun, realize nobody currently in the scene could pull it off, and invent a character on the spot who can fill the void? Is there some way to blame it all on Dr Dinosaur?

Carl H.

We’ll have a design, or a hint of a personality, and then put them on the page to let those things influence one another. And, in a way, the story tells us who that character is.

We have a very collaborative process that brings out the best ideas from both of us. The things I write don’t necessarily appear on the final comic page. And when they do, they don’t necessarily appear as I’d intended. Which, y’know, is fine. In general it’s little details. Things like a facial expression or posture. Or a character interacting with the environment in some way. These are great touches that add a lot of life to a scene. It’s Scott’s way of taking up the slack I leave in a script. I’m more concerned with the timing and execution of gags -- not jokes, necessarily, just bits of dialog and visuals -- so I tend to leave out the little details that make a character human.

Scott puts those in. And then those visuals force me to change the dialog a little. Like, if the dialog is some kind of pun about getting punched, but he’s drawn a kick, well duh of course that needs a change. And then that change influences where we take the character.

Two of our original Action Scientists from Volume One make great examples of this. Bao Lang and Bernard Fischer. They weren’t given names in the script. None of the Action Scientists were. They were all SCIENTIST #1, SCIENTIST #2, etc. Scott just picked the three he wanted to put into the first issue where they appear, and we rolled from there. Since these guys mostly popped up in conversations with each other, it meant that any one of them could have borrowed lines from two different sources depending on how we played with the scene. Lang kept popping up around sassy lines from SCIENTIST #2 and #3. Actually, I didn’t mention him earlier, but that’s how Vikram became who he is too because he kept popping up around lines that sounded like a Wild-Eyed Theorist’s. So, that’s what he became.

And then there’s Bernard. His sad little line in the first panel of this page sealed his fate as the guy who will always be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

It works a little differently with historical figures since we have facts to fall back on. Obviously, those facts are up for interpretation, but they give us some common ground to work from.

Hi Brian and Scott,

I discovered Atomic Robo because of Free Comic Book Day, and I absolutely loved the 2011 FCBD story. The ending, with Emma arriving to join Tesladyne when she grew up really touched me (here's hoping she reappears in some issues in 2021 :) ). My question is:

Do you plan to still put out Atomic Robo stories for FCBD? And will there be print issues for comic book stores?

Thanks,

Bobby

Whatever our plans for FCBD future, it’s far too late for us to participate this year. You have to get that stuff turned in and approved, like, nine months ahead of schedule or something ridiculous.

I’ll just say that FCBD is always on the first Saturday of May and we’ve timed the release of our back catalog so that new Atomic Robo content will start to come out in mid-May. So, y’know, early May might be an interesting time around this here website.

Hi,

Curious question. Since this Patreon marks the beginning of making Atomic Robo creator-owned, what does this mean regarding your affiliation with Red 5? Will print versions of the comic still exist? If so, do you currently have a distribution plan? Atomic Robo doesn't seem to be Red 5's cover focus on this year's FCBD so I have the impression that you've cut ties with them altogether.

A long-time fan since Vol. 2,

Chocolancer

Point of order! We’ve always been creator owned. We just had a publisher before. Now we’re still creator owned and self-published through the internet.

But, yeah. Our ninth volume, The Knights of the Golden Circle, will be the last Atomic Robo material published by Red 5 Comics. We’ll handle the publishing of new material and reprints of the back catalog.

On the one hand, it was an amicable split. On the other, I don’t think either party was thrilled by it either. We stuck with them and the direct market for seven years, but there just wasn’t enough money coming in. Scott and I are well into our thirties and we’re still living like college students. And Scott’s daughter will soon be a college student. Like before Volume 14. We had to either cut out all the middlemen or stop making Atomic Robo.

I suppose we could have bargained for larger page rates, but it felt wrong to even suggest it. “Expose yourself to way more risk by giving us bigger advances or lose your best selling title,” is a lose-lose proposition. We couldn’t ask them to make that choice, because it’s an unfair proposition from the start. Red 5 Comics isn’t an abstract corporate entity that we can make heartless decisions about. It’s a couple guys. We just couldn’t bring ourselves to blackmail them.

So, here we are!

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