The Nuclear Option: Atomic Robo Volume 6, #1 Review

So one last non-New 52 review from last week’s releases before the comic store opens and another 13 DC first issues make it impossible for me to find anywhere on my coffee table to put down my beer…

Actually, let’s stop and think about the New 52 for a second. I read an interview with Dan Didio today where he said that part of the reason we have the DCnU is because years of continuity preconceptions about characters made it hard to tell new and interesting stories about them. Didio quotes legendary DC editor Julie Schwartz:

…he literally said to me at one point, “Every ten years, continuity needs an enema, because your characters don’t age in real time, the stories don’t move in real time and when you build too much story against the characters, it holds down the potential stories you could tell for the future because you’re so beholden to the past.”

And being a reader of comic books for (Jesus) 36 years now, I can tell you Julie was right. Almost any comic book character will, over time, get mired down in continuity, old stories and character beats that makes doing something different with them nearly impossible.

(I say NEARLY impossible because regardless of continuity, it is still possible to read new and fresh stories about Batman making sweet, sweet man love to Optimus Prime while Strawberry Shortcake watches – thank you, slashfic! But I digress.)

For example: because of 70+ years of Superman-as-Boy Scout stories, DC continuity had to die in order for Grant Morrison to tell a story about a young, iconoclastic Superman (“But what about Mark Waid’s Birthright?” QUIET, YOU!).

Comic book characters get tied into telling certain stories. There is no exception.

Except for Atomic Robo.

In the four years since the first Atomic Robo miniseries, the eponymous protagonist has fought giant, Them!-style ants, explored Mars, and battled Nazis, dinosaurs, 1930’s gangsters, and Cthulhu, being stymied only by his evil genius arch-nemesis: Dr. Stephen Hawking. By contrast: DC had to blow up their entire comics line in order for Superman to scare an old millionaire.

This is the the first issue of the sixth Atomic Robo volume. The last, Atomic Robo and the Deadly Art of Science, followed Robo as he shadowed (and bothered the hell out of) his Shadow-esque idol Jack Tarot on the hunt for gangsters, trying and generally failing to be a vigilante crimefighter. That story ended in May.

In THIS issue, we start with Robo telling Steve Jobs that his interface designs are incompetent and move immediately into Robo spearheading a team effort to launch an orbital rescue mission… in SIX HOURS. It has the beats and urgency of the best parts of Apollo 13, only with an atomic robot instead of Ed Harris (Trust me, you won’t notice the difference).

Are you following me? In four months we went from a story about a bumbling vigilante sidekick to what Blue Beetle writer John Rogers calls “competence porn” (WARNING: competence porn is a euphamism. Attempting to masturbate to white collar workers doing math problems will lead to frustration, blood blisters and writing about comics on the Internet)… all with the same character. A character who in a single issue can go, in the space of pages, from saying:

We’re not here to talk about if we can do it. We’re talking about how we WILL do it.

to saying:

Safety first, Robo.

In that this helmet is the first safe thing I’ve done today, yes.

Brian Clevinger has never written a bad issue of this book, and regular artist Scott Wegener can deliver up everything from Robo’s cartoony style to exciting splash panels of experimental jets shaking themselves almost apart.

Atomic Robo’s fun comics. You should be buying it.