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.

Worlds Finest Comics Unintentional Blasphemy

I tuned out on Anne Rice after Tale of the Body Thief, but apparently somewhere between 1993 and now, she found Jesus. In, like, a big way. The kind of way you normally find Jesus when you’re facing a long prison term, or are personally responsible for raising a generation of mopey Hot Topic consumers.