Is it wrong to criticize a collection because it feels like six smaller stories strung together? Atomic Robo Volume One isn’t a bad book, but it is a collection that just doesn’t read well.
In an age of six issue storylines that fit one story nicely into a trade paperback collection,
Atomic Robo and the Fightin' Scientists of Tesladyne is a bit of an anomaly. It's a collection of four or five short stories that slowly build up the world around its main character, Atomic Robo. Atomic Robo
is a robot built by Nicola Tesla and now working for the U.S.
government and the United Nations, tackling the strange and arcane to
protect the world. He battles Nazis, giant ants, moving Egyptian
pyramids, and Nazi brains that have been implanted into Nazi robots.
Atomic Robo
even travels to Mars thanks to NASA, Carl Sagan and Stephen Hawking.
Each part of the book is enjoyable and entertaining but the overall
book lacks much cohesion if you're expecting a complete story.
In many ways Atomic Robo is like reading Mike Mignola's Hellboy, complete with a unique protagonist (robot vs. demon.) Of course, one is dealing with the occult and a creature bred for destruction while Atomic Robo... well, not much backstory is given to Atomic Robo other than he was created by Nicola Tesla. In fact, a lot of the backstory in Atomic Robo remains thin and unexplained as Brian Clevinger and Scott Wegener concentrate more on trying to create rip-roaring yarns. They succeed in creating a fascinating and colorful world around Atomic Robo, a world where Carl Sagan can talk Robo into a 2 year trip to Mars and Stephen Hawking can play psychological jokes on a robot. Clevinger and Wegener have fun with Atomic Robo and his team of adventure scientitsts.
What Clevinger and Wegener don't do enough of is building the characters. Atomic Robo is a standard adventurer because they often chose not to concentrate on one simple fact-- he's a robot. They do get a nice character moment when Atomic Robo receives a letter from the grand-daughter of someone he fought WWII with and the sequence when he takes a 2 year trip to Mars is great as it looks at what Atomic Robo would do for two years alone in space when he has no books or anything to distract him. And then there's the ever-present team of adventure scientists who don't do much other than join Atomic Robo on his adventures. A short backup story suggests that the team members each have their own story but little of that is hinted at during the main stories.
The collection itself is a bit of an odd experience though. With no clear breaks between the separate issues that make up this book, the stories bump up against each other with no rhyme or reason. Reading the book gets confusing as one story doesn't really end before another begins. That's not necessarily a weakness of the character or the stories but of the book design itself. There needs to be a cover or another illustration in between the stories to clearly mark where one ended and another begins. Without that, the stories are jumbled together and have no beginning and no clear end.
Atomic Robo Volume 1 is an enjoyable introduction to the character as the creators define a bit of the lay of the land and give you just enough characterization to give you a taste of what this title could be like. Clevinger and Wegener have a solid beginning that could lead to more fun stories down the road.
Atomic Robo and the Fightin' Scientists of Tesladyne tpb
Written by: Brian Clevinger
Drawn by: Scott Wegener
Colored by: Ronda Pattison
Lettered by: Jeff Powell
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