 COMICS |  | Q&A WITH 'ATOMIC ROBO' CREATORS | | Wizard pokes the funny bones of creators Brian Clevinger and Scott Wegener! | | | By Anne McNally | | Posted 7/07/2008 | |  | |  Everyone who fell in love with the wisecracking robot Atomic Robo, listen up! Dogs of War, the next Atomic Robo story arc, will be in stores August 13. In the last volume, Robo fought the evil Baron von Helsingard, defeated massive bugs, destroyed the Pyramids, and changed the face of Mars just to flip off Stephen Hawking. We spoke with creators Brian Clevinger and Scott Wegener to find out what they've got planned for Robo in the next volume.
| |  WIZARD UNIVERSE: So what can you tell us about Atomic Robo, Vol. 2?
SCOTT WEGENER: Volume 2 is set against the backdrop of World War II. We're going to play around with that time period, and then the general idea from here on out is that each miniseries will be set more or less in a specific time frame, so we're hitting the mid-forties for this one.
BRIAN CLEVINGER: Scott and I are big WWII nuts, we like the era's technology and aesthetic, and the world theater at that time is just… it's an amazing period in history, all these firsts. We wanted to get that out of the way, tackle a WWII story, have some fun adventures against that backdrop, do some weird science stuff. In the previous volume, we jumped from one era of time to another to give the reader a grab bag, the kind of things to expect from Robo and his world. This time, we're focusing on five issues of WWII adventure. It's not a continuous story, but everything is linked.
WEGENER: It's kind of very Indiana Jones-y, punching Nazis in the head kind of stuff. We've got Nazi big robot tank things… Monster Men who are supposed to be these German Super-Soldiers who didn't quite work out right… stuff like that, weird science-y pulp-y stuff. We also got a lot of positive feedback on the action scientists from Vol. 1, so we used some Army GIs to substitute for them.
So this will be chronicling his younger years, and his war exploits?
WEGENER: Yeah, it's a younger Robo than we saw in most of the first volume, so he's a little patriotic, kind of a gung-ho adventurer, idealistic, and that kind of starts to go away by the end of the war. So we're going to develop him a little bit, explore a little more of the weird world that he lives in.
Are we going to get to meet Robo's creator, Tesla?
CLEVINGER: No, we're not going to meet Tesla. I think with Robo, we'll never see Tesla on screen. He'll be talked about, he'll be alive at certain points, but he won't actually be on the page. I think it's a better way to portray him as this sort of mythic force in this world.
Is there a favorite scene of yours that you can tease for the next volume?
WEGENER: The first two issues deal with Laufpanzers – walking tanks. Picture those little two-legged walker things from "Star Wars," but built with 1940's technology and about 12-15 feet tall. So basically the poor pilot just crams himself into this box and he's got these chicken legs and a couple of gangly arms. There are several of them running amok on the beaches of Sicily to foil the Allied invasion of Sicily, and of course Robo's there to un-foil it! He puts them out of action to make sure that the invasion works. There's a couple of really great scenes on the beach where he teams up with the GIs to figure out how to take out these walkers, and there's this great old battle royale on the beach with bazookas and hand grenades- it's complete mayhem.
CLEVINGER: Issues three and four are my favorites for the next volume. In those issues we team Robo up with a British secret agent, named The Sparrow. They have their own missions, which just happen to converge in this one area, and neither one is aware of the other until their missions intersect and they screw each other over. So there's this conflict of personality throughout those two issues. My favorite scene that I've seen drawn so far is the moment where they first intersect, and they're just yelling at each other and telling each other what to do, both bungling it.
This British agent is a new character for the series.
WEGENER: Yeah, we'd been working on this pulp character that would fit the period very well, and I said, “Well, what if we made this guy a gal instead?” She's got the goggles and the bomber jacket and a couple of .45's, and she's cracking skulls and kicking butt and wisecracking the whole time. Loads of fun.
Are there any other new characters being introduced?
CLEVINGER: We've got a historical character we're introducing… Otto Skorzeny. He was Hitler's right-hand man in a sense, his number one commando, his number one secret agent supersoldier, if you will. Real historical guy, just one of those people you couldn't make up. He spoke five languages, and was supposed to be a well-educated aristocrat who just happened to be this evil Nazi scumbag guy. So we're introducing him into the Robo mythos. We're also introducing a made up character, Vanadis Valkyrie. She's a mad scientist working with the Nazis that Robo and the Sparrow have to take out.
What's the reaction been like from the fans?
CLEVINGER: It's been enormously positive. Scott and I are just blown away by it.
WEGENER: The feedback's been amazing. Insane, really. Obviously we hoped people would like it, but I don't think we ever anticipated this level of positive reaction from people. Basically, we had both fallen off the comic book wagon ourselves, years ago, and all we were doing was making a comic that we would want to read. It's almost like we subconsciously tapped into some secret want that people didn't even know they wanted, and it seems to hit all the pleasure buttons when they read it. I was always really inspired by guys who do their own thing- Mike Mignola, Jeff Smith… I wanted to create something that I could enjoy but that I could happily hand to my child and she would enjoy it too.
CLEVINGER: One of our big concerns with Robo was making a comic that was fun for kids, for adults, and especially for women, because it seems to us that comics do so much to exclude female readership.
WEGENER: We were very pleased to get a lot of women who seem to enjoy the comic book because it doesn't have a lot of the things in it that keep women from enjoying other comic books–to put it very politically. At the end of the day we're just making a comic book that we would want to read, but we hope it appeals to people who may have stopped reading other comic books.
When will this [story arc] be coming out?
CLEVINGER: The first issue is August 13th, and it will be monthly.
WEGENER: And just like the previous volume, each issue can be read on its own without having to read everything else in the mini-series. If you miss an issue, you're not going to be lost. But if you read them all, you can see how the full adventure unfolds.
What's next for Atomic Robo?
WEGENER: With each era that we play with, we want to acknowledge the pop culture from that period… hence bringing in pulp character during WWII. I think next in the ‘20s we're looking at an H.P. Lovecraft kind of thing, and after that we're going into the ‘50s with the air pirates. We decided to take a group of WASPs (Women's Airforce Service Pilots) who flew important missions for the US during WWII. As soon as the war was over, they were all fired and told to go back to their old lives. Well, that didn't interest some of these ladies. So, we're taking some of them to the Pacific Rim where they become air pirates, but with hearts of gold, of course. And jetpacks! You gotta have jetpacks!
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