Sunday, November 11, 2018

Sunday Splash Page #40

"All Those Exposed Pipes Have to be a Safety Hazard," in Atomic Robo and the Shadow from Beyond Time #5, by Brian Clevinger (writer), Scott Wegener (artist), Ronda Pattison (color artist), Jeff Powell (letterer)

I almost went with the page from issue 3 of Robo and Carl Sagan chatting outside a diner, but Obviously Evil Computer won out. This might be my favorite Atomic Robo mini-series. Strong contender, to be sure. Robo fighting against some creature from outside time and space that keeps reappearing again and again through his life, as Robo struggles to stop it.

There's a clever twist to how the creature operates relative to how we perceive time, appearances from H.P. Lovecraft, Carl Sagan, and mathematician Charles Fort (he and Sagan have different perspective on causality), a lot of good one-liners. Plus 1920s Robo's version of swearing. I need to start using "banana oil" and "horsefeathers" as dismissive remarks in my daily life.

Because the story takes place across several decades, Wegener gets to draw a variety of locales, and Robo in a variety of outfits (which helps for telling them apart near the end). I'm especially fond of 1970s Robo wearing a Gilligan hat. Does Robo even need to worry about getting too much sun on his head? I suppose it might make his brain overheat. Plus, lightning guns! Everybody loves lightning guns!

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