Sunday, December 02, 2018

Sunday Splash Page #43

"Jet Packs For Everyone!", in Atomic Robo and the Flying She-Devils of the Pacific #3, by Brian Clevinger (writer), Scott Wegener (artist), Nick Filardi (colorist), Jeff Powell (letterer)

One thing I find interesting about Robo is that, even with decades to hone his abilities, there's a lot of things he's still not very good at. Like flying, for instance. Robo's prototype jet gets shot down at the start of this mini-series, he's up against a Japanese ace who shot him down twice over China during the war, and when they have a showdown at the end, the guy outclasses him as a pilot again. Although it's funny to see that Robo's response to be fighting flying things is to keep throwing himself at them like a missile. Even though he can't, you know, fly.

This isn't one of my favorite Atomic Robo mini-series. It isn't bad, but because the story involves him being dropped into a situation he was entirely unprepared for, there are times he feels almost sidelined. Some of that is a necessity for introducing the situation he's fallen into, and especially trying to flesh out the She-Devils as individual characters. It's a little different than a story where there's perhaps one new character to try and build up (like Dr. Dinosaur or Bernard).

But there's some lovely color work by Filardi, especially a panel later in the issue the splash page is from of the She-Devils' island base being destroyed. There's a silent panel in an earlier issue of their airship flying over the ocean at twilight that was lovely, too. And there are airplane to jetpack dogfights, which are cool.

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