Atomic Robo Out The Wahzoo

We all need out wahzoos cleaned out every now and again . . .

You need Atomic Robo #6. Here’s the low-down; Atomic Robo is trapped in an underground complex, his Action Scientists are captured, and he’s surrounded by a vast army of re-animated cyborg soldiers. Things go downhill from there.

Just give this number, JAN083857, to your local comic shop and they’ll reserve a copy for you. Or if you don’t have a local shop, you can reserve it online. If you’ve been been keeping up with our progress so far, then you’ve probably learned that the only way to guarantee that you will see a given issue is to pre-order it. Stores simply cannot keep these things on their shelves. That’s great for us, but not-so-great for you. So pre-order, dammit!

Or, ignore us and pay the price for your insolence.

BTW, have you seen the preview pages for Atomic Robo #4: There’s a Viking On Mars?

Over at CBR Robo was voted SENSATIONAL CHARACTER FIND OF 2007, by columnist Bill Reed.

“I’m going to give the nod to Atomic Robo on this one. The sarcastic, pragmatic Tesla-built robot commando has been a great addition to the world of comics. If I ever need to be saved from a giant radioactive ant, I’d want this guy to do it.”

 EDIT: Earth-2.net, episode 184 handed out some well deserved praise to Brian for his writing in Atomic Robo.

2007’s I Want To See More of This Damn-it! Atomic Robo. Red5 Comics has been keeping a tally of praise for their titles and it fills my black little heart with glee to see how warmly Atomic Robo has been received by the right thinking, comic book reading, people of the world.

Red5 Comics confirms Atomic Robo Vol.2 This is no news to you guys, but its amazing how many people just don’t read the I Hate Blogs blog or Mechapolis.com.

Phew, okay, that’s enough Robo for now. Lets take a look at my week.

I sort of want to say that it’s been a giant suck-fest, but that would be untrue. It has been VERY busy though. Much busier that I wanted it to be. Dorinda left for her 2 week visit to Poetry Camp. This will be the last time, as she graduates on the 12^th and is officially an over-educated, under-employed writer.

Granted, she’s a brilliant writer, and weather she goes into teaching or editing I know she will be great at it. Its nice to see her finishing up her Masters so she can pursue the things she is passionate about.

BUT, on the day she left I had to take Dad-in-Law to his mechanics to check on his car (which just sort of stopped on New Years Eve -that was a fun day of me not working to fix that emergency). Now, Dad is 80 years old. And a little . . hmm, well I’ll just say this; in the very unlikely event that I live to be 80yrs old, I hope that I don’t live to be 80yrs old. He’s like Mr. Magoo with a short temper. His routine was interrupted like a motherfucker and he’s disoriented and freaked out by the whole thing.

But no problem, I’m married to his daughter, (who is just a younger sort of disoriented and freaked out most days), so I can cope. I was wondering how much the repairs would cost and what exactly was wrong, but Dad couldn’t really explain things for the above mentioned reasons. I was ready for a lot of things, but I was not ready to be told by his mechanic (a really sweet man who looks out for Dad’s best interest) that the car was done. Forever.

So now I’m Single-Dad for a fortnight AND I have a non-driving elderly person to take care of. A confused and disoriented elderly person I might add.

Needless to say, my work output had gone down drastically.

Which is really frustrating the shit out of Cupcake -known to you folks as Mrs. McCheezeBurgerHead. “Dumb ass” (as I like to call her in private) spends her days hanging out with me –usually perched on Dorinda’s desk chair napping, tasting my coffee, and eating whatever I happen to put on my desk and leave unattended for 5 seconds.

Her only excitement comes from the scanner. She also loves the printer, but since Dorinda stole the Goddamn printer cable and took it to school, leaving me with only 75% of the computer accessories that I require to DO MY FUCKING JOB, we shall not speak of this. The scanner though . . .

It must be the pretty green light and the whirring, grinding, clockwork noises the thing makes. She goes batshit crazy when I scan pages. Sometimes I like to just scan the same page over and over to watch her go bananas.

“I wait patiently for my prey . . .”

“I sense movement!”

“Wait for it . . .wait for the moment to pounce.”

“At last, you are mine! Now I shall . . wait -what!?! WHY CAN’T I LIFT THE LID NOW!?!”

And lastly; Right before Christmas Vacation I kept the Widget home from school one day. We rode a train into Boston, spent several hours at the Museum of Science, ate lunch, and came home. Because some times a dad’s gotta roll like that. I took tons of pictures, but since most of them involve the Widget I can’t really share them on this blog. But here are some cool ones not involving her, or if they do, involving something awesome. Something awesome that is not the Widget I mean.

Cool man-powered watercraft thing.

Hands-down teh coolest part of the museum. They have a 2 story Van de Graff generator in here and do a lightning show a couple times a day. Soory, but all those pics are Widget-tastic.

Here’s a really cool plasma tube they had in there though.

Elsewhere, the Widget was able to make her own tornado and play God by mucking about with it.

While I have nothing nice AT ALL to say about the new Star Wars movies, this things was pretty damn cool.

This super detailed reconstruction of the lunar lander would have been amazingly helpful as reference for Robo #4 when I was drawing it . . .last year.

 

This is the heart, windpipe, and lungs from a sheep. They would hook it up to that tube thing at the top of the frame and make it “breath”. You could then stick your hands in the plastic baggies and touch it. Awesome.

 

I don’t know what this was all about, but I know I wanted to take it home in a really bad way.

 

EDIT: Its Tuesday morning and I just got back from Town Hall. Today is Primary day here in New Hampshire. It always feels good to vote. Like I’m doing my civic duty. Doing that in a small town seems to reinforce that feeling as everything is on a miniature scale; its cute, quaint, and everyone is chatting as we line up and wait. You keep expecting Andy Griffith to walk in at any moment.

Some people were dressed up for the event. Not me. I got to bed around 1:30am this morning and was up less than 6 hours later trying to get a cranky 7yr old dresses, fed, and off to school. I was all bed-head, halitosis, and red crusty eyes, clutching at a giant Winnie The Poo mug full of coffee. There must be a portion of the Wilton Downtown population that thinks I’m some kind of alcoholic or that I’m running an all-night meth lab in my basement.

No folks, its far worse than that. I draw comics.

Without a doubt the best thing about New Hampshire is that democratic processes still work here. Howard Zin would like NH, if only for this one thing. Voters are actually empowered. There is no broken and unrepresentative Electoral College or city councils to get in the way. I think that Florida in 2000 showed perfectly well that when it comes to choosing Presidents our votes don’t actually count, and that widespread and blatant fraud is easy to get away with. You can argue that all you want, but the verifiable facts are that the popular vote went to Gore.

But here in NH every vote actually counts.

As a State, NH is lacking severely in many ways. While the State moto is “Live Free, or Die”, it really ought to be, “Every Man For Himself”. We have almost zero social safety nets in place. If you are really sick, mentally handicapped, or struggling to keep your head above water in any way, you are fucked in NH.

Officially NH’s stance on this is that it is the People and not the State Govt who is responsible for taking care of those in need and so we rely on a charity-based system for funding most social services. The great irony of this is that NH residents are at the bottom of the lists for giving money to charity. What I think is blindingly obvious is that most people, (myself included), are too wrapped up in their own personal grind to spare much though for the rest of the world. For that very reason you need official institutions whose job it is to look at the greater good. That’s my opinion anyway.

There is a much I will not miss about NH someday, when I live far, far away from here. but I will miss voting and feeling like I did something worthwhile.

 

RANDOM SPLENDOR

Disappearing doors! Totally cool. I can’t wait to see these on Brian L.’s Mini.

I think that last week I had the link to the silly goth pic site. I meant to post these along with it.