All the line art for Volume 2 is done; Ronda is coloring the fifth and final issue; and soon Jeff will make my dialog look like it's worth reading. We are on track to have everything ready on schedule. Maybe a little early. Team Robo loves you that much. Kinda like a Skrull god.

Volume 2 Issue 3 comes out in a couple weeks -- Oct 15th, mark your damn calendars! I'm curious what the reaction will be. Every issue of this volume is faster and crazier than the one before it. Issue 3 is the divide between the somewhat realistic walking tank action of the first two issues and the vat-grown soldiers and intercontinental rail guns you'll find on the other side. Y'know, the stuff They keep out of the history books.

Meanwhile, I have turned my attentions toward Volume 3: Atomic Robo and the Shadow From Beyond Time. It's another five issue series. The structure is something of a mix between Vol 1's time-hopping and the thematic cohesion of Vol 2. Which basically translates to time hops starting in the 1920s and ending in the modern day with a common thread that ties every issue together.

This just in: we're participating in FCBD '09 with an 8-page story. I don't know if I'm allowed to talk about it, but I will 'cause it involves a character I've been trying to introduce since the first volume, Dr. Dinosaur. I'm not sure what else Red 5 will pack with our story, but I assume it'll be some of the new titles they've got in the works. Like Brothers Gemini why not. I read the first issue a few days ago and would be very pleased if Robo's FCBD story were to be used as a gateway drug for it. There's another title they're trying to get into print, a webcomic, that could benefit hugely from some delicious FCBD exposure. I've been wanting to tell you guys about it since San Diego, but I'm sworn to secrecy on that one for now. And, no, it's not 8-bit Theater, it's a webcomic that deserves to be in print.

Scott and I stumbled across this blog where a seven year old reviews comics. We wanted to ask them to review Atomic Robo, but they beat us to the punch! I don't know why, but this review means a lot to me. I guess it's confirmation that we're on track.

Moving on to our next issue: it was supposed to come out this week but some kind of delay at the printer has put us back to next week. I assume it's a delay at the printer because we turned in everything for this issue early, like we normally do, so whatever's going on has nothing to do with Team Robo.

But let's look at the bright side. That just gives you an extra week to bask in advance reviews! ...C'mon, people. Work with me here, I need a positive spin on this!

Comics Bulletin must have liked Dogs of War 2. They gave us our highest score yet over there!  Kleefeld gave us a right nice review as well. I always enjoy that he picks up on the characterization I sprinkle into every issue of Atomic Robo. A lot of reviewers seem to think that characterization is something you can only do once you've paused the story or action to take the reader aside and tell them "Spider-Man feels guilty" or whatever. Kleefeld doesn't make that mistake.  As Dwight Moody and Lord John Whorfin tell us, "Character is who you are in the dark". Well, character is also how you choose to bludgeon a giant ant to death.

The trade paperback of our first mini-series, Atomic Robo and the Fightin' Scientists of Tesladyne, hits June 11th. If this thing moves the way the individual issues did, it's in your best bet to pre-order it. Just head down to your local comic shop and give them the order number: APR084084. If your local shop is a million miles away (or fewer but still outside of reason), fine chain bookstores such as Waldenbooks, Books-a-Million, Barnes and Noble, Borders, and so on can order it for you too. Or you can pick it up online at a variety of stores including Amazon.. and Heavy Ink.

Dear god, there's more!

The first issue of our new mini-series, Atomic Robo and the Dogs of War, comes out August 13, but you can order it now! Local shop; go there; order number JUN084181; give them. Also, online and Heavy Ink.

Whew.

Meanwhile, we just turned in Vol 2 Issue 2 yesterday (ahead of schedule, cha-ching), Scott's already a couple pages into Issue 2.3, and I'm making some headway on 2.4. Team Robo is an entertainment machine and we're stuck on turbo, baby.

This Saturday is Free Comic Book Day. It's an annual event where you can go to a comic book store and, in case there's some confusion about the name, get some free comics. Most stores participate, but not all of them, so it's best to check ahead of time. If your store is worth the space it occupies, they'll have ordered Red 5's FCBD offering with all new original Atomic Robo and Neozoic stories.

I'll be signing at Sci-Fi City from about noon until question mark. It would not be out of the question for me to make surprise and totally unofficial appearances at the Bad Apple Comics by UCF or maybe A Comics Shop across from Full Sail. Maybe if I did that, I'd give away some of these copies of Atomic Robo 1 to people who haven't yet taken the plunge on the series. But who can say? The future is a terrifying place filled with uncertainty.

Meanwhile, Scott will be signing at Jetpack Comics from 9am - 12pm, Double Midnight from 1pm to 4pm, and Larry's Comics from 5pm until whenever.

Oh, and I guess Iron Man and GTA4 and Mario Kart are all happening too. If that's what you're into.

In lieu of actual content tonight, I’ll just assume Scott or I said something insightful or interesting in one of the following interviews.

Alternate Reality Podcast and The Gigcast interviewed us back-to-back on the same night. We’re going to have to get Skype so we don’t sound all garbled and delayed and dumb on these things.

And if podcasts aren’t your bag, then newseedcomics.com has got you covered there as well.

Scott's got some interesting thoughts on Volume 2 regarding fiction, history, and how to mix them without insulting the reader or the source material.

As should be obvious, history is a big part of Atomic Robo. We've always sought to present history with a sci-fi twist but without trivializing the efforts of people who lived through the real events. Scott and I both had grandfathers who fought in WW2 and these men were heroes to us -- and would have been with or without their military service -- so we felt a personal need to be extra careful with the World War 2 content of this volume.

Mostly, we manage to respect history when we play with it by having Robo's adventures happen on the fringes. It's our theory that tackling history in this way is the best way to tell entertaining stories in historical settings without invalidating the actual contributions of real persons. It also has a side benefit of being Anti-Forrest Gump Insurance. The last thing Scott and I want is for Robo to be at the center stage of every major moment of the 20th century. He's an important person, yes, but the forces that mold history and shape the future are far larger than any single person. If he's at the fringes of history, then he can't be perceived as the primary motivator of it.

An example of fringe historical adventure would be Issue 1.1 (first volume, first issue). It's a classic early anti-Nazi pre-war pulp comic. It was an easy story to do because it was entirely fictional. While the Nazis had an interest in Himalayan peoples and history, and there was genuine interest in vril-like occultism, they never built a mountain base there to research it, so we were free to go nuts. You can't mangle a history that never happened. Conversely, Issue 1.4 put Robo right in the middle of the Viking I mission to Mars. He's on the rocket -- not exactly a position on the fringe. But nothing Robo does for NASA lessens the contributions of the scientists and engineers responsible for Viking I and II's successes. He is literally there for the ride. It's not a story about how Robo saved unmanned space exploration, it's a story about how there's nothing for him to do. The men and women of NASA get the job done at every step.

So, we had to find a way to put Robo into World War 2 without trivializing the sacrifices made by the soldiers on both sides and the civilians trapped between them. Again, our theory of fringe historical adventure seemed like the best path to take. The danger was in going too fringe. I mean, if we had Robo battling 50ft tall Juggernaut Mechanazis, that's clearly something that never happened (like the premise for Issue 1.1), so we should be in the clear. Right? Well, we couldn't shake the feeling that it was insultingly fictional. As if we would be saying that the real WW2 wasn't "interesting" enough.

One could maybe argue that we were over thinking it at this point, but really, you can go to just about any other big action comic book to find aliens and giant warbots. We wanted to do something a little different. It was always our goal to be as realistic as possible. Or, perhaps more accurately, to be as plausible as possible. Yeah, our main character is a walking impossibility, but other than that we aim for plausibility. And frankly, the Germans just didn't have the time/resources/tech to build giant robots. Intercontinental cannons and orbital weapons are another matter, of course...

In the end, we decided to give Robo missions that went alongside actual World War 2 events. Issue 2.1 concerns the Allied invasion of Sicily, Operation Husky. Robo is tasked to destroy key targets concurrent to the invasion. An interesting dualism kind of generated itself in this arc: the actual invasion is a background event to Robo, while Robo's mission is a background event to the invasion. I just now noticed that, but I'm totally taking credit for it if anyone thinks it's cool.

When we first started thinking about a World War 2 arc, we were talking about this exact set up for Operation Overlord and the Normandy landing. But, really, everyone does Normandy. We wanted to help raise awareness that there was more to WW2 than Normandy. Hell, there'd have been no Normandy without the costly lessons learned in Sicily, but that's another topic altogether.

The invasion of Sicily and the Italian Campaign that followed are these fascinating, pivotal moments in the war, but they've been forced to the fringe of public awareness by the Hollywood-ization of World War 2 and an almost fetishistic focus on Normandy. In essence, even though Robo's missions are critical to the success of the war effort, we've managed to put him at the fringe of a fringe. Hopefully, he won't step on any toes there. Dude weights a quarter of a ton, it'd really hurt.

Continuity is consistency. A finished film appears to be a consistent whole because continuity exists between camera angles, between scenes, objects within the scenes, the characters, and the plots they drive. Hell, the very motion of "motion pictures" is an illusion your brain manufactures from the continuity between individual frames.

Continuity is the clear path of cause and effect from origin to conclusion. Without continuity there is anarchy. It would be fair to say that continuity is the basic building block of all storytelling.

So why is continuity such a huge problem for comics?

Well, The Big Two have made continuity their problem. This isn't anyone's fault, it's just the inevitable result of maintaining a cache of un-aging characters for five to seven decades with hundreds of creative teams overseen by dozens of editors. Today's comics creators and editors are in the ineviable position of figuring what to do to maintain continuities that were never meant to be maintained.

Good luck with all that.

So far DC's decision has been to nearly completely erase their existing history to reboot the multi-uni-multiverse every so often (and more and more often). They can't be faulted for doing it the first time because, hey, it had never been done before. They couldn't hope to have foreseen some of the inconsistencies it would cause. They can even be forgiven for doing it a second time because "Surely," they no doubt thought, "We figured out what went wrong and this time we can make it stick!

Short version: they didn't. The third reboot is where it's fair for us to make fun of them for it. I guess DC's reboot policy is, "Fool me seven times, shame on you. Fool me eight or more times, shame on me."

Marvel's solution tends to work better. They just quietly ignore and/or update the past as needed. Iron Man, for example, originated in a Vietnam-like war and battled Cold War-like enemies. Today his origins are tied to the Middle East and he fights terrorist-like enemies. Same actor, different stage.

Marvel recently attempted a DC-type "clean slate" reboot, in miniature, with the Spider-Man storyline One More Day, which is what got me thinking about continuity today.

If you've got a lot of time on your hands, check out the multi-part interviews with Marvel Editor-in-Chief Joe Quesada and see Spider-Man writer J. Michael Straczynski's perspective from the other side.

TL;DR version - "We think we should see other people."

To say that reaction to this story has been "mixed" would be, well, lying. The reaction is negative in a big way and by a large margin. It's probably impossible to find out for certain, but I bet reaction would be more favorable if the story wasn't a DC-type continuity reboot or if, at least, it arose naturally from the characters instead of spontaneously arriving care of left field.

I think part of what riles fans so much about these kinds of events is that they are meant to "solve" a particular (and sometimes merely perceived) problem with continuity when all they really do is bring to light that comics characters' continuity is very poorly maintained when viewed with the slightly scrutiny. It calls into question the consistency of the character (or setting) as a whole. It breaks the illusion.

Atomic Robo is a reason to love comics.

Atomic Robo is one of IGN's best new titles of 2007.

I finished the script for our FCBD '08 offering. Robo has to stop a global radioactive crisis in sixteen pages. Can he do it?! The story takes place in the '60s so, yeah, it probably turns out okay in the end.

This was probably the hardest time I've had with a Robo script. Turns out that sixteen pages is an incredibly awkward length. It's way too long for a quick fire mini-comic (of the type you'll see in the backs of Atomic Robo 3 - 6) and way too short to indulge in slowing things down for a moment as in a full length story. On average I have to write every page about three to five times while searching for the right pace between action beats, plot beats, and comedy beats. Some of this re-writing is done in my head, but either way it takes time. It was the same with this FCBD script. Then I'd get to the end of Act I, realize it was moving way too slow, and then re-write the whole Act. Repeat for Act II. And for Act III. It was a pain in the ass, but I'm very happy with how it turned out. Scott's done a few pages already and they're wonderful. I was so jealous of the quality of his work in Killer of Demons and Punisher War Journal 14/15 after he finished Atomic Robo 6. So it's great to have him back on Robo again after nine months of powering up.

The issue is a bit of an experiment for us. We're working in a more cinematic format. I tend to think in cinematic terms when scripting -- my initial scripts were written in screenplay format because that's what I was most familiar with -- because I'd taken several years' worth of film courses in my crazy college days. It's a more regimented layout, but on the other hand it frees us up to do some interesting shots. And I feel like I'm better able to utilize the page. It's like 8-bit trained me to get something done on every page and this new format taps right into all of that training. I don't know if we'll stick with it, but it's been a fun format to work in so far.

What's next on my plate? Why, writing Atomic Robo Vol, 2 Issue 2, of course! There's no guarantee that we'll see a second volume -- we need you guys to support the next three issues of the current mini-series for that to happen -- but it can't hurt to be prepared just in case we screw up and succeed.

ATOMIC ROBO #1 will be in the July issue of Previews, and will be available for purchase in October.

Tesladyne's primary base of operations has been a top secret location since 2002.  It was felt by the city, state, and federal authorities that our highly public offices located in the top floors of the Empire State Building provided too tempting a target after the 9/11 business.  Helsingard alone made several direct attacks on the building over the years, and though the most recent of those was 1967's unfortunate hurling of a then late model Oldsmobile from the 80th story to street level in an attempt to kill me as I entered, I couldn't really argue.

It was decided that Tesladyne's new location would remain a matter of secrecy.  Oh, we still hold a small office in NYC, but that's mostly to facilitate the day-to-day bureaucracy that keeps a company rolling.  It's hard to send mail with a return address of QUESTION-MARK.

I do miss New York though.  I was built and raised there, and I can think of no better place for a robot who never sleeps to grow up than in the city that never sleeps.  The first eighteen years of my life were a blur of laboratories, celebrities, skyscrapers, and adventures -- many of which Mr. Tesla never learned about.

Then I set off to travel the world, fight the Japanese in the skies over China, the Ratzis in Europe, and met all manner of so-called "mystery men" along the way.  When I came home, it was to a very different New York.  It felt like the electricity of city life had been leeched away.  Maybe my globe-trotting days made it difficult to settle down all at once. Maybe it was Mr. Tesla's death in my absence. Maybe it was my own sense of aimlessness without him or A Great Big Cause to present me with immediate goals.

There was one other thing: a shift toward unparalleled secrecy in the scientific community. Oh, sure, we always had our secrets, our pet projects. My creation was one such clandestine endeavor. But, before the war, there was an on-going forum, an informal sharing of theories and developments through letters, social clubs, seminars, and what have you.  You couldn't get two of us at the same table without one hammering out the kinks in the other's work.  After the war? Everything was a secret. Getting the most basic information from trusted colleagues was like pulling teeth.  And if someone was working on a tooth-pulling machine, they'd never tell you.

I didn't know it then, but it was all a by-product of the war.  It was like one day in in the '40s the government had just figured out that things like earthquake machines and weather cannons could be weaponized, so they gathered all the brainpower they could to work on them, a hundred others technologies, and defenses against all of them.

It took me a while to figure this out in part because the Cold War hadn't really taken off yet.  But mostly it was because I'd been left out of the loop.  This is still a sore subject for me, and the primary reason I stopped working for the military.  Put simply: the FBI used the circumstances of Mr. Tesla's death to steal his life's work while I was an ocean away fighting monsters and war engines for their bosses.

They denied it, of course, and still do. The missing documents and equipment were obviously destroyed in the explosion that took Mr. Tesla's life. Yeah, I'd like to buy it. I tried to for a time. But then you see things like lightning gun prototypes, or papers researching the uses of spatial transposition in wartime, or you get a call desperately asking you to retrieve soldiers from the Vampire Dimension, and it gets hard to believe it's only coincidence.

No, I didn't know why it was happening, but I could feel the landscape of scientific progress shifting around me.  The spirit of discovery was moving out of laboratories and into board rooms of defense contractors.

Mr. Tesla's will rather clearly left all rights, royalties, and properties to me.  And while the FBI or whoever may have seized anything and everything from our New York labs, that still left me with our less publicly known holdings.  It was with those resources that I founded Tesladyne to make a stand for independent scientific inquiry.  Just me, two assistants, and a warehouse filled with equipment, still in their packing crates, only recently unearthed from treasure troves stretching from Colorado to the East Coast.

Outside the growing military industrial complex, outside the marriage of academia and corporations, we were seen as an association of crackpots operating at the fringes of science.  I can't say it's an unfair generalization.  It's certainly one we've done nothing to combat.  Yet, as the years passed, Tesladyne gained a different reputation. We became a kind of clean up crew. When more "respectable" scientific efforts would get out of control, we were there to make things right.  Most of these things I can't mention in detail, even thirty years later, but they run the gamut from basic espionage to the total collapse of all structure in reality.

We were the ones exploring theories everyone else assumed to be absurd, building things everyone else assumed to be ridiculous.  In the process, we became the Earth's immune system against all manner of weirdness.  After a while, the U.N. recognized our efforts and helped foot the bill for our field work.  Their initially controversial endorsement helped legitimize our work in the eyes of many, and as a result Tesladyne had never been busier.  As it turned out, the world was a very strange place, just no one liked to talk about it.

Well, we held officies in the Empire State Building for quite a while at that point.  Almost since the day we entered, we were absorbing our neighbors.  And then whole floors.  No one really needed convincing to move.  I don't have to tell you that working next door to what is effectively a barely contained explosion factory can be a little distracting.  We were there for just shy of fifty years.  You could feel Tesladyne in the city, like we were a landmark.

It's just as well that we moved out when we did.  We'd have probably owned the entire top half in another fifty years.  And the space and accommodations provided by our new, for lack of a better word, complex puts to shame anything we had in New York.

But I still miss my hometown.