Brian Clevinger, Mike Olson, and Scott Wegener
A quick follow-on to last week’s review – very much an expansion pack to the game, but one that added a lot of detail to the backstory of Majestic. The idea of The System, a deliberately-obtuse bureaucracy meant to ensure that nobody knows enough of what’s going on to effectively leak things, is a nice touch. Pairs extremely well with the existence of ALAN in the comics. A nice follow-up.
Brian Clevinger, Mike Olson, and Scott Wegener
Doesn’t quite fit my review concept, as I’d call this more of a reference book than anything else, but having just sat and read through the whole thing, I may as well do a quick write-up!
The Fate Core system seems more approachable to me than the classic Dungeons & Dragons thing; I’m hopeful that I’ll have a chance to try this at some point. The Atomic Robo universe feels like an absolutely perfect fit for a game like this, particularly the more episodic (or rather, issue/volume) structure of the stories. I also enjoyed that there was more material in this book than I’ve seen in the actual comic—the timeline, in particular, includes quite a few things that have yet to make an appearance in the comic, and helped to build out the world even more. Fun!
So hey, if you’re interested in RPGs, consider this one.
Brian Clevinger, Scott Wegener, Lee Black, Ronda Pattison, Nick Filardi, Anthony Clark, Jeff Powell
Atomic Robo is one of my favorite comics, one I’ve been reading long enough that I wish I had some way of figuring out exactly how long I have been reading it. It’s getting a review now, however, as I recently did an all-the-way-through reread.1
Here’s the concept of the comic: Nikolai Tesla built a nuclear-powered, fully sentient robot. He’s creatively named Atomic Robo Tesla, and generally goes by Atomic Robo, or just Robo to his friends. Being a bulletproof, super-strong robot, he gets into some adventures! Being an ageless machine, those adventures occur across a wide range of time. Being a world where it’s possible for Nikolai Tesla to build a nuclear-powered, fully sentient robot, those adventures involve a whole lot of pulp science fiction—there’s an entire comic early on where Robo spends a few hours fighting giant insects while having a discussion via radio about why giant insects are impossible.
Basically, it’s some of the most fun science fiction I read, and I absolutely love it. There’s some really interesting storylines, and there’s also some really funny storylines. Just about everything that Dr. Dinosaur shows up in absolutely hilarious—everything else in this world feels like it’s following some rules, though different ones than our world, but Dr. Dinosaur is just running around inside his own personal reality distortion field. And he shows up precisely often enough to maintain the hilarity of how well he plays off of Robo.
So, hey, if you’re at all interested in any of this, go read the comic. The nice thing about webcomics is that it’s all free online! And, honestly, I really recommend starting from the beginning—it makes the most sense that way, and while there’s some early references to stuff that shows up again later, it’s more little hints that make it better on reread.2