40th Anniversary Souvenir Book

The 2009 San Diego Comic-Con is less than a month away, with preview night kicking things off on Wednesday, July 22. If you are a publisher, creator, retailer or any other kind of exhibitor who would like to let folks know about any special plans you have for the show (panels, signing schedules, exclusives, debuts, etc.) drop me an email and I'll run it here.

Also, to the right is the 40th anniversary souvenir book cover, featuring art by the great Rick Geary. Comic-Con debuted it on their Twitter feed, where they've also been announcing panels and auctions for membership badges.

Publishers | Red 5 Comics will be at booth S-9 in the small press area, with the creators of We Kill Monsters, Neozoic, Atomic Robo and Afterburn available for signings.

Books | Scott Morse says he'll have about 100 copies of The Ancient Book of Sex and Science, which sold out before its release after being mentioned on BoingBoing. He's also taking orders for a signed and numbered edition, which he'll bring to the con if you order one.

Exclusives | Becky Cloonan will have a set of four silkscreen prints at the con, limited to 100 "signed, numbered, stamped and enveloped" copies.

I asked if she and the 5/Pixu crew had another book planned for this year, but she said they've all been so busy they haven't been able to do one. She also said she'll have a big announcement at the con, and she'll have a table with with Brian Wood, Cliff Chiang and Jill Thompson.

Mini-comics | According to Ben Towle, J Chris Campbell of Wide Awake Press is putting together a Michael Jackson memorial mini-comic to sell at the con, which will feature stories and pin-ups of the King of Pop.

Panels | The Crogan Adventures creator Chris Schweizer sent over a list of panels he'll be at this year, providing more pieces in the ever-growing Comic-Con schedule puzzle:

THURSDAY, JULY 23:
3:00-4:00 Oni Press: Panelmonium 2009-Often imitated but never duplicated, get up close and personal with trend setting indie comic powerhouse Oni Press. Join in the Q&A with your favorite Oni creators including Ross Campbell (Wet Moon), Jamie S. Rich (You Have Killed Me), Greg Rucka (Whiteout), Bryan Lee O'Malley (Scott Pilgrim), and Chris Schweizer (The Crogan Adventures). Get sneak peeks at upcoming Oni projects, news on Oni Press fan initiatives, free Oni comics, prizes and more! Guaranteed by Oni Press' totally biased employees to be "the most fun you'll ever have at a panel." Room 10

Crogan's Vengeance

SATURDAY, JULY 25:
5:00-6:00 Graphic Novels: Sense of History-There's a wonderful world of history awaiting you in numerous graphic novels available now. Whether it be real life stories adapting historical events to the comics form, or fiction taking place in a specific time, these practitioners of the historical graphic novel are all presenting work at the top of their form. Moderator Randy Duncan (co-chair of the Comics Arts Conference) talks to Comic-Con special guests Rick Geary (Treasury of XX Century Murder: Famous Players), David Petersen (Mouse Guard), and Stan Sakai (Usagi Yojimbo), plus Jason Lutes (Berlin), Chris Schweizer (Crogan's Vengeance), and Eric Shanower (Age of Bronze), about their individual takes on history. Room 8

SUNDAY, JULY 26:
10:00-11:00 Kids' Graphic Novels- What's new and wonderful in the world of comics and graphic novels for kids in 2009? Moderator Robin Brenner, creator and editor-in-chief of NoFlyingNoTights.com highlights the works of panelists Lewis Trondheim (Tiny Tyrant), Gene Yang (American Born Chinese), Derek Kirk Kim (The Eternal Smile), Eric Wight (Frankie Pickle and The Closet of Doom), Chris Schweizer (Crogan's Vengeance), Jennifer Holm (Babymouse), and Jarrett J. Krosoczka (Lunch Lady), who all recommend other great titles. Room 3

2:00-3:00 Kids Write!-Kids, join creators Chris Giarrusso (G-Man), Chris Schweizer (Crogan's Vengeance), Eric Wight (Frankie Pickle), and Gene Yang (American Born Chinese) as they draw the story you tell! Moderated by Cory Casoni (Oni Press). Room 30CDE

Panels | Mark Evanier lists all the panels he'll be moderating at this year's con, including a spotlight on comics legend Gene Colan.

Exclusives | The Comic-Con official website posted a whole bunch of exclusives that'll debut at the show, including Avatar comics, Dark Avengers minimates, a Stay Puft Marshmallow Man bank, signed and numbered copies of The Hunter by Darwyn Cooke and more. Hasbro has a cool Invaders action figure boxed set (right) and a black-and-white Captain America that look like they're worth checking out. I also like the Peanuts shirts and the Astronaut Snoopy figurine.

Movies | Footage from Matthew Vaughn’s big screen adaptation of Mark Millar and John Romita Jr.'s Kick-Ass will debut at the con.

Television | The Sci Fi Channel has announced their line-up of panels, which will include one devoted to Caprica and Battlestar Galactica: The Plan. They'll also be showing episodes of Warehouse 13 and Eureka.

Merchandise | Cartoon Books has three new Bone shirts that they'll be selling at Comic-Con. Or you can buy them now online.

Movies | Speaking of Bone, there will be a screening of The Cartoonist, the documentary about Jeff Smith, on Friday at the con.

Movies | King of the Hill and Office Space creator Mike Judge will show footage from his next movie, Extract, on July 25 at the con.

Movies | Comic-Con has released the schedule for their International Independent Film Festival, which will run all four days of the con. You can find it here.

Atomic Robo: Dogs of War #1

Atomic Robo: Dogs of War #1-5
Written by Brian Clevinger; Illustrated by Scott Wegener
Red 5 Comics; $2.95/issue

One of the things I loved most about the first Atomic Robo series was that each issue stood on its own and told a different story from the others. Nikola Tesla’s greatest creation could fight giant ants in one issue and mummies in the next. You just never knew what you were going to get.

It was the perfect format for a monthly serial. In a time when I almost always wait for the collections on independent books, Atomic Robo made me excited to tune in each month for the next installment. There was no incentive to hold off and read the story all at once later on. It was all about instant gratification.

When I heard that the second mini-series, Dogs of War, was going to be more of a serialized story, I was worried that it would lose some of that spontaneity that I’d loved so much the first time around. It didn’t though. Dogs of War focuses on Robo’s service fighting Nazis in WWII and the stories are connected, but there’s still a great deal of variety from issue to issue. There’ll be a little more flow in the eventual collection than there was in the last volume, but it’s still very much an instant gratification kind of book.

Atomic Robo: Dogs of War #2

The first two issues form one story. Robo is part of the US 45th Infantry that took Sicily’s Scoglitti Beach in 1943, but what history doesn’t tell us is about Hitler’s walking tanks that were there to defend the island. Robo spends a couple of issues fighting these primitive, but tough Nazi mechs and gets his metal butt handed to him in the process.

I read an interview with Brian Clevinger once – or maybe it was a blog post – where he talked about the balancing act he had to play between showing plenty of Robo action and not having him single-handedly defeat the Nazis at every turn. While Atomic Robo isn’t a serious exploration of the horrors of war, Clevinger wanted the honor and sacrifice of the real soldiers who fought in WWII to have their due. And he does a fine job of that.

By making these walking tanks – the Laufpanzer – so nasty, Clevinger makes sure that Robo needs plenty of help fighting them. He can’t be a one-man military division; he’s got to act as part of a unit. Fortunately, Clevinger’s talented enough to show that with humor and style. There’s a real sense of poignancy about the soldiers that grounds the series without ever weighing it down.

For the most part, Robo leaves his unit behind in the third and fourth issues. He and another soldier are on a mission to bring in Otto Skorzeny, the commander of the Laufpanzers, and to learn the whereabouts of the remaining tanks. What Robo and his partner don’t realize is that Skorzeny has met up with an evil genius named Dr. Vanadis, a woman who herself is being pursued by a British agent/adventuress known as the Sparrow. When both Robo and the Sparrow try to take their prey on a train rushing through Croatia, the two “allies” stumble over each other and need to learn to work together. Need to, but that’s not saying that they ever succeed.

Robo vs. the Sparrow

As anyone who reads my other blog knows, I’m a huge fan of women characters who kick butt. Add the Sparrow to that list. My only disappointment though – and it’s a major one – is that Sparrow and Robo never get along well enough to get their act together. That’s not a weakness in the storytelling. Clevinger obviously means for it to happen that way and he took the more difficult road in making the Sparrow so likable. He could easily have made her a strident bitch so that it would be obvious who we’re supposed to root for. But I liked both of these characters so much that I wanted them both to succeed. I wanted them to be friends. When they didn’t like each other, it was like having to stand back helplessly and watch two of my pals fight.

The final issue in Dogs of War takes place more than a year after the first. Normandy has been successfully invaded, but the Nazis are still pushing on with their Weird War initiative. Trying to put a stop to that, Robo leads a British Commando force in an attempt to shut down a devastating weapon that could destroy all of Britain from an island in the English Channel. When they get there, they find Skorzeny ready for them and Robo is captured. The rest of the issue is about Robo’s being rescued by an awesomely talented, but hilariously incomprehensible Scot commando.

"Did you hear that?"

So the issues are connected, yes, but they also make up three different stories with very different feels. And each issue also has a short back up story in which Robo fights various giant creatures (specifically: a crab, a mummy, and a robot), one of Robo’s modern-day co-workers reluctantly takes a vacation and ends up having a sweet, butt-kicking time, and we see a modern-day epilogue to the Robo/Skorzeny conflict. And there are pin-ups. Pin-ups of Robo fighting dinosaurs, hooking up with Prohibition-era robo-dames, and posing (tastefully) in the nude.

It’s a brilliant, worthy sequel to the first mini-series. I’ll be buying it in its collected edition, but I’m not at all sorry I nabbed it as it was coming out. And that’s not common for me. I have no doubt I’ll be buying the next mini-series in both formats as well.

Five out of five incomprehensible Scots.

What?