The Trades talks with Atomic Robo artist and co-creator Scott Wegener about his influences, collaborating with Brian Clevinger, and making the kind of comic he wants to read:
As far as what Brian and I are doing with Atomic Robo, it’s pretty simple. We both love good old fashioned action movies, we both enjoy a good laugh, and we both love a well crafted movie, book, or comic that can laugh at its self. Unless you’re making the comic book adaptation of the Diary of Anne Frank you can probably afford to dial it down a bit, and not take yourself too seriously. Comic book professionals should be taken seriously, but we should also keep in mind that we’re not curing cancer, or protecting Democracy here. However, not enough people are doing that. And none of them were giving us the “pulp” feel that we craved as readers — except for Hellboy, which only comes out once in a blue moon.
Another thing that irked us and we wanted to say something about with Atomic Robo, is the “dark and gritty” garbage that seems to be the norm in comics these days. Okay fine, one or two anti-heroes are great. They spice things up. But these days EVERYONE is dark and moody, and worse than that, cynical. But y’know what? Pop a Zoloft and grab some hand grenades, because we’re not doing that with Robo. We’re going to fight evil robots, giant ants, and Stephen Hawkins, and we’re going to do it without miles of lame character introspection, and we’re not going to de-construct a two-issue story into a nine-issue story.
The first Atomic Robo trade paperback will be released in June.
