ALBOTAS - A Little Bit On The Awesome Side

Today’s Free Comic Book Day, so I hit up my local comic shop, Golden Eagle Comics. There was a special guest appearance by 501st Legion: Vader’s Fist, a worldwide Imperial costume organization. Hit the jump for some pics and check out some short reviews on what I picked up.

Even though I got harassed by some Stormtroopers who though I was smuggling intergalactic cargo, it was a pretty fun time. The troopers kindly apologized and told me the whole thing was a just a big misunderstanding. They were just told that the suspect was Hispanic. No biggie.

The deal with Free Comic Book Day is this: There’s a huge table laid out with tons of comics. The first one’s free, then if you want any more, they’re 50 cents apiece. Most of these comics are samplers containing anywhere from one to three samples of different comics from the same publisher. Check out my goods.

First up is the ATOMIC ROBO sampler (click here for 3 page preview) with a bonus sampler for NEOZOIC by Red 5 Comics. The backstory for Atomic Robo is simple: back in 1923 a scientist made a robot with automatic intelligence. The robot’s granted American citizenship, but it has to go on top-secret military missions. Years go by and the robot founds TESLADYNE — “a think tank dedicated to exploring the fringes of scientific inquiry.”

The sample issues features robo going on a mission to St. Alexanria Island, just north of Siberia, in search of what’s supposed to be a bomb built by the Russians. Turns out it’s just a crazy rogue scientist with an army of robots who’s built a bomb to blow up the world for his own reasons. I was surprised that the guys behind this were able to cram so much action, humor, and suspense into only 16 pages, but they did, and it worked.

Art: Excellent! It’s actually what drew me to the comic in the first place. I’m a huge fan of thick, angular lines and minimal detail in the pencils & inks. The coloring has a cool cell shaded — almost Saturday morning cartoon feel to it.

Story: Totally not what I was expecting, but I was pleasantly surprised. Robo’s personality really shines and the some of dialogue is LOL-worthy.

Verdict: I’m totally going to pick up the TPB that collects the first six issues, and if it’s anything like this sampler, I’ll be adding the new series, Atomic Robo and the Dogs of War to my pull list this fall.

As for the other story, Neozoic, I wasn’t really feeling it. It goes like this: you know that meteor that supposedly wiped out the dinosaurs? Well, in Neozoic, that never happened. So, flash forward 65 million years to world where humans and dinosaurs co-exist. Sounds kind of cool, I guess, but the creators only had 8 pages to try and sell this book to me and it didn’t really work. The artwork came off pretty sloppy and the characters were way too cliché for my tastes. You have the badass, fearless, tough chick that also happens to be a total babe, then you have her BFF who’s a pansy-ass dork that’s scared of everything. I guess it just wasn’t for me.

Art: Meh.

Story: Meh.

Verdict: Maybe it was the fact that they were trying to give me a sense of the story, character, and world in only 8 pages. I’d definitely give this another shot, but I sort of have a sour taste in my mouth. It wasn’t terrible by any means. I have a feeling it just wasn’t for me.

The Hellboy sampler containted 3 short stories, two of which I read and enjoyed, the other one I just couldn’t bring myself to finish. I’m a pretty big Hellboy fan, so free Hellboy is just plain awesome no matter how you look at it.

The three short stories include The Mole which has Hellboy playing a card game with some dead people when one of them notices that Big Red’s growing an ugly mole on his hand. The mole gets bigger and bigger and a Demon bursts out of it, turning Hellboy into an empty skin sack in the process. Hellboy’s skin detaches from his huge arm and blows all around town while the demon takes his arm to hell. Then Hellboy wakes up to find it was all a dream… or was it?

The second story, Out of Reach, featured the ghostly Johann Kraus coming to grips with the death a good comrade and friend. And by “coming to grips” I mean “revenge”. It’s a good story that’s told well. It’s one of those pieces that tells you the story without telling you the story. Loved it.

The next story was Bishop Olek’s Devil. I could not for the life of me read this thing. I found Paul Azaceta’s art VERY bland and it almost put me to sleep like a slow song. Maybe it wasn’t the art alone. Maybe the drawn-out narrative had something to do with it, which sucks because Mike Mignola, whom I adore, had a hand in penning the script with Joshua Dysart. It was one of those comic stories where most of the narrative is told in yellow boxes with barely any word bubbles. I can’t even remember what the story was about. I remember Nazis… and that’s about it. Sorry.

I’m gonna’ skip the art/story/verdict rating on this one because it’s Hellboy and B.P.R.D. If you aren’t reading any of these or haven’t read any of these, then you probably don’t like comics or good stories.

Here’s some more pics from Free Comic Book Day at Golden Eagle.