Wednesday evening I had the pleasure of picking up Test Subjects Brian Clevinger, Scott Wegener, and Scott Wegener’s Beard from San Francisco International Airport. Both of them had just completed an arduous journey through several of this nation’s finest and most delayed airports. My Lovely Assistant and I felt it appropriate to greet them on arrival with a bottle of BBotE and a bottle of St. George Single Malt Whiskey, to help with the creative process if you will. Also, in a matter of pure happenstance, I parked next to Tesla roadster and it was still waiting for them in the garage when we got back out to car.
If they were crestfallen that the Tesla wasn’t specifically put there for their use, they hid their disappointment well.
It was a pleasure to walk their bleary-eyed, starving, travel corpses over to my favorite restaurant in Chinatown, give them a strange wandering history of San Francisco/California from the pre-Colombian period through John Carpenter’s “Big Trouble In Little China”. I took special care to make sure the Wing Kong didn’t get them and pointed out the supreme difficulty Big Jack Burton would have had in getting the Pork Chop Express anywhere around Grant St.
The following day, they gave a talk to the Academy of Art 2nd Annual Comic Symposium about how to insert robots into any idea you can find. This is known as the Team Robo Method(TM). I am sorry I had to miss it but I had a minor bit of crazy preparing for a trip to Las Vegas to hand have deliver Stein #200 to Steinwielder & Test Subject Zitron and celebrate my Lovely Assistant’s birthday.
More seriously, I have had the pleasure of reading Atomic Robo since it was a brainworm that would not leave Brian Clevinger’s head. I have yet to meet someone that I’ve introduced to Atomic Robo that hasn’t ended up both adoring the story and laughing at the jokes. I still swear it is amazing the amount of emotion Scott Wegener’s gotten Robo’s almost featureless face conveys. And boy howdy do I have a deal for you, you can read the first issue for free online at Comixology. As they say, want some, get some! Besides, the more comics they sell the more likely I get to see them all again and I’m keen on that. Consider this a continuation of my Shameless Whorebaggery on Behalf of Others from last week.
Right before leaving for Vegas, a package arrived for me. I might have cackled with delight. Dr. Dinosaur is dear to my heart because, as my Lovely Assistant has said, I am prone to feats of broken logic that do a supergenius ‘raptor proud (and I have finger wriggles of anticipation at getting even more Dr. Dinosaur in the coming Free Comic Book Day, if rumor is to be believed). Now that I have both Atomic Robo and Dr. Dinosaur statuettes, I was able to let the duel begin as they chose their respective seconds:
The heartbreaking aftermath of this otherwise awesome photo is that the cats of Funranium Labs were feeling very, very, VERY unloved in the wake of 36 hours worth of food ape-less kitty eternities. An episode of cat crazy demolition derby sent them crashing into the stand where the stein was mere minutes after this picture was taken. Therefor, there is now a new cat-damaged stein in the Prototypes & Clearance section, dagnabit.