Thursday, August 13, 2020
Robot That Hated / Robert the Robot!
The recent storms here in the macabre midwest knocked out the power in my lab for a few days, but we're back up and running, and comin' atcha hard 'n heavy with a rock 'em sock 'em Robot Double Feature! One is good, and one is eeeevil, but they're actually both love stories (!!!) and if you're scratching your scientific heads about that-- then read on! Al Eadeh spooks yer screws loose with a haywire classic from the February 1954 issue of Adventures into Weird Worlds #26, while joltin' Joe Maneely brings up the rear with a rip roarin' round of robo hilarity from the July 1954 issue of Crazy #7.
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6 comments:
For just a second at the end, I thought the robot was going to kill Feder because he was a "self-loathing" character, and the robot killed ANYONE he hated.
(If that had happened, it would've been a little like that TRILOGY OF TERROR story where Karen Black puts a fatal spell on her sister, not realizing that she IS her sister in a different personality.)
I love that the robot in the first story looks like a really demented version of the Tinman from the Wizard of Oz. Funny that the story apparently takes place in Ridgewood. I live in New Jersey, and there's a Ridgewood there, so I like to imagine that this story took place in New Jersey. I love the 4th panel of the second page where Feder is imagining his cigarette is Flo--the smoky face is great touch! There's also a nice panel on page 3, panel 6, of his home during the night. I love those last few panels of the robot approaching Feder and humming some sort of song. It's unintentionally hilarious to me.
The second story is hysterical. Love the can opener for emergency on the robot's back and Maneely's signature on the robot's rump on the splash page. The silly puns are great and I love the part where the scientists have to slow down because the artist can't keep up with them.Love this line too: "You chase what you want...I'll chase what I want!" The only part that doesn't quite work at the end is when Zelda reveals herself to be a robot. The "costume" looks more like a mangled body and it doesn't help that the coloring of the dress and gloves are off here.
Maybe Robert lay down and got all his buttons pushed at once? There's only a limited number of drinks you can mix, after all.
No robot can reply to this post because of the "I'm not a robot" button. Clever!
Eadeh deserves a med(t)al for "The Robot that Hated." As said before, it's a tin-man riff (notice the heart on the splash) but with shark teeth and a crazy evil face. I love everything about it, and Eadeh goes the extra mile to make our real villain as unappealing as possible.
Page 3 with the kill, the house (bats!) and Frankenstein equipment are all really good. The ending was a surprise, I was also convinced it would be self-loathing.
Robert the Robot feels like Kurtzman wrote the script, especially with the constant chase scenes always revolving around a woman. Maneely, as always, is an expert at everything. Every expression, done in a lite comic style, is just great. Page 3, panel 5 is a very Kurtzman gag. I loved every panel of it!
Robots!
That deep dark Eadeh art in the first story is pretty glorious. I love the last two panels of page three. And I think the grotesque character work is wonderful, too. It's just an amazingly chewy visual presentation all the way through. I'm digging the splash on the Maneely story, too, which comes off like a big colorful kazoo sound after the curdled thrum of that first one. Boy, Maneely is sure good at crafting futuristic cities and background mechanics that don't accidentally evoke Wally Wood. For the record, I think the "Can Can" joke was absolutely worth crafting a whole four-page comics story around, Maneely and the wonderful color work is just icing on the cake.
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