More Comics
Robotika: For a Few Rubles More #1
By Michael Vance
February 9, 2008 - 10:13

Archaia Studios Press
Writer(s): David Moran
Penciller(s): Alex Sheikman
$3.95 and 35 pages



robotica.jpg

The first issue of a comic book series is similar to a first date. It’s impossible to learn everything about the object of one’s initial interest, but if the packaging isn’t right and there’s not enough that’s intriguing, there won’t be a second encounter, you can bet your sweet bippy.

Prepare to bet your sweet bippy (and your hard earned cash) on a second date.

Robotika is the second miniseries of a title that reads and looks a lot like the movie Mad Max if it had been set in Japan, filmed like the Western classic High Noon, and written by a streamlined H. P. Lovecraft (the master of subtle horror).

Intriguing?  You betcha.

Throw in a little pseudo-science from the pulp magazines of the 1930s.
Robotika is sorta like a techo-western sushi comic book. Ah-so-yippee-ki-yi-ya!

Its reality-based art is heavily influenced by Japanese and European comic art as well as by the home-grown American variety, and it just doesn’t get much better.

In addition, I applauded the restraint used when dealing with violence, nudity, profanity, and perversion in the first series.  I clap heartily again.

However, the promotional blurb on its website says a member of an elite bodyguard protecting the queen is “sent on a mission to recover a stolen invention that, in the wrong hands, could trigger a bloody civil war”.

Well, that’s why you’ll need a second date. Not much of that is in the first issue, but it sure made me want to read the second one. And maybe sing: “Do not forsake me, oh my darling…geisha”.

Robitaka: For a Few Rubles More is highly recommended.


Related Articles:
VIZ Media and Haikasoru Announce Return to World Science Fiction Convention
VIZ Media's Haikasoru to Attend 73rd World Science Fiction Convention
Elysium - Science Fiction as Political Economy
Oblivion - Ego-stroking Beautiful Science Fiction
Los Angeles Comic Book and Science Fiction Convention Presents Billy Dee Williams
Los Angeles Comic Book and Science Fiction Con presents Tanya Roberts and Kevin Sorbo
VIZ Media Announces Four New Science Fiction Novels
VIZ Media Debuts Two Science Fiction Novels
VIZ Media Launches Science Fiction Imprint
VIZ Media to Publish Japanese Science Fiction Novels