3 out of 5

Man, I was hyped for this – in single issue form – when it originally came out some years back.  As an Atomic Robo fan, and with fond(er) feelings toward artist Brian Churilla than I have now, the promise of Clevinger bringing his high-concept actionry to the Marvel sandbox was enticing as heck.

I’m… not sure I finished buying the series all the way to issue 4, but if I did, I blacked out the memory and the books are no longer in my longbox.  Thus continued or encouraged my tradition of often avoiding Big Two books written by authors I otherwise appreciate on indie titles.

With expectations more firmly set low, the trade was a way to wade back in to the title to see how it fared from this time-softened point of view.  Clevinger, after all, hadn’t been wooed by Spider-Mans and Avengers (whether or not Marvel extended further offers), keeping to his creation Robo and continuing to produce work I’ve loved, so it seemed like enough time had passed to give this another go.  And, y’know, I’m glad I did.  Because it’s not bad!  But you know what is bad?  You know what brings it down to almost unreadable, if I didn’t have a sense for Brian’s pacing from Robo?  Effing Churilla.

Now, I hate being so anti- whatever.  Because it’s not fair.  Churilla isn’t a bad artist by any means, trading in a sort of bubbly style with a focus on drawing big ol’ creeps and monsters that makes for an Archie-meets-Eric-Powell look, but he keeps taking on projects that just aren’t good matches for his style.  While Clevinger’s comedy chops may seem like a fit pairing, that’s discounting how good Robo artist Scott Wegener has gotten at cramming Brian’s complicated setups into slick, widescreen panels.  Complicated?  Not Churilla’s forte.  Nor is the lightfooted dialogue pacing that Clevinger works in, or the characterizations by which the Robo cast meets world-ending events with an in-universe convincing soberness and sardonic quips.  Am I making Churilla sound pretty limited?  Well, again: I just haven’t seen what he is really a good match  for yet, but case is closed on working with Brian Clevinger.  (Not A Good Match, if you needed that clarified.)  If not for Bri rescuing the ridiculous character of U.S. Ace – cosmic truck driver – from Marvel’s nethers and finding ways to humiliate Dr. Doom and to get Hulk to wear a funny hat, the book would not survive Churilla’s supremely underwhelmingly simplified art.  And reading it in a trade also certainly helps, as waiting month-to-month or week-to-week (I can’t remember the cadence) for what’s essentially a compressed Infinity Gauntlet sendup that has no real bearing on anything and unexciting visuals would have been… was… not a great experience.  But jam it into a flimsy trade for fairly cheap – yeah man, I’d read that on the toilet.  And did!  And laughed at Clevinger being as silly as possible and succeeding!

The summary: it’s funny.  Thanos does his gauntlet thing, and some pared-down Avengers take a bus to the center of the galaxy to do the fight thing.  And at story’s end, none of it matters.  To drive that home, we get the first issue of Starlin’s original Infinity Gauntlet.  (At 15.99 for the trade, if you consider the current value of these issues at 3.99, that’s a bonus, but if you consider the original 2.99 value of these issues… it’s just a way to justify the cover price.  But this is just a cash grab tie-in to the upcoming Avengers movie anyway, no?)  (Man, how am I still writing about this?)