4 out of 5

Hm, for once, Robo doesn’t steal the show.  Fosgitt’s ‘Bodie’ is cute, animated, and makes me want to see what happens next… vs. Robo’s tale which, yes, adds some details to the Robo world but feels, unfortunately, formulaic for the ‘bot, lacking the organic magic of previous entries.  We join AR in 2010 as he’s been called to deal with a rampaging punchin’ robot who maybe looks a little like Clevinger’s warbot.  There’s a pretty funny fight (narrated with one word actions by each character) and another panel of Robo getting smashed around while voicing pleasant curses like ‘Applesauce’ that, as always, reminds me of Hellboy’s approach to getting pounded.  Then Jenkins steps in for some Jenkins action, and then we get our ‘reveal’ of links to Majestic, which is still a sort of frustratingly undeveloped adversary, in my mind, in the AR world.  Nothing wrong with this short, just, as I said, it follows beats with which we’re familiar and I’m not sure it’d be punchy enough to make a new reader track down the series.  Interestingly, we have a new colorist on hand.  Anthony Clark’s colors are interesting, with a blended water color look to them, but I don’t think they’re the perfect match for AR, Weg’s pencils benefiting from straight ‘pop’ colors.  Regarding Weg, this is him in blocky style, Robo looking all chubs and Popeye forearms.  And it’s a step down in readable action from recent volumes, going back to his old tricks of motion suddenly switching direction between panels.

In Bodie, a troll who can’t scare anything is trying to, er, scare up some money to buy some grub.  This has him trying to dispose of a giant egg… which hatches to reveal a monster… and end scene.  Fosgitt’s humor timing is excellent, Bodie’s frequent distractions sold by his facial expressions and the BT world a perfect balance of classic cartooning and background detailing.  Each page, each panel is a pretty masterful example of spacing and framing, with the solid, earthy colors allowed good flashes of orange, or red to further assist in keeping the look exciting.