5 out of 5

Dr. Dinosaur.  Best character ever?

YES.  PROBABLY.  The synthesis of all previous FCBD Dr. D appearances pay off here, for the team-up.  This is Clevinger and Wegener at their prime: pseudo (real?) science fiction backing about some world-ending event requiring Robo and the late-night staff at Tesla to set things right.  But they need help.  And guess who offers?  Right, I mentioned team-up.  Some of the best paced /placed jokes this crew has ever delivered (laugh out loud, for reals) and a ridiculous ending that is indescribably hilarious and, again, is such a great cap to the few moments we get with Robo’s crazed enemy.

Wegener does his standard reliably awesome bit, dialed to its most appropriate levels.  Sometimes he gets a bit too blocky with his figures, but its in nice balance here, and the action is similarly pitched at just the breaking point before Weg’s framing can get a bit confusing.

Also included are Neozoic and Bonnie Lass shorts, both of which are well-chosen pages for getting a reader interested.  I’m not a Neozoic fan, but you get dinos and mind control and main characters in our preview, fun and action and a couple jokes with enough dialogue to give it some depth.  Bonnie Lass has a pretty fun 4th-wall breaking intro and manages to drop a ‘cliffhanger’ in there that has no impact on new readers but is contextual enough to act like a hook.

Red 5 has been able to rely on Robo to anchor their FCBD entries, but 2012’s was definitely a notch above, solid through and through.