3 out of 5

Given that its essentially a series of one-shots, and lacking the world-tour feeling of the first mini, volume 4 of Robo can’t build up much steam over its four issues.  It drops some clever ties to the mythology – with Edison’s ghost appearing, and a non-FCBD Dr. Dinosaur appearance I’d forgotten about – but it feels like loose story pieces Clevinger had nowhere else to put, and so loosely tied them together by staging them in the same year (1999) a issuing them as a new AR volume.  This doesn’t make them bad at all, just somewhat fractured, like volume 3’s time-jumping issues that seem like left-turns from the core plot.  Issue 2 is a lot of fun – a visit to Japan to fight a Kotaku monster – and the Edison appearance is one of those magic AR moments that flirts with real emotions briefly.  Issue 1 is a nice coda to the Jenkins’ Vampire Dimension back-up story, but like a lot of Robo one-shots, its a flash-in-the-pan for a final punchline.  Surprisingly, the installment that falls the flattest is Dr. Dinosaur’s appearance.  Wegener’s art doesn’t seem as visually funny, here, Dino looking more limber and less dumb than usual, and while there are some great gags (an ‘ebb’ and ‘flow’ controller, and Robo’s pointing out that Dino can’t be a raptor due to some pretty now-widely-known facts about their actual size and appearance), it just lacks to zip of randomness the character normally brings to the mix.

The individual issues have a good range of pin-ups, though obviously people are fixated on the robots and Nazis angle.

Still entertaining?  Of course.  And if you’re starting on the Robo path, might as well read ’em all.  But these issues might work better spliced up to before-or-after slots with the storylines with which they tie in.  Read together it feels like an odds-and-ends affair.