Writer & Penciller: Michael Allred / Colour Artist: Laura Allred / Letterer: Nate Piekos of Blambot! / Edited by Daniel Chabon / Asst. Editor: Chuck Howitt / Designer: Brennan Thome / Dark Horse Comics.
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18th March 2020
The Pitch: Max is a family man seeking a more interesting life. While conducting a new experiment at work, the fabric of his reality is torn before his eyes, and a robotic figure appears, claiming to be his 277-year-old self…
So, this came out way back in March but was kept out of my hot little hands as I was isolating. I've read it now and boy, what a book! I didn't read Michael Allred's work on Madman. As an indie book in the '90s, it was outside my sphere of comics. I was doing the 'proper' super-hero thing, see? But I'd certainly seen his art. The thing I like about it is that it's art with a wink and a twinkle in its eye. Allred always seems to find the funny in any situation. But his books aren't comedies. They're absurdities. You get the sense that Allred read the comics of DC's bonkers silver age, fell in love and never looked back. It's glorious. Allred has managed to create the summer's goofiest book and it's the antidote to the negative polarity we're all feeling right now.
X-ray Robot (there's a silver-age title for you) features Dr. Max Wilding, a scientist, who builds a robot suit to hop between realities. He hops. But when he comes back, he's stricken by visions of death, feeling like he's no longer part of the world he was born into. Holy isolation!! Allred is a master of creating tiny moments of amusement and character in the big story movements. Check out the expression of Wilding's wife after a female scientist kisses her husband. It's great! But of course, like any great adventurer going on a voyage into new realities, he doesn't go alone. Laura Allred's colours are perfectly attuned to both the mundane elements of this world and the wild and wacky direction it's going to take. Nate Piekos' letters get the voices just right and Brennan Thome's design takes the '60s style tone and runs with it. It's a good-looking book, cover to cover. There's even a bonus 3-D section 'dimensionalised' by Christian LeBlanc.
X-RAY ROBOT IS A BOOK THAT LOOKS BACK BUT STILL FEELS PROGRESSIVE
As much as X-ray Robot is a book that looks back, it also manages to feel progressive. Marnie, a colleague of Max's finds the best way to deal with her handsy boss is to slap the shit out of him and demand a place on Wilding's robotics team. And to a certain degree, Wilding himself seems to represent the mildly irresponsible boys that populate fiction, forced to grow up when... oh, I'm not gonna tell you. Buy the book or a pair of X-Ray specs and read the book that way. Or just ask Allred. He's the artist with X-Ray eyes, after all, seeing back through time, all the way to the comics of yesterday
Buy Dark Horse comics here and support The Comic Crush. By now, you can buy the trade of X-Ray Robot at Gosh Comics, or order it from Bookshop.org.