COMICS: Dave's Rant Special: Rivets & Ruby

[Dave Van Domelen]

Dave's Rant Special:

Rivets & Ruby #1 "The Big Bopper"
Rivets & Ruby #2 "Cavalcade Of Characters"

The folks who do this comic (Kiernan and Knowles) sent me a copy of #1,
which is on the shelves, and a photocopy of the main story from #2, which is
not on the shelves yet. Judging from the house ads and a quick sweep of
Previews, this title seems to be a departure for the publisher Radio Comix,
being as it's neither furry nor porn.

CAPSULES:

#1 - Good cartoony-style art, story bounces around a bit but has
reasonably good flow, scripting occasionally goes too far over the top.
Backup story is an okay Kirby homage. Mildly recommended. $2.95/$4.20Cn
#2 - Art's the same (but no backup in the pages I got), story is more
disjointed, feels like the sort of thing which would have been better broken
up across 3-4 issues as a backup itself. Provisionally mildly recommended.
Price probably still $2.95/$4.20Cn

Spoiler space....

#1 "Against the SiliConspiracy": Here's the basic setup. It's a vaguely
futuristic world (think Space Ghost but planetbound and you won't be too far
off) where robots are widespread, but aren't really alive. Ruby, who isn't
quite human if the coloring on the cover is to be believed, works for a
mysterious Professor Herbert, helping him salvage junked robots. Two such
robots are the construction robot Rivets, who thinks he's a superhero, and
the Foglio-like monitor on treads named Desktop, who is supposed to keep
Rivets out of trouble. He almost always fails, and Rivets often gets shot
full of holes in the process. Ruby's afraid that one of these day she won't
be able to put Rivets back together again, and it's implied she loves him.
The story starts during one such putting-back-together scene, and
flashes back to the day's events as Desktop tells the tale of a bank robbery
by a band of robots led by a scenery-chewing Colonel Krill and his cyborg
henchman Marvin...er, Killerbyte. Rivets takes care of the robots and the
cyborg, but is felled by Krill, who makes good his escape.
It's an okay story. It establishes the main characters on both sides,
gives an idea of their personalities, and has some good, clean and clear art
which mostly reminds me of the Mighty Heroes cartoon. It does carry that
hallmark of computer lettering, typos, with a couple slipping past editing
(credits don't say who does the editing, but it obviously gets done, since
there's a lot less typos than in the uncorrected #2).
The backup story, by Steven Block, is an extended Kirby homage.
Multi-billionaire adventurer-inventor-hero-etc Simon Kirby travels into
another dimension to find a source of free energy...but he comes back
transformed into a pants-wearing monster. The art is definitely on the
scratchy/messy side of Kirby's style, and the story seems more of an excuse
to string together Kirby-homage art than anything else. Maybe it gets better
in the second installment.
Finally, Knowles puts in a couple pages of, well, lame newspaper strip
type cartoons involving robots. Perhaps it's an attempt to further the feel
of the book as early 60s kiddie comic.

#2 "Whither Cometh The Rivetman": This is an all-origins story, as Ruby
tells her date (who is very annoyingly modern-hip...the story's not set in
1996 Earth, the guy shouldn't be using 1996 Earth pseudogrunge fashions and
words like phat) about the origin of both Rivets and Professor Herbert, plus
the reason Rivets isn't around. Meanwhile, a number of other supporting
characters wander in and out.
To be honest, the result is REALLY weak standing on its own. It's as if
Knowles wants to make sure all the facts get out before the book is
cancelled, so he dumps the origins and supporting cast into one big story
which isn't really a story. As mentioned in the capsules, this would work a
LOT better broken into pieces and spread out over several issues. The
origins themselves are interesting, and the vignette with Rivets trying to
rescue a plane full of hostages is funny, but the overall impression this
issue gives is of a pile of "whatever's left in the fridge" for dinner. The
fact that I don't really like Grungey Smurf doesn't help, either. Splitting
the origin across several issues would make a framing sequence, and hence the
date, unnecessary. }->

Dave Van Domelen, "I had been studying industrial double redundancy
bipolar neuromechanical gramoframerntz, so the Prof let me do a lot of the
work." - Ruby, who was technobabbling *so* well until she hit
"gramoframerntz"....