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IDW to Publish Atomic Robo & The Ring of Fire


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Atomic Robo the Blog


What good is getting a soapbox if I can’t abuse it a little bit?

Great news on the comics/crowdfunding front – Atomic Robo & The Ring of Fire, the popular small press book that converted over to a free webcomic earlier this year, will be published in floppy format by IDW Publishing. More after the cut.

I mention earlier that I was the grumbly fella who doesn’t care for crowdfunding, but that’s only really partially true. In that list, I don’t think I really hit on why stuff like Kickstarter and Patreon are the big-deal innovations that they like to tell people they are. Atomic Robo (and a couple of other comics that are now being published by Action Lab, Image and IDW) is a perfect example of why.

Team Robo left Red 5 because they couldn’t generate enough money to justify the time investment they put into it. They went solo, started a successful Patreon campaign, and then ran a Kickstarter to reprint old volumes in fancy, HAWT hardcover format. They were so successful with both campaigns that they demonstrated substantial fan interest to a big(ish) publisher, and now they have the promotional and logistical support to bring their book to a wider audience than they could have alone. That’s EXACTLY what crowdfunding platforms should be used for.

I’m pretty shameless with my Robo fandom here, but it’s with good reason. This is a series that I’ve handed to probably 15 people in my life to try, and all of them came back asking not just for more Robo, but more comics. I’m pretty damn excited to see Clevinger and Wegener and the rest of Team Robo put their book in more people’s hands, and I’m beyond pleased that they get to keep making a comic that I love.