On the surface, the comic is about a skull-headed robot who fights giant monsters from Greek Mythology. From a storytelling standpoint, however, it’s somewhat a reworking of Frankenstein meeting Homer’s Odyssey- it’s the story of a thing created by Science who goes on a Hero’s journey of sorts to find out who he really is…(Thomas Hall, co-creator, Robot 13).
Thomas Hall and Daniel Bradford bring their talents together to create Robot 13, a slightly Gothic, somewhat mechtorian-styled robot with amnesia and a purpose. With meticulously drawn illustrations that would give Hellboy a run for the money, precise panel narrative, and enough mystery to keep even Sherlock Holmes happy, this series looks promising. After reading issue 1 I was left disappointed that it was only 24 pages long. I wanted to read more. To assuage my depression until issue 2, I asked Hall and Bradford a few questions.
You’ve taken mythological elements, blended in a bit of steampunk, and added a quest for identity. What led you and Daniel Bradford to choose these elements for your storytelling?
Thomas: When Daniel showed me his sketches of what eventually became Robot 13, I knew we needed to do something really unique with him, but I wasn’t sure exactly what. At the time, we were pitching a story including a version of that robot for a CGI project, and when that didn’t work out we decided to do something totally different with a comic than we did that pitch.
I have always loved giant Japanese monsters and anything Ray Harryhausen did, so I wanted to see our robot fight some BIG creatures. Daniel drew a shot of the robot having just killed a Kraken, so I jumped at that. Daniel mentioned Frankenstein as a point of reference for our story, and we talked about that a lot. Both of us have a love of the old Gothic literature and art, and adding those elements with a modern spin on them was an attractive idea to us. For a while, it seemed like we had too many ideas, so we thought about it a lot and I did some research to try and find some common ground in it all.
Around that time, I was flying out to Arizona to the Phoenix Cactus Comic Con to do the show with Daniel, and I brought a notebook with me that had everything we had talked about and Daniel’s sketches and other notes. During that 4 hour flight, I worked out what wound up being the basis to the Robot 13 back story. Sure, we have tweaked a few things and it’s evolved over time, but during that flight I found a way to incorporate everything that we both wanted to try in a comic. When we had a moment, I told Daniel what I had come up with, and with only a few minor changes we pretty much had our direction.
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Interview With Robot 13’s Hall and BradfordRead More »
