EP0088: Atomic Robo: The Savage Sword of Doctor Dinosaur and the Knights of the Golden Circle and Superman, Volume 5: Hopes and Fears

Summary: Atomic Robo fights his archnemesis in <a href="https://amzn.to/2Daj2jf">The Savage Sword of Doctor Dinosaur</a> and then travels back to the Old West in <a href="https://amzn.to/2DbBasW">the Knights of the Golden Circle. </a><br> Superman takes patriotic family vacation in <a href="https://amzn.to/2DbcsJp">Superman Vol. 5: Hopes and Fears</a><br> Affiliate link included.<br> Transcripts Below:<br> Atomic Robo battles Dr. Dinosaur and then goes back to the Old West in two different Atomic Robo collections, and then we’ll take a look at Superman: Hopes and Fears, straight ahead.<br> <br> Welcome to the Classy Comics Podcast, where we search for the best comics in the universe. From Boise, Idaho here is your host, Adam Graham.<br> I’d received the Atomic Robo Omnibus Collections, the Hell and Lightning Collection, which contained three different Atomic Robo stories; and so we did the first one in the last podcast and we’ll do the last two in this one. So, we’ll be discussing Volume Eight and Volume Nine of Atomic Robo. Volume Eight is The Savage Sword of Dr. Dinosaur, and the plot is that Robo and a team of scientists from Tesladyne are heading out to investigate a series of sightings of a mysterious cryptid in Venezuela as Robo has been dealing with some negative publicity, as well as just attacks from the military and the press as a result of an in-universe event known as Eight-Eleven – not really explained but clearly it is a bother. They end up stumbling into an underground city full of stone men under the command of Dr. Dinosaur, who is this insane, mad scientist dinosaur – and he has concocted a plot to fire a time bomb which includes several atom bombs that will wipe out history and return the earth to being ruled by dinosaurs.<br> At the same time there is an invasion of Tesladyne which is Atomic Robo’s company, top secret Government organization. Dr. Dinosaur is a great character – he’s over the top, he is insane and really entertaining in comic book form. One big challenge with the character that I think is a concern when I read about it, is giving him a five-Issue arc all to himself could be too much of a good thing. But here the invasion of Tesladyne plot really does balance out what’s going on with Dr. Dinosaur so he doesn’t get too much time, but just enough to really make this book work. He’s great; the interplay with Robo is fantastic. There’s some fantastic humour as well as just a lot of great action and adventure as Robo tries to stop him from destroying the earth, though Robo’s less sure that Dr. Dinosaur can do that. More like Dr. Dinosaur could cause just a major catastrophe. <br> And the story we get just has a lot of great action, some good humor, some really genuinely funny lines. Dr. Dinosaur has the most obviously funny lines. A lot of the people with Robo are also really funny as well; and so it’s just this great, over the top adventure, and I’ll give Sword of Dr. Dinosaur a rating of Classy.<br> Next up we have The Knights of the Golden Circle, and this one actually does follow right after the plot of the previous book which…and I’ll give a little spoiler for the end of The Savage Sword of Dr. Dinosaur, is that after fighting him over this time travel device, Robo finds himself in a desert where there are historic Native Americans on horses. And we learn in Volume Nine, The Knights of the Golden Circle, that Robo has actually been sent back in time, and he finds himself in the Old West and he’s just trying to stay out of the way and avoid interfering with history and messing up the timeline. However, Robo rescues a wounded man from the gang of Butcher Caldwell, and he goes to a saloon in order to get treatment, and in that saloon you have Doc Holliday who is in the process of being captured and arrested by Marshal Bass Reeves, Deputy Marshal Bass Reeves.