Atomic Robo goes Webcomic

Every word on this page was taken from a video game.

Yeah, Bernard must not be much of a gamer if he isn't making Zelda jokes yet.

Useful advice from Jenkins.

Jenkins learns what time it is.

I dispute his concept of "morning."

It's like a Danger Room, but not.

They're not endangered but they will be terrified. Terminology checks out.

On difficulty levels.

Maximum risk.

MAJOR JENKINS REVEAL. He has a birthday. At some point.

Well, that rules out him being some kind of hyper-violent Tom Bombadil.

ALAN?!

Well, obviously we have to sneak into that.

Robo's not wrong. "...except he's amnesiac and I'm teaching him morality" is an extra element of complexity.

This must be weird for the eavesdroppers. "Alan" doesn't really have the kind of villainous-robot oomph you get from, like, Omnitron.

Everyone seems to be jumping to the worst conclusion pretty quick.

They're not just assuming that Alan's gonna be malicious, but that he's inevitably going to grow powerful enough for the malice to matter.

Yeah, that's the big one, for me. Robo is raising him as a person, and sometimes people turn out bad despite the best intentions of their parents. But there's no sign he's going to be able to cause any more damage than anyone else in the room.

I believe there was a Word of God (or maybe it was in the actual comic) that the reason Tesla built Robo as mostly human in ability and mindset was because there's no need for him to go crazy and try to conquer the world if he's the same as everyone else in most important respects. Robo isn't likely to hook ALAN up to a giant automated nanite factory or whatever.

Hm. Well. That... might be bad. On the other hand, ALAN is doing basically the exact same thing the kids are doing.

Trope knowledge says eavesdropping on all this is going to make Alan decide to run away and go come of age.

Standard "raise him right this time." Though since ALAN is watching this, I don't know how it will go.

I kinda have this random idea of him running away with the science kids.

Datasets. Reminds me of Schlock Mercenary, where Petey happily described people as "data that makes more data."

It's funny how Alan 1.0 put more stock into Robo's attachment to humanity than Lang does. "It was calculated that if I wiped out humanity you would devote the next fucking century to hunting my ass down."

God, Alan was such a great villain. That arc killed. "I dropped you from orbit with a phone call. I turned you into a domestic terrorist with a few bytes of data. The offer to join me was a courtesy."

In more recent news, action geology continues to be a much bigger deal than it has any right to be.

Ghost of Station X is still my favorite arc, almost entirely because of that last chapter.

I figured Alan would have bolted by now.

Suppose leaving the only place he's ever known was more daunting than facing the people who mistrust him.

Anyway, page.