No matter their choice of media, every successful journalist, cartoonist, novelist, teleplay writer, essayist, or scripter has a trick or two their known for.  Neil Gaiman has his platonic kiss that signals the beginning of the third act.  Kevin Smith has his beating you over the head with pop culture dialogue until you either laugh or walk out of the theater (/turn off the DVD, /put down his comic).  David Sedaris always has an image or phrase in the beginning of his stories that he deviates from until the very last paragraph, when he wraps it all up into a circle.  Glenn Beck has his batshit crazy screaming of made up facts that he then calms down, and apologizes for, suggesting that his made of facts were an accident that he heard somewhere else, and not merely deliberate hyperbole designed to anger his target audience.

It is when an author deviates from their pattern that the fan usually gets scared.  “Oh,” you cautiously think, “this could end up being awesome.  I really love this writer.  Surely they won’t lead me astr—damn it.”  And that author ends up doing something you don’t like.  This is often because writers tend to focus on their one talent, and they get so ensconced in it, that when they try and deviate from the pattern, they fail.  Maybe not spectacularly fail.  They don’t plunge off The Sears Tower to their death, they just trip over a crack on a very crowded sidewalk, and someone records it, and posts it to youtube.

Issues three and four of Atomic Robo, seemed to me to be Brian Clevinger tripping on the sidewalk of an unfamiliar city.  Yes, the comic still had funny dialogue; yes, it was pretty to look at (thanks, Scott Wegener!); but it felt off.  The stories left you with Robo about to do something awesome.  Then, the next issues started with the beginning of a whole new story, and eventually you got to the same enemy, and…it ends without being resolved.

I trusted Clevinger enough to kow that he’d wrap all the stories together in the final issue.  But that’s a dangerous game to play.  And there he went.  Toe in the crack, and his whole body thrust forward.  His hands sprawled, and…he executed a perfect handspring.  And it was so much fun to watch, and so satisfying.  This was as good an ending as he could have written, right down to the final quip.

If you missed issues of this series, they’re probably going to be hard to come by, but you should really do yourself a favor and pick up the trade (as well as the two volumes that precede this one).  It’s fantastic storytelling.