Caveman Robot

    (Tetragrammatron, 2004-2005)
™ and © Tetragrammatron

Creator Jason Bell moved his Caveman Robot project to the front burner with the publication of Gigantic Mega Annual #1 several years after the casual conversation that first gave Bell the idea for starting his own comic book series. Hunks of sheet metal crudely bolted together in humanoid form and dressed in a fur toga, Caveman Robot nods in the direction of comics kitsch and Golden Age fun.

In the mid–1990s, Bell self–published (photocopied) several Caveman Robot comic books. He invited friends to contribute their own ideas in the form of computer animations and story leads and the Caveman Robot idea slowly evolved into a story hook suitable for use in a variety of styles and formats. Heavily informed by Bell and his friends’ witty art school sensibilities, this Gigantic Mega–Annual includes four complete CR stories, a short origin tale, several pages of pin up art, and some editor’s notes.

Expertly illustrated by Britton Walters, “The Mechanical Marvel of the Midway!” has the hero performing as a circus act under the rule of an unscrupulous autocrat. In “Tank the Money and Run,” CR tackles the dastardly, bank–robbing simian Ape Lincoln (“The gorilla does not live who is more devoted to evil than I am!”). Bell uses his own thick, richly–detailed ink work in the wordless “The Hunted!” and “Sacrifice of the Atomic Heart” puts Caveman Robot in a distant, space faring future. Shoshanna Weinberger writes and draws CR’s funny 15–page origin story.

— Leland Burrill
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