The strange origin of Robotman

[mmcirvin]

If you're fond of Jim Meddick's frequently funny comic strip "Monty", you probably know that it used to be called "Robotman" and originally had a completely different cast of characters. What you may not know (I just learned it from Toonopedia) is that the Robotman character was originally conceived as the star of a startlingly lame 1980s cross-marketing campaign aimed at little kids, with plush toys, crappy cartoon videos and Little Golden Books. Meddick seems a bit baffled himself as to how it happened.

Comments

[iayork.livejournal.com]

I may be the only guy for whom the Robotman collection ("the elusive" second connection, not the "so rare I had to leave the country" first) was my intro to the whole Robotman schtick. It's a hilarious collection, with the warped Montyesque humour pasted on top of a Robotman with a little heart on his chest, and a family of cute kids who as the collection progressed became gradually less cute and wholesome and more twisted and perverse. It wasn't until years after that that I once against saw a Robotman strip, and that was when it was still called Robotman but morphing toward Monty. Shortly after I found it, Robotman was ousted and the strip was renamed.

I'm also the guy who read Color of Magic when it came out, as a mildly interesting, moderately amusing fantasy parody.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

Robotman actually ran in USC's Daily Trojan for a little while during my years there (late `90-early `93). It was mostly crappy. That i started to enjoy it several years ago really surprised me.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

I think that what fascinates me about this is the strange, ambiguous things it has to say about artistic genius and compromise. We're sometimes taught that to be any good, artists have to be so uncompromising and uncomplicit with the Man that they toil in obscurity and die poor. Yet here's a case where, mostly because he was young and didn't know any better, this guy let himself get roped into an amazingly compromised situation dreamed up by tasteless idiots, ended up standing firm on some things and caving in on others (he actually let them make him draw a heart on its chest!)—and it turned out in the end that his vision was simply stronger than the one he was given, and after enough years the syndicate actually begged him to turn the strip into the one he wanted to draw in the first place.