Book Shelf 25-14 ~ Atomic Robo and The Agents of C.H.A.N.G.E. (Brian Clevinger, Scott Wegener, Tesladyne LLC, 2025)

It’s a Robo world…

I follow certain comic books very irregularly. As in I by once in every several years and then it is usually a compilation. More than a few years back I read the Atomic Robo series, in part because I purchased and played Atomic Robo: The Roleplaying Game from Evil Hat Productions (2014). So when I saw a new book funded through Kickstarter I jumped in…

…and experienced first-hand the downside of nostalgia purchasing.

I love the setting of Atomic Robo. I mean, how can I not love a nuclear powered robot designed by Nikola Tesla in the 1920s that has fought—amongst other wild threats—a secret Nazi space program in the 1960s? The tag line used in the RPG is, “…Atomic Robo’s world is basically just like ours. The main difference is that the dials for Science and Conspiracies are set a few notches higher.”

The Kickstarter campaign for Atomic Robo and The Agents of C.H.A.N.G.E. described the new story this way:

ATOMIC ROBO AND THE AGENTS OF C.H.A.N.G.E. is the latest chapter in Robo’s exciting life. Now he’s…sort of a university administrator? But for a sci-fi action school to train the next next generation of ACTION SCIENTISTS including his sorta-secret robot son with the rebooted intelligence core from the Advanced Learning Algorithm Network that nearly killed all life on Earth, and framed Atomic Robo for it, and got Tesladyne shut down by the secret fascist science police, which indirectly threatened all life on Earth (again), and got a bunch of his comrades probably killed and definitely hunted as terrorists for a few years. Uh, but that was the old ALAN. The new Alan is a much nicer fellow, but he’s still being kept secret on the Tesladyne campus because folks might link him to all that other stuff and, golly, that wouldn’t be pleasant.

Kickstarter campaign

…a bit unbelievable…

The Kickstarter campaign for The Agents of C.H.A.N.G.E. sought to raise $24k and ended with nearly $46k from over 1,000 backers. Funded in October 2024, delivery was projected for May 2025. So taking delivery in July 2025 does not look that bad. Except, well, the product is slightly defective. As the final campaign update explains:

So the title on the spine of the physical edition reads “The Vengeful Dead” instead of “Agents of Change.” Additionally, due to a mix-up in our source files the chapter/issue covers are not only printed out of sequence but they are the non-final versions of those covers. The good news is the actual comics pages are fine and the reading experience is unaffected!

Update #10, May 30, 2025

The solution? Again from Update #10: “First, we are going to correct the spine with a sticker.” Oh, that does not satisfy you? “Second, when it is time to reprint Agents of CHANGE, we’ll give all physical edition backers of this campaign a coupon code to discount the price of the new corrected version… .”

[Deep sigh]

…and tiring

How did the errors in The Agents of C.H.A.N.G.E. happen? The creators on Kickstarter point to a three events:

• Charlie the Cat died after 17 years of companionship – Understandable.
• Files were accidentally deleted and file names were confusing – Believable, but that is why a publisher needs stringent configuration and change management or it will FAIL like it did here.

The third reason The Agents of C.H.A.N.G.E. had problems? I quote again from Update #10:

Then, two days later [after the death of Charlie the Cat] my country elected a deranged fascist who would threaten the lives and safety of literally every single person on the planet starting with our trans friends and families.

So, between the existential horrors and the holidays, I admit to being a bit distracted when our proofs came in that December.

Update #10, May 30, 2025

Ah, so “Orange Man Bad” caused the errors, eh? Apparently there really is nothing Trump is not responsible for. Noted.

While I have some compassion for the death of Charlie the other reasons are not good enough for me to overlook the poor business processes Tesladyne LLC apparently uses. Tesladyne LLC does not need to send me a coupon for their next publishing attempt. Update #10 tells me I need to wait until after this Administration is past to decide if I can ever trust Tesladyne LLC business practices again.

[Oh yeah, I read the book. Reading it was, admittedly, a bit hard given the political taint from the Update. Suffice it to say the writers not only talk about their politics in Kickstarter campaigns.]

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Feature image courtesy RMN

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