This Old Robo

One of the small things I liked about the final issue of Atomic Robo: The Ghost of Station X was how casually it brought up the issue of Robo's longevity. A.L.A.N. mentions that one of the reasons he tried to destroy Robo was he knew Robo (unlike 99% of the life on Earth) would survive the fallout of A.L.A.N.'s ship leaving Earth. Then it wouldn't take Robo more than a hundred years to build his own Orioncraft and set off in pursuit of the one responsible. Once he caught up, he would most likely destroy A.L.A.N. or seriously impair A.L.A.N.'s mission to learn.

It's so simply mentioned, that yeah, Robo would survive the fallout, and yeah, he'd build his own spacecraft in a century, give or take a few years. The same way we might tell a kid he can build his own soapbox racer in a week or so. For Robo, that's nothing at all. He's already close to 90, and having survived being hit with a satellite and plummeting from orbit, it's a question whether anything will really kill him.

It's a powerful reminder, but done in a quiet way. Like the interview he gave in the first mini-series, when he mentioned the hardest thing about being around as long as he has been is he does a great Jack Benny impersonation, but no one gets it anymore. It taps on the point that Robo, for all that he gets along with most people and likes being helpful through science, is not like those people. He'll outlive them. Easily.