The Things I Fixate On

Everybody has interests, "enthusiasms", as DeNiro put in in The Untouchables. If you're reading this blog, then comics are probably one of those, but I'm thinking besides that. The sort of hobbies or interests that might be woven into the story, maybe as a key part, maybe as just background detail. Maybe it's just me, but I find those are the sorts of things that stick out. Especially if they're used wrong.

For some people, it might be a language, or history. Greg Burgas at CBR seems to be a bit of a history buff, so inaccuracies in that area seem to annoy him. Other people are art buffs, or into sports, computer systems, physics. It could be anything.

Atomic Robo Flying She-Devils of the Pacific #4. Takeshi tells Robo he had 23 kills in 1941. Twenty-five if you count shooting Robo down twice, which I think they would. He shot the plane down, it's not his fault the pilot was a metal man that didn't die from it. He claims he was the top ace pilot in the world. All I could think was, bullcrap. Erich Hartmann flew for Germany throughout the war, racked up 352 kills. Now as it turns out, Hartmann didn't get to be a fighter pilot until '42, but Guenther Rall had 37 victories by the end of 1941, and he's just one guy who managed to make it to the end of the war. There were probably lots of guys, in all theaters, who had more than 25 kills in 1941.

Does it have any bearing on the story? No. In the next panel he says he joined Chokaiten to bring greater glory to Japan. Taken together, I think they're revealing, because it shows Takeshi takes pride in his skill as a pilot, but that he recognized how things stood, and that his skill alone wasn't going to win the day for Japan. So even if he doesn't like Chokaiten's methods, and I don't think he does, he understood that he needed to sit out the war and wait for the moment his skills could make a difference.

It's an interesting sequence, but that first part still bugs me, because it feels false. Even if it might not be. Maybe none of those other guys exist in Robo's universe. It's possible, but the universe Clevinger and Wegener built has enough similarities to ours that if feels familiar, and so part of me expects those things would be the same. There are any number of areas Takeshi could excel at I'd know nothing about. If he was painter, for example, Clevinger could have him make just about any statement related to his skill and I'd never know the difference. Someone else might, but not me. Everybody's suspension of disbelief gets strained in different places.

It does actually make me want to see him shot down even more, because he's being too boastful, you know? Claiming a title that isn't rightfully his. Acting as though he was the best pilot,but wasn't afforded the chance to prove it. I'd like to see Robo disabuse him of that notion.