Air Raid Robertson

Author notes

Proof of the Pudding Page 1

Air Raid Robertson

on Nov. 30, 2011

Regular readers of Air Raid Robertson will recall that I introduced a futuristic incarnation of the character called Air Raid Robertson 2000. With that in mind, I suppose it was only a matter of time before I went in the other direction…

This story has been brewing in my mind since I initially began developing the Air Raid Robertson character. This is because I believe Air Raid Robertson is a clear descendent of Don Quixote.

For those of you unaware of him, Don Quixote is the title character of a farcial novel published in 1605 by Miguel de Cervantes. He's a country gentleman who, after reading an excessive amount of romantic literature about knights in shining armor, begins having delusions about being the world's finest adventure hero. He's accompanied on his "quests" by Sancho Panza, whose sensible advice is typically ignored by Quixote.

The most famous scene in the entire novel is when Don Quixote attacks a bunch of windmills while harboring the impression that he's actually assaulting a gang of ruthless giants. This storyline obviously uses this scene as a springboard.

Another influence on this comic is the long-running newspaper comic strip entitled Prince Valiant. The strip was created by Hal Foster in 1937 and was both written and drawn by him until 1971. Prince Valiant is often cited as a high point for comic book draftmanship and it influenced a horde of influencial artists in the comic book field.

The layout of this page reflects a Valiant strip circa 1941 or so. I also signed and numbered the page in a manner reflective of Foster's approach.

I did not, however, copy the layout of the comic exactly. Prince Valiant's approach to storytelling was to include copious amounts of third person narrative with largely static images. There were no word balloons and organic transitions between panels were few and far between.

I consider Air Raid Robertson to be a largely dialogue driven kind of a story. Plus, I much prefer making comics with hopefully smooth, animated progressions from one panel to the next. So, I attempted to preserve that as best I could.

Some of you may have noticed that I titled this "Medieval Air Raid Robertson" in a manner similar to "Medieval Spawn". I've never been a fan of Spawn, but I was greatly amused by the court battle between Neil Gaiman and Todd McFarlane over the rights to the character. I couldn't help but use the name as result.