THOUGHT BUBBLE MONTH 2024! Last year at Broken Frontier I reviewed a rather fun minicomic from writer Leo Healy and artist Torgo Wells titled So You’ve Been Conquered By the Human Race. That humorous sci-fi short had echoes of old school Future Shocks stories from a classic era of 2000 AD. This year at Thought Bubble the duo have another collaboration on offer that has a similar vibe, albeit it an all-ages one. Uncle Zaxlor’s Robot Repair Shop is the first in a planned series of adventures for the titular alien robot repair man and his nephew Zam.
Set on the planet Zekrus Uncle Zaxlor’s Robot Repair Shop may be situated an alien world but it plays with familiar and universal ideas of inter-generational comedy. Uncle Zaxlor is not the most industrious practitioners of his trade and certainly doesn’t take his work or his responsibilities too seriously. When Zam turns up to stay with him for the summer holidays (summer on Zekrus can apparently last from anything from two weeks to five years) he is bewildered by his uncle’s lax approach to life. But Zam is about to display an aptitude for robot repair that may just change their relationship…
As an introduction to the characters this is a fun comedic character set piece, with the pair’s characterisation making them instantly likeable despite any perceived flaws they may have. Dialogue is fun and sparky and there’s a lot to build on for future instalments. Torgo Wells’ cartooning is once again a delight, full of expressive visual characterisation and with every panel crammed with additional details that reward a re-reading. If there’s perhaps one criticism to be made it’s that while the four-panel grid for each page may give the story a certain rhythm you can’t help but wonder what Wells might achieve in terms of visual storytelling if the story could break out of that convention every so often.
Still, Uncle Zaxlor’s Robot Repair Shop is off to a promising start. This feels like exactly the kind of strip that would be very much at home in Monster Fun, The Phoenix or among the 2000 AD Regened material.
Leo Healy (W), Torgo Wells (A) • Self-published, £3.50
Buy online here after Thought Bubble
Review by Andy Oliver
Leo Healy will be at Table D19a in the Redshirt Hall at Thought Bubble.
Thought Bubble 2024 runs from November 11th-17th with the convention weekend taking place on the 16th-17th. More details on the Thought Bubble site here.
Read all our Thought Bubble 2024 coverage so far in one place here.
Art by Rocío Arreola Mendoza
