Okay, here’s where we find out whether or not you need glasses. In the first panel on the wall in the background, is a picture of Lillian McKenzie, the original owner of the bookstore in Crankshaft, accepting her Ohioana Library Book Award.
When John Byrne and I were going over the scripts, he said he was thinking that the robot could be an hommage to the robots from Magnus the Robot Fighter, the terrific comic book illustrated by Russ Manning. I was totally charmed by the idea and we made it happen. It became yet another call back, as I had done so much of in Funky’s later years, to the comic books that had inspired and saved me as a kid.
