Old Comic Ideas

Automaton Noir
The beginning of a Film Noir Detective story with a robot detective - Rob is not the robot detective, I haven't introduced the robot yet:


Rob is seen hiding behind some crates. It is raining. A harsh streetlight shines on him. A bullet blows a corner off a crate near him.

“Come on, Rob, you’e done this before.”

2 more bullets hit the crates.

“…and that’s six.”

Rob leans over the top and fires several times. A bullet goes through a crate and hits the perp. Rob goes to stand over him – his body lying in a pool of his own blood.

“Ahh…shit.”

Rob is in the Chief’s office.

“That’s the seventh one in a month, Rob, what the hell is going on with you? We can’t get any goddamn information on these fucking creeps’ boss if you keep shooting them!”

“You think I don’t know that? Maybe if they stopped pulling guns on me, I’d stop shooting them!”

2 panels identical. One shows the two sitting in silence. The second has them with a bit more of a smile. The next panel has them laughing.

“Shit, Rob…go home…get some rest. I know you don’t need to see the shrink for pulling your weapon, but don’t go acting all macho, okay?”

“Chief, do I ever?”

Rob is at home and dials the phone. It rings out onto the answering machine, “Hi, you’ve reached William Lydell, I’m obviously not home, so leave a message after the beep.” BEEP!

“Hey Will, it’s your brother, remember me? It’s been like a month since we’ve spoken properly. I’ve called a bunch a times. You must be working on something really big this time, huh? Ah well, gimme a call.”

Rob hangs up. Slouches into the couch, turns on TV. Falls asleep.

Next day. Lighting shining in through the blinds in the window onto Rob’s face.


Automaton Noir Update
I've decided to swap the names of the brothers. Because I want to call the robot RoBert or something like that, RoboRT. So, would it be weird to have the two main characters with the same name? The brother could have named it after his brother for something. Cop is Rob and robot is Robo or something. Hmm...
The idea is kind of from Penny Arcade