Brian Ralph: Reggie-12

Hang out with a young robot hero in his fortress of not-so-solitary solitude

What if Osamu Tezuka's beloved hero Astro Boy was a young robot with endless enthusiasm who lived with a bumbling sad-sack robot friend, a self-centered wise-cracking cat, and a well-meaning but forgetful inventor? Why, then he'd be Reggie-12! "Reggie-12" is classic Japanese adventure manga cartooning reworked in Brian Ralph's trademark style and told with the episodic wit and structure of the contemporary American sitcom. Laughs explode from the page (and the reader's belly) as mishap follows caper follows disaster. Ralph ("Daybreak," " Cave In") first presented this hilarious pop-culture send-up of the infallible boy hero in the back pages of the seminal Asian culture magazine "Giant Robot," and it instantly became one of the magazine's most popular and enduring features. Come along for a wild ride with Reggie-12, Casper, and Professor Tinkerton as they eat pizza, play video games, and get dissed by bad guys.