“The Roberts” offers comic fans unique story
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If nothing else the premise of publisher Image Comics’ recently released “The Roberts” is unique. In a medium dominated by spandex, vortexes and countless mutants, the plot of “The Roberts” takes the road less -- maybe never -- traveled: serial killers in a retirement home.
“The Roberts” opens with extreme close-ups of pudding, floral print walls and other items normally associated with an old folks’ home that reiterate the monotony of resident Robert Sprunger’s life. Over the panels, Sprunger’s monologue about the pseudo-prison that is old age evokes a smidgen of empathy for what appears to be a feeble, depressed old man.
That is until he reveals that he is the infamous “Boston Strangler,” the real-life murderer of many young women in the ’60s.
Sprunger is content with passing the time with bingo and daydreams of strangling innocent victims until he can “get old, disappear and die.” But his lonely existence is interrupted by the arrival of new resident Robert Steib. The two Roberts are drawn to one another, although Sprunger remains suspicious of Steib’s motives.
The first issue concludes as Sprunger, through some kind of murderer’s sixth sense, deduces that Steib is also a serial killer. Steib confirms the other Robert’s suspicions and reveals that he isn’t just any serial killer, but the Zodiac Killer of San Francisco. As Strunger admits, apparently psychotic killers “can smell [their] own.”
So there you have it: two serial killer has-beens in the same nursing home. Now what?
It’s a great concept, but as every writer with a whiz-bang premise realizes as he stares at a blank computer screen after his project gets the green-light: now he has to write the darn thing. Not that “The Roberts” is written or even drawn particularly poorly, but rarely does the execution of a great idea surpass its potential.
“The Roberts” reads like a comic into which a great deal of thought went. The art of Erik Rose is gritty and complements the frankness of Wayne Chinsang and Justin Shady’s script even if the characters are too inconsistent from panel to panel to pull off the near photo-realistic style for which they are shooting. The writers’ sense of dark humor in the way these serial killers are portrayed as gentle grandpas is not lost on the reader.
However, the problem for the creative team is that part of what makes the story unique, a retirement home, also happens to a particularly boring setting for a story to take place. Old people aren’t really known for being fast-paced or action-packed.
But this is only the first issue of a two issue mini-series, and while this issue is a little too exposition-heavy, it is only half of the story. We can only hope things pick up later this year in the concluding issue.
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