The world is trying to progress. The city wanted to design robots to become the backbone of the city and do all the manual labor. However, the company that won the contract to make these robots decided to cut corners. What is left is lazy, abrasive, and horny Shmobots. Miles (the main human character of the story) lives with three of these Shmobots in an apartment: 69.5 (who has amazing movie ideas), Rusty (mean spirited drunk), and Eyeballs (who always starts and ends his sentences with "Eyeballs"). They all have this great band together called "Tetrahedron." The main story in this book is that there is someone going around town killing other Shmobots. Are Miles and the gang trying to solve it? No, they have a show to prepare for. Other than that, this book as a lot of smaller stories going on such as Rusty trying to get a date with a waitress, prostitutes who please robots, and strip clubs. The 117 page book ends with the guys accidentally finding out who the real Shmobot killer is, then going home and watching television.
When I bought this book (after looking at only one page, the page where 69.5 describes his first idea for a movie) the writer's name kept gnawing at me. "Adam Rifkin. Where do I know that name from?" I came to my senses the next day, after looking him up, that he is the writer of three films I sincerely enjoy: The Chase, Small Soldiers, and Zoom. The writing is solid though, even with all the side stories going on. It's comedic and actually "laugh out loud" funny. The story is also solid. Essentially it's generation X in robot form with robots having their head's cut off. Now, this book is not for kids. It's definitely an adult read. Even though all the cussing is crossed out, the book contains quite a bit of sex, drugs and robots playing rock. It's all in good fun though. Les Toil does all the art on this book and it really does the story justice. The shading on all things metallic is probably my favorite thing out of the art. The robot design themselves are great too. You can tell by a quick glance, at any of the characters, that these robots are pretty worthless. Eyeballs has to be my favorite out of the designs. He looks like a toy I had as a kid, but after extensive internet searching, I cannot find what the toy was called.
When it comes down to it, at times I was a little annoyed with the amount of swearing crossed out in the book, and sometimes it seemed like there was too many side stories to keep track of. It's 128 pages and only costs $14.99, I consider that pretty awesome. In addition to 117 pages of story, you get 11 pages of character designs: also pretty awesome. Overall, this was a well drawn and well written comic extremely worthy of the Boom! Studios stamp and the first on my list of "Indy Trades You Have to Read." I can only hope Rifkin and Toil work together again on a book as bizarre, interesting, and hilarious as Shmobots was the first time I've read it. (I've read it three times now, and yes it's still just as awesome the 3rd time through)
Shmobots: 4/5
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