Big Guy & Rusty

Big Guy and Rusty the Boy Robot was a two issue over sized comic book, published by Dark Horse, that Frank Miller wrote and Geoff Darrow drew in 1996 and there's a nice over sized volume that collects both issues. I hadn't read Big Guy and Rusty since it was first published and I was looking for something light and fun to read between doing some work and this certainly fills that criteria.

Basically Big Guy and Rusty is Miller and Darrow's ode to Japanese monster movies and Astro Boy. If it didn't say so in the credits, a person wouldn't know that this was written by Frank Miler because it's an all ages work, it's not dark, and Miller's politics aren't on exhibit (and while I don't agree with Miller's politics, I find many of his works very entertaining on a pure testosterone level and I like a lot of his art, even his more recent raw, crude style).

Big Guy and Rusty the Boy Robot was also made into a 26 episode Fox animated series (I didn't remember there being that many episodes) that I remember was also highly enjoyable and becasue it was longer than the comic, actually had more on the story side of things going on. Sadly to my knowledge, to date, there hasn't been a dvd collection of this series.
I'm not sure if this photo of a two page sequence from Big Guy and Rusty the Boy Robot is the best example to those unfamiliar with Geoff Darrow's art of how much detail Darrow puts into every page. Darrow is definitely the star of Big Guy and Rusty the Boy Robot (and any book that has his art). Currently Darrow is working on the very weird, but great in a good Grant Morrison way, comic book called Shaolin Cowboy, that he writes and draws very irregularly. It's unknown how long Darrow will be doing Shaolin Cowboy, but it's always one of my favorite books when it comes out and it'll make for an incredible collection (hardcover or softcover) whenever that's announced.