Mechanical Design in Disney Comics - Send in your favourite or most memorable robots/machines from Disney Duck/Mice Comics!

 

Nice illustration by Jason Gamber, click to go to his Portfolio.

Amongst my many passions in fiction, and in real life to a point, is mechanics and robots. I'm not sure where I can source this, really- as a kid I cringed at Power Rangers since they were dubbed in Portuguese (I hate dubs normally, never mind having live action footage dubbed!), and found Transformers ugly. Yet somehow by the time of the Matrix I was both terrified and fascinated with the sentinel robots, the ships, etc.

Click Read More for a ton of images of stuff I imagine most readers won't know what it is, and in the end an explanation of the only time I liked mechanical design in Disney Comics!

Also, I'll put this here already- I want you to send me your favourite, or at least the ones you might remember because they were memorable, cases of cool machinery- be it robots, vehicles, etc- in Disney Comics! Who knows, maybe I just need to see more cool stuff to re-evaluate my stance.




Anyway, thanks to a channel that felt very transgressive to me (since it was aimed at 18+, so it was the perfect channel for lil' ol' 6-year-old me to watch!), I got introduced to Japanese media mechanical design. Specifically, Evangelion.

Now, if the readership of this blog happens to have overlap with the viewership of Evangelion, I just want to say the first smart-alec to come say "but they're not robots" is getting tut-tutted at - by mechanical design I mean everything, from their robot armour to the helicopters that appear in Ep 1

And then, in the space of a few years, I get also introduced to FLCL...

 ... to the Portuguese edition of the Dragon Ball manga, which gives me time to look and gawk at Toriyama's great mechanical design...

 I get gifted one Christmas one volume (volume 2) of Akira...

Gave me, together with Digimon Adventure a couple years before, a love for detailed cityscapes

I buy some used copies of Sonic 3, manual included...

And so on and so forth, no need to be talking about every little thing here. Point is, Japanese media got me in love with mechanical design. And recently, that got me thinking. I source so much of what I love in the world to Disney Comics. Why not this?

Well, for one.

They just aren't appealing. I know, what a blasphemous thing to say. Especially with a Barks image as an example!

But really, mechanical design in most Disney stuff just feels completely uninspired. The Barks-Egmont-etc. line of artists seems to just repeat the same basic bland idea- "metal box, add vacuum tubes for limbs, light-bulb for a nose, dials for eyes, beep boop".

And I know what some'll say, "well sure, but that's because based on what you posted above, your tastes are more to the late 80's cyberpunk style of mechanical design, when the Egmont-style artists are very traditionalist and thus go for 1920's styles of mechanics!"

And to that I say pish-posh, because I quite love me a good pulpy 1920's robot!

 

This stuff looks great!

This doesn't!

And the modern Italians don't get away either. Having a more modernised, stylised take on the art, they seem to aim for more modern styles of mechanical design too, so we end up with things like...

But their more anarchically stylised take on shapes and inking works against them this time, and their garish colour choices kill most of their attempts at the start, so they really can't stand against stuff like

HOWEVER

There IS one case where I went "ooh, this actually looks pretty cool!"

Now, it IS on an Italian story, so they did their best to try and stop my hype by dousing things in bright red and green and yellow tones, but still...

Casty's stories have, when drawn by him, pretty neat mechanical design!

It's kinda by-the-books Dieselpunk, mind- the robots in "World to Come" are a mix of the Iron Giant and bits and bobs of other robots -  but still leagues better than anything else I can think of, and I think he's got something going, here. This is my advice for any Disney Comics artists reading this (IE, no-one)- Dieselpunk and Raypunk, IE 30's-50's-style machinery, works great with Disney Comics. Mickey in particular just looks so natural doing a Sky Captain shpiel!

Anyway yeah. If you've read this to this point, congratulations! I once more ask- send in the cases of mechanical design you've liked in Disney Comics over the years, I might discover stuff I happen to like too.

For anyone who wants it, here's a list of the "positive" examples I listed, in order: 

• Neon Genesis Evangelion
• FLCL
• Dragon Ball
• Akira
• Sonic the Hedgehog 3
• Metropolis
• Giant Robo
• The Big O
• Tetsujin 28-go (Gigantor)
• The "U"-Beam
• Astro Boy/Pluto (Pluto being the realistic-looking re-imagining of an arc from Astro Boy, the image shows the characters how they look in both styles)
• Getter Robo
• Gundam: Reconguista in G
• Diebuster
• Appleseed
• Neon Genesis Evangelion (again)
• Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann
• Kill la Kill
• Gatchaman Crowds

Good readings for everyone!