How many pages long is it? It looks like one of the “Smash the Trash” series comic books, which isn’t very long at all. Are there any other stories in it, featuring any new characters? Inquiring minds want to know.
“How many pages long is it?”
It’s the first issue of a comic book series. American comic books tend to be like, 40 pages long an issue or something like that (is a hopeless manga geek and still learning about this stuff) so it’s pretty short, but it’s the first volume in an ongoing and it’s 3 bucks an issue, plus the art is great. No clue how long the entire series will be, but it’s written for each volume to be able to stand alone from what I heard, although it also seems to be building onto something as well (seriously, I really like the writing on this guys. I really do. And I’m not easy to please.)
“It looks like one of the “Smash the Trash” series comic books, which isn’t very long at all.”
I have no idea what those are. There’s another set of comic books? 8O Are those the really short ones the UK got? It’s longer than those.
"Are there any other stories in it, featuring any new characters? "
(Mild spoiler, but you asked.)
It’s pretty centric on WALL-E for this one, but there are technically other WALL-E units around that sometimes take roles. One’s role carries a pretty neat theory, actually, but I won’t give it away. I dunno what future volumes will have, though issue #2’s preview cover seems to hint at Hal showing up.
I got both of these over in Berkeley early in January. (It’s only 3-4 miles from Pixar, the only good comic book store nearby I suppose, so maybe one day I will recognize one of the film bozos there.) The price was almost a giveaway, hopefully those guys are making something for a living. It was a depressing set of stories, punctuated only by a few lighter moments of [spoil]collecting knick-knacks[/spoil]. Some have speculated before that Wall-E developed a personality as the result of a [spoil]malfunction[/spoil], instead of as a gradual understanding of his environment.
One of the Wall-E’s seems to have gone to sleep permanently in his rack, but then later disappears. This was a discontinuity for me. The Christmas lights I just didn’t get, altho they were nice when activated. [spoil]When Wall-E is left all alone, he starts to collect yellow duckies, I guess to substitute for the dead Wall-E’s[/spoil].
My feel for the time of all this is that it is occurring long after people have left. But all those Wall-E’s being still around says that people had left not too long ago. There aren’t any BnL ads, there are tons of such ads in the movie, and no other kinds bots or signs of activity, altho we see some [spoil]incinerators[/spoil] functioning in Issue#1. It’s a bit depressing for me. The movie creators knew to add moments of lightheartedness, comedy, ruefulness, etc…
There aren’t any ‘wow’ moments for me in these issues. Yes, the artwork fits the content quite well. Maybe they are laying the groundwork for something… but I really feel they have squandered the earliest part of the Wall-E story: they have avoided the part where Wall-E was invented. Somewhere in the dvd there was something about him being “an archaic design.” Now does that mean that Wall-E was invented closer to our time, rather than 100 years from now when presumably an advanced bot like EVE was developed?
I plan on reading this when it is released as a trade paperback! At least that is what I think it is:
Unfortunately just the first 4 issues and there will be more issues in the future. Personally I’m buying them as they come (though not the trade paperback) out, but I won’t buy any of the “collections” unless they include the entirety of the series, graphic novel style.
I like how purple-y his eyes are!
I got one of the WALL•E comics two days ago. It was issue #4, however. I may think about getting the WALL•E: Recharge, paperback someday in the future.
I got WALL-E: Recharge about a month ago, I like it. I find and discover something new just about every time I read it. There are still some parts that still confuse me though, like when the other WALL-E [spoil]Died. How did he die?[/spoil] and why did WALL-E go inside that thing that burns trash?
Oh I remember reading these comics. They were really good, but really sad. Especially the ending. 
I need to get a hold of these comics!
I don’t visit the site anymore, but at one point I think they had the issues on the Wall-E Forum.
Hmm, have to check it out. I have an account there, but never posted!
Bad parenting, Skunklover having Wall-E that close to the water’s edge…
They are up to Issue #7 now, which came out earlier this summer. Almost every single comic store around here (and I’ve checked 5 of them) has most of the issues at any time. Some have the larger compilation, but although the gloss is shinier on these, the pages are somewhat smaller. I like the individual issues for reading. And DO ask for protective plastic sleeves that precisely fit the comic to guard against spills and wear. You can stuff several issues into just one of these!
Aw, the water wasn’t even 2 inches deep, DarkHandOfSigournyWeaver 
It’s been a whole year since the last post in this thread. The other thread, about Issue #1, didn’t take off, so I’ll post in this thread exclusively about all the issues. So we’ve heard about the first 2 issues to some extent. The third one, Wall-E #2, is a complete waste. I just don’t get why they even bothered.
One of the artwork styles that catches attention is how they portray the garbage. In the movie, it’s been 700 years and that waste has been bombarded by rainstorms, duststorms, relentless sunshine, extremes of temperature, cosmic rays, you name it… it’s rusty and partly corroded away. Not the case in the BoomKids, where it’s kind of murky and sloppy, mushy. Do you think that this was intentional?
When the BoomKids team discusses the upcoming issues, they use promotional language like: “See where Wall-E gets all his collected trinkets from!” If that was done incidentally, imbedded in a good story, I wouldn’t mind, but to make it the focus of an entire part of each issue is, well, kinda boring. The Pixar folks refer to this as being ‘derivative’. I guess that means that a follow-up storyteller looks at an original work and bases the sequel too much on the original framework or exposition. Ok, so let’s get back on track on how you can make collecting trinkets into an interesting part of the story. For example, in the scene in the movie where he runs across The Plant, he also collects a whole cooler full of other knick-knacks. In fact, he uses one of the items, an old brown shoe that looks like it came from a boy in the 1700’s (maybe it was Peter Stuyvesant’s, wow, Wall-e did his job thoroughly) as a kind of pot to transport The Plant. Now that’s storytelling!!
Wall-E needed to encounter different kinds of bots in the comic books, to liven things up. This wasn’t done at all in the 7 issues (except for the giant security bot specifically made to oversee the Wall-E’s, similar to the Axiom Wall-A’s). Maybe he could have collected things earlier on, then got tired of those and found some new knick-knacks, just like we do when we get older. At first, without having read the issues involving the astronaut, I thought that he wasn’t a good idea. But after actually having read those last issues, it seems like a fairly good idea, it’s something new and it does fit well within the story.
Finally, I was told by my local comic book store that Disney acquired Marvel two years ago(?) which makes its own comic books and that BoomKids would likely be left out in the cold. Supposedly they are changing their name to Kaboom! and surrendering Disney licenses to the new comic makers. Anyone else know about this? The nearby stores still usually have a few of the issues, but BoomKids Wall-E is quickly fading away now off the shelves…
Ah, you took the words right out of my sequel to the prequel! That’s exactly how i imagined the Wall-E developing it’s feelings, through his other companions in this trash collecting business!
That is a awesome WALL.E comic book.
The other Wall-E forum, walleforum.com, has an entire sub-forum on the BoomKids! series. There are like 30 different threads, but most are just announcements that a new issue is out, or some very general intro statement like “Wow-E, issue #6 is out, and I like it!” The discussion over there was even more disappointing than the Wall-E comic book itself. But I’ve gone thru the entire oeuvre and gleaned out a few discussion points.
Woodoo was mostly happy with the last issues, but not so happy about the unexplained absence of the other Wall-E’s from the earlier issues.
Wall-E Dragon, the site administrator, was mostly pleased. He cautioned that you, the reader, need to be aware about the time frames of the issues. Apparently, the first 4, issues #0-3, cover a time frame from the end of Operation Cleanup to somewhere near the end of Wall-E’s 700 year run. Then the last 4 issues, #4-7, cover a short period right at the end of Operation Cleanup. I will have to reread the first set to confirm their wide range. He also, like me, said that issue #2 was very disappointing and did nothing for the new story! And here is what he said about issue#0:
There’s not too terribly much to say about this comic. It’s simple stuff and no one’s going to be saying that it gives the film a run for its money. But they pulled it off admirably, especially thanks to the art work which, other than a few monosyllabic utterings is the only way we are able to understand what’s going on and see WALL-E’s emotions. One especially poignant scene, where WALL-E tries to jump start one of his fallen brethren, says all that needs to be said in just a few frames of great artwork. It also nicely answers the question of how WALL-E reacted when his fellow units started failing around him (and I guess also tells us that they did indeed go one at a time and didn’t get turned off all at once).
Shadow Wolf75 tells us about what to expect in the Recharge collection, especially the high quality glossy color print compared to the quality of the regular issues on no-sheen pulp paper. There is also a gallery of the multiple covers. These covers seem to cause the most delight in the Wall-E community.
Here are a few links that that site’s admn gave out:
comicbookresources.com/?page … ew&id=1560
forums.projectfanboy.com/showthread.php?t=4914
EDIT, Problems in conveying Wall-E’s emotions in a comic book format.:
Well, this is a formidable task that Wall-E Dragon brings up. Why not just do what Andrew Stanton did and hire Ben Burtt? Oh wait, that won’t work, he’s a sound designer, hmmm. Ok, then just let BoomKids! hire Tommy Newman, you know, the man who did the musical score, oh, that’s no good either, drat. Oh yes, I know now, hire some of those guys off the dvd who did pre-production, watching Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton,and coming up with all those subtle movements in his body and binocular ‘face’ to convey the proper emotion. Well, in comic books you can have a stop-motion picture, and cross your fingers, or use one of two other techniques: 1)multiple slow-motion, nearly identical pictures in a series, side-by-side, with only slight changes to the succeeding frame, or 2)showing movement in a single picture using near overlays or shadowy ghosts.
Sounds discouraging doesn’t it? But remember, some of the other members of the pre-production team thought that the storyboarded version of Wall-E was already a masterpiece. So the gauntlet has been cast for us ‘little people’.
btw, i love PixarTeo’s pictures. She needs to have a say-so in Disney’s next nature film…
Thanks for that.
These comics are still running, right? Would I be able to find them at a local comic book store? I was interested when they were new but never actually got around to reading any.