The Mads Are Calling...

A crossover drawing that was supposed to be funny... But I keep looking at The Spine's face and thinking, "Aw... he looks so sad and lost... he even dressed up the other robots to look like his buddies back home... He's still holding the Sharpie he used on them..."

I realized I was assuming everyone recognized the two things I combined here, so for those who don't recognize one or borh, this is a fusion of the tv show Mystery Science Theater 3000 and the San Diego band Steam Powered Giraffe, both of which are peopled with robotic characters. Or robotted with them.

The backstory (bear in mind, this is Forrester's voice initially... I'm one of the weirdly dressed concert goers myself as often as possible):

Dr. Clayton Forrester, mad scientist, skulked among the weirdly dressed concert-goers, glaring around him suspiciously. He had intercepted a tweet that showed a man named Kevin Murphy leaving San Diego. Murphy was known to work with Nelson and Forrester had some new ideas for experiments... after he extracted a sample of brain tissue, of course, as a control. So Forrester had managed to track Nelson down to this, a concert by a local band who dressed as robots. How droll! He would have thought Nelson had seen enough robots...

But all he saw here were delinquents and hoodlums. He slipped past security to see if Nelson had somehow managed to get backstage.

"I beg you pardon, sir. You aren't supposed to be back here..." asked a deep voice.

Forrester whirled and leaped into the best martial arts stance he could, considering he only knew about it from movies. The owner of the voice recoiled slightly, raising his eyebrows in what Forrester could only assume was abject terror.

"Are you lost, sir?"

"I am looking for a man named Mike Nelson. Where is he?"

"You know Mike Nelson?"

"A-HA!" roared Forrester.

The silver man blinked at him. "I've never met him, though the band and I do enjoy his work."

Forrester dropped his stance and sulked. "Oh, poopy."

"Now, if you'd just follow me..."

"Where?" asked Forrester suspiciously.

"Why, back to the theater... the intermission is almost over..."

"Oh, no, I wasn't here for the performance," he responded slyly. "I was trying to find my way to the back parking lot."

"Oh. Of course. Right this way."

The silver man led him right out the door by the dumpsters. He never noticed the evil snicker or the high-voltage taser. Forrester struck and his victim hit the ground with a slam.

"What?" cried Forrester. "He really IS a robot? Why does everyone else get all the candy? I need a test subject!"

Then a smile grew on his face, widening into a mask of evil. Now he had something. He would experiment on an automaton far more advanced than those cereal box toys Robinson had built, and monitor its responses. Now, at last, the other scientists would stop calling him "Doof." Why did they call him that?

He managed, with great struggle, to haul the robot to his car and got it inside with the aid of the car jack, and drove away, laughing madly.



The Spine woke to see a cluster of small robots peering down at him.