http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iH2a30LTeWw&feature=related Grease I was thinking of how delightfully out of contact with the “latest” Kirby’s Machine Man is, in 1978; the robot is practically a metaphorical persona for the out-of-place cartoonist himself, reinvented as a young man who just might live forever in the pre-pubescent four color world that gave him birth. The then-dated Beat-style lingo and thinking, mixed with fringe mass culture elements such as u.f.o.’s, is so yesterday that I crush on it ironically and un-ironically. My parents were enjoying being a young couple in 1978, so I have regarded that time fondly as I wrote. The fetish for things ‘50’s in those times also reveals just where Machine Man, who is more Twilight Zone than Twilight, really fit into the culture. The artificial intelligence storyline never gets too technical; it is more Bradbury than Heinlein, except Machine Man is rather a bit like more like a Heinlein character, himself. If Nova would’ve be...