A seven-foot-tall robot with a barrel-chest and bubblehead stands in the corner of John Byrne’s Fairfield living room, ready to obey his master’s every commend. Bearded and bespectacled, Byrne beckons with an impish grin. Waving his arm he introduces "Robbie," a replica of the mechanical man that deftly stole every scene from Leslie Nielsen in the 1956 sci-fi classic Forbidden Planet.
Cool. To an old-school science-fiction geek, Robbie is an icon on par with C-3PO of Star Wars fame.
“I love showing him off to my guests,” says Byrne, clicking a button on a black box tethered to Robbie’s back. Instantly, the mechanical being comes to life. Colored lights flash on and off. A whirring sound emanates from within his metal frame.
“If you do not speak English … I am prepared to converse with you in any of 180 languages … programmed into my memory banks,” Robbie intones in a deep, slightly halting voice.
Welcome to John Byrne’s world. And what a delightfully way-out world it is. A famous comic-book artist is likely to live in some pretty awesome digs, but this … well, outside the Bat Cave, I can’t think of any place I would rather hang my cape.
Every room is overflowing with the marvelous, eclectic clutter Byrne refers to as his “toys.” Model airplanes and rocket ships hang from the ceiling, as if frozen in mid-flight.
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