Keeper Awards: Robert James Algeo

Robert James Algeo finds inspiration in spies, space and Springsteen

Robert James Algeo's "Hum" just came out in November, but he already has plenty more in the works.

Image credit: Marshall Franklin Long

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By: Dana Raidt |   January 2012   |  From the print edition

At first glance, this year’s Keepers are a ragtag bunch. Their mediums run the gamut from good old-fashioned pen and paper to the human body; their habitats are classrooms, venerable theater stages and rock clubs. But here’s where this diverse group converges: Each Keeper has talent to spare, and is an indispensible cog in the wheel of Twin Cities culture. For that, we hereby present them with fancy words, pretty pictures in an attempt to flatter them into never leaving town.  

“The more you know about a situation, the less clear it becomes.” Robert James Algeo isn’t philosophizing; he’s discussing the plot—a thick one, at that—of his newest graphic novel, Hum. Amidst the books and pop-culture memorabilia that crowd the Uptown home office he shares with his wife Courtney (ask him about his Dan Aykroyd autograph collection), Algeo excitedly relays his protagonist’s entanglement in a complicated web of altered reality, Realpolitik and espionage.

Algeo’s work isn’t all conspiracy theory, though. The 29-year-old’s daily activities are much more benign: As a digital learning specialist at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, he helps instructors troubleshoot design programs; he also works as a freelance web designer and recently started as an adjunct professor at St. Paul’s College of Visual Arts.

The Philadelphia native already held a degree in English before moving to the Twin Cities in 2009 for MCAD’s MFA program. Algeo’s comics (published under his In Absentia Press imprint) vary widely in style and subject matter, but it’s his painstaking attention to the narrative-art convergence, and the belief that one aspect should not preclude the other, that sets him apart. His web comic My Grandfather was an Astronaut—completed with guidance from his mentor, graphic novelist and former Low bassist Zak Sally—is especially poignant, using bright, saturated colors to complement a well-paced story told through the eyes of a boy who idolizes his grandfather.

Hum just came out last November, but Algeo already has plenty more in the works: a collaboration with New York-based artist Rick Ritter (which Algeo will write); an “ode to the zany sci-fi comics of old,” in which a doctor and nurse battle with a time-traveling astronaut; and a 100-page, frame-by-frame comic interpretation of Bruce Springsteen’s “Dancing in the Dark” video. Although the Springsteen project has been arduous, requiring endless viewings of the video in three- to four-second intervals, Algeo brushes it off with his signature humility.

“It’s a completely superfluous adaptation,” he says, laughing. “This is literally one dude dancing in the dark. It’s weird and sad.”

+ Robert Algeo created illustrations for each of those METRO honored with a Keeper Award. We thank him for all of his efforts. Download a high-res image of this autobiographical illustration here.