I think it's safe to say that we've all gotten used to the idea of webcomics making the transition into print, whether it's through a Kickstarter campaign or being picked up by a publisher. It happens all the time, but it's a whole lot more rare to see it go the other way around, with a printed comic going up on the web -- which is exactly what's happening this week with Brian Clevinger and Scott Wegener's Atomic Robo.

After seven years of science adventures across multiple eras, Atomic Robo is transitioning to a full-time webcomic at Atomic-Robo.com on Wednesday, January 21. The whole series will be online for free, building up to the debut of the tenth volume, Atomic Robo and the Ring of Fire, this Summer.

While the switch to a webcomic for all future volumes is probably the biggest part of the announcement, the news that over a thousand pages of the existing Atomic Robo series will be available for free online is a pretty massive move, too. The entire first volume goes up on Wednesday, followed by a Monday/Wednesday/Friday update schedule where full issues are put up three times a week until the whole thing's online, leading to a pretty big archive.

It makes sense, though. Clevinger and Wegener have always said that one of their biggest goals with Robo was to reach the widest possible audience, and while they've certainly made it easy with the creation of stand-alone stories in each volume, putting the series online for free (with ad support) definitely removes any barrier readers may have had to givingAtomic Robo a shot.

Reached for comment, Clevinger confirmed that the collected editions of Robo will remain in print and available through ComiXology: "New material will be free online first and collected into issues/trades through ComiXology for folks who wants ‘em like that. We’ll also print the new stuff as trades as, y’know, they get finished."

The first volume, Atomic Robo and the Fightin' Scientists of Tesladyne, will be available in its entirety on Wednesday, so if you've never read the series or just want a refresher, now's a good time to start.