Review – Not All Robots #1
Review – Not All Robots #1
Writer: Mark Russell
Artist: Mike Deodato
Publisher: AWA
Release Date: August 4th 2021
Variant Cover: Rahzzah
Issue #1
In the year 2056, robots have replaced human beings in the workforce. An uneasy co-existence develops between the newly intelligent robots and the ten billion humans living on Earth. Every human family is assigned a robot upon whom they are completely reliant. What could possibly go wrong? Meet the Walters, a human family whose robot, Razorball, ominously spends his free time in the garage working on machines which they’re pretty sure are designed to kill them in this sci-fi satire from Mark Russell (The Flintstones, Second Coming) and Mike Deodato Jr. (The Amazing Spider-Man, The Resistance).
Writer: Mark Russell
30 years in the future humans are nothing more than pets for a robot workforce. Razorball the Walters robot is going through an existential crisis working to live and living to work. He’s depressed but his friend tells him of a growing movement to disable his emotion chip. At home, Cheryl is worried that Razonball is not communicating with them and decides to do something about it.
Russell very cunningly uses robots as an allegory for toxic masculinity in the story. In the story, robots are starting to kill their families and we even get a flashback of Razorball attacking Donny, the father of the family. In the same way that white privilege led to the BLM movie and toxic masculinity led to the MeToo movement, he points a mirror at the reader.
Artist: Mike Deodato
Deodato’s work in the issue is interesting he uses panels to split up later images allowing the reader to see it as the movement of time. The uniformity of the panels mirrors the artificial status of the main robots, wanting conformity. Each robot has a personality, even without a recognisable face as he uses postures, gestures and overemphasized cartoon-like scenarios to bring them to life.
Overall Thoughts
Whether we men like it or not we have privilege via our gender and our status afforded through it. To say not all robots are hurting or killing their families takes away the horror that any robots are. The dry, pathos rich story isn’t too preachy about its subtle message.
[yasr_multiset setid=1]
[yasr_visitor_multiset setid=1]
I hope you have enjoyed our review of Not All Robots #1 and hope you pick it up at your Local Comic Shop
Buy tickets for BGCP Comic-Cons in and around Glasgow Scotland – BUY TICKETS
Check out all of our Comic, Movie, Television and Videogame Reviews HERE and our Podcasts/Interviews HERE
If you want to be part of the BGCP community, Join us on Discord, Twitter, Instagram etc then click HERE
