So I tried taking the gameboy with me and instead of getting anything done I just forgot it, so that’ll have to be delayed further. Magnus today. Remember all those good times we had, not hearing about this comic? They end now.
When last we left off, Whitey picked up another ethnic sidekick, this time one willing to die for him. He backhands the evil progressive woman and runs off with the proper lady who understands his dick means he should totally be in charge. It’s about to get still worse!
Luckily we don’t need to deal with that today, because in fine comics tradition, it’s time for a #0 issue. If you aren’t familiar with the general disregard comics has for people trying to read a series, you might think I should have started with this one, but the zero just means it’s set in the past. According to the note, this is set between #2 and #3, but the internet tells me it came out after #3 and also I think you need to get as far as Evil Ice Queen Bitch pointing out how objectively she is totally right and all hail our non-prejudiced robot overlords before reading this.
This issue we learn things are even better for us humans than it appeared! We knew that Inspector Clane: HUMAN HUNTER seemed important, but was she so awesome she got her own TV show, or was she only of any importance because the TV show entertained robots?
And the answer is she is pretty damn important and actually in charge of the robo-police. We also see that the one claim this place has to dystopia, the whole three laws business and implication all robots outrank all humans, isn’t even an issue, because look at that human ordering robots into something that’s going to cause them some harm! Clearly, the laws are general statements about don’t damage your fellow citizens and how usually when robots issue orders it’s for a good reason so obey it.
Magnus’ complaint about how can she let robots be in charge, therefore, is now proven not to mean “how can you accept a world where you’re a second-class citizen?!” and to actually be “how can you accept a world where any of those things outranks a single human being instead of universally being our property?!”
Of course, this is comics, so it’s entirely possible none of this was intended and the thought process began and ended at the fact that obviously, mass produced looking robots exist only to be ordered to zerg rush opponents (this is literally the plan, to distract the killer by dying so that the second wave can get a shot off). And that’s really plausible given the high concept this particular issue is built around is that it’s being narrated by one of those robots thinking about how there must be more to life, because who would have thought the sapient robots who act like humans could have feelings wow such original much good writing.
Our robo narrator confirms that A1 is a terrorist who makes sure his kids “accidentally wake up” in targets of interest.
And also that they always kill them in the end. He wonders why this keeps happening when it seems pointless – they rebuild whatever’s broken, so all that’s accomplished is robot death followed by human death. Because he’s a terrorist, robo narrator.
Robots, to recap:
Have friendship
Feel suffering
Can die
Those are the people that A1’s robo-utopia kids believe it’s okay to rip apart in a temper tantrum, because they were raised in a world of “equality” rather than the horrible real world where it’s not okay to murder dozens of people whenever you feel like it.
Also yeah, robots have genders somehow we’ll be dealing with that this time and by dealing with, I mean not really but kinda.
The art direction here hits a new low, so all we actually see her do in this part is tear an arm off (grabbing and pulling apparently being a “martial art”) and it’s not clear what killing involves. What we do learn is that punching a head off isn’t it, because he gets pulled back into the “central network” to get a new body. Before he gets it, he has to recite the scriptures, which are that humans invented robots, humans merged with nanobots, humans are walking around looking exactly like us and then suddenly decide to become a giant robot cloud and go visit the stars.
Yeah, this is what passes for writing in comicsland.
But not everybody went. Some robots – most, going by the fact that the story is describing it as nanobots merging with humans, but not many going by the picture of a roomba to illustrate this – weren’t advanced enough. And somehow the roombas were advanced enough to start building new robot bodies and advancing.
The reason the robots look like people is because they’re trying to recreate the society of right before the singularity and space journey thing, in the hopes that one day the singularity will come back and they can join it and robots are basically dogs.
When the robot is done reciting the story of how society got nanobots and still looked basically the same and then suddenly melted and went into space, the robot overmind says that he gets an upgrade and he’s thrilled. Now he gets to look like a person and he’s got a beautiful wife and they’ve applied for a human baby and
How does this fit with the part where Whitey was going on about how Inspector Clane: HUMAN HUNTER has evilly traded freedom for security because the robot overlords have removed prejudice at the cost of being in charge? It doesn’t. How does it fit with the idea the robot overlords hate jive-talking robots because they’re more concerned with being PC than how people totally talk like that? It doesn’t. It fits with the fact they needed to show a silhouette of people totally doing it. Comics.
So anyway, we learn two things this issue: robots identify themselves as a gender from creation, and in the one upgrade we’ve seen the robot ended up with robot genitalia matching that. And robots can die so Magnus is totally a mass murderer but it’s hard to tell what’s a fatal blow so we can’t figure out if he’s killed someone at any given moment.
Also implied: all robots are heterosexual and cis, despite being robots.
Hmmm… Just to play Devil’s Advocate for a bit, if we assume that the robots aren’t actually developing identities of their own, but only emulating what they see in humans, it would make sense for them to develop a form of sexuality, and heterosexuality does seem to be the norm.
Mind you, from what you’ve shown of the series so far, I doubt that view is supported by the text.
Having an affair is not the norm, though, unless we go by sitcom logic*.
If they consider it valuable to emulate cheating, they should emulate other, more positive, aspects of humanity as well, like different orientations.
*Though that would be an interesting dystopia. Let’s say that due to some freaky accident robots only have access to 50th sitcoms as their source of knowledge about human civilization. Then they find some humans hiding in a vault or something.
In order to “recreate” the society, they force those humans and themselves into the sitcom roles.
“No, Mrs Doe. You are a wife and as such cannot have loving relationship based on open communication and mutual respect with your husband. You must be shrill and demanding while he has to spend no less than three days per week in a bar, ignoring you and the kids. It is the law.”
Eh, I’d consider sexual orientation to be more of a neutral aspect than anything inherently positive; but even then, if heterosexuality is the norm, there’s a higher probability of a random sexual robot being “heterosexual” than any other orientation.
(It’s certainly got nothing to do with how, this way, they can draw the outlines of a robot lady’s ass.)
Neutral is still more positive than cheating, which was my point. If they replicate negative aspects of humanity, why not everything else as well?
Heterosexuality is indeed much more prevalent, especially if we go by self-identification surveys, which is likely what robots would go for.
Still, going by the scene, there is no mention of different sexual orientations. The robot didn’t say “since I was assigned ‘heterosexual’ as my orientation parameter, I was matched with a wife identified as an opposite gender” or something in that vein.
Even assuming sitcom-only knowledge, it’s still more likely they’d know about homosexuality than cheating given homosexuality appears to be a set factor while cheating would be pretty hard to pull off given how few humans there are. “A portion of humans are always gay” should be ranked way above “married human males always have a second female to have secret sex with”.
The problem is how very advanced their emulation is. They want to be a copy of our society, they emulate different races and ages…but gay people is a step too far?
I could swear I had already replied to illhousen on that front, but it seems Disqus swallowed it! Basically, I agreed with what he said (and you’re saying now) and admitted this was a hard devil to defend.
So fakeSpiderman outfits are standard issue for Robot Fighters.
“fitting”
Is this by the same writer of previous issues? Not that it’d surprise me, judging by how much of a chucklefuck he was, but completely hollowing out your own message for one frame of robosex seems to be an exciting new low.
Amazingly, yes, it’s all the same people. COMICS.
[humans invented robots, humans merged with nanobots, humans are walking around looking exactly like us and then suddenly decide to become a giant robot cloud and go visit the stars.]
I can’t express how confused I am by the whole “singularity” thing. Was it good? Were humans left behind being punished? Was it death? What is even happening.
Also, I hope you’re feeling better!
The humans merged with the singularity. It’s not mentioned where the current humans come from but given robohistory is that robots evolved on their own, I think all humans left and the remaining ones are clones.