front page  ·  comicbook reviews  ·  interviews  ·  comics  ·  merchandise  ·  contact us  ·  newsfeed: rss xml

Robotika #1 Book Released: 30 Nov 2005 Review posted: 26 Dec 2005 Writer: Alex Sheikman Artist: Alex Sheikman Ryan Sook (cover) Colors: Joel Chua Publisher: Archaia Studios Press  3.75 out of 5 Stars Reviewed by J. W. DeBolt Jr.

Archaia Studios Press brought us Artesia, the tale of a warrior leader in the distant past. Now, Mark Smylie's company takes us in the opposite direction with Robotika. Biotechnology has reached the point where people can be genetically modified and where robots have become an integral part of society. Robots serve many labor functions (naturally, as the word “robot” comes from the word “work”). Some corporations, like Starbrain, are also blending robots and humans into cybergenetic organisms, but no one has yet been able to create the ideal cyborg.

Starbrain corporation makes inefficient cyborgs that need incremental improvements so that it can keep making money off of them — sort of like computers and computer operating systems or cars with built-in obsolescence. People are urged to buy new models with new features and keep up with whatever the fad may be. Many failed hybrids exist; they are sentient or semi-sentient and have left mainstream society to live on the fringes in the wild.

Dr. Rha Agon finally succeeds in creating the perfect cyborg prototype, but mercenaries called the Black Legionnaires infiltrate Agon's lab, kill him, and steal the prototype. The humans and cyborgs are in a constant state of war, and this action is somehow part of that conflict.

The queen has been trying to close the rift between cyborgs and humans. She summons Niko, a powerful warrior with a past shrouded in mystery and legend, to retrieve the prototype. Niko is under a severe time restriction: he must retrieve the prototype before the start of an important conference the queen must attend, or else a great upheaval would result from the news of the long-awaited prototype being created and then stolen.

Most fiction ignores the marketplace even though it is an integral part of any society, for unless everyone grows and eats their own food, builds their own shelter and are totally self-sufficient, people have to trade, buy and sell to live and thrive. And public and shared ownership of businesses help provide the capital needed to keep economies running, and a stock market is a natural extension of that. Take ancient Venice, for example, when it was one of the biggest economic entities in the world; its stock market affected all of its trading partners. So the queen mentioning the marketplace adds a point for realism in the story.

Niko is a samurai figure with a samurai-type mission. He goes north, to where most of the discarded cyborgs congregate. They live among toxic waste and in areas where humans won't. Niko fights cyborgs and some, upon their demise, utter zen-like epitaphs, which adds to the story's existential quality. The lowest-level cyborgs, in Niko's conceit, are those who look least human, who have sold off their body parts (to humans looking for improvements) in order to feed their families. (The family structure of the cyborgs has not yet been explained.)

Niko meets the character Cherokee Geisha, who gives Niko information on the missing prototype. She speaks with vertically-set words in her word balloons. This is consistent with the Oriental look of the characters' dress and geography, but it is a bit difficult to read. Plaudits, though, for attempting something different.

Sheikman's art is imaginative. The cities look nothing like contemporary earth cities or even like most versions of future cities because of the technology explained below. Using a Lewis Carroll quote, though, puts the story in our far future when cyborg technology is widespread.

Philip K. Dick covered well the idea of cyborgs rejecting their servitude toward man in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? His main question in the book was “What does it mean to be human?” or “How do you define humanity?” It seems that Robotika could be on the way to addressing this, but a central theme beyond the missing prototype has yet to be laid out and may come together in the next few issues.

In the back of the issue, a helpful glossary explains some of the story's unique features. XPS-15, for example, is a small organism that was created to provide power to cyborgs and other bioengineered products. XPS-15 has replaced batteries for most purposes, so all of the technology has a different look to it. Reading the story the first time around, I wondered where the

Sheikman plotted well in distributing XPS-15 technology into all parts of society, such as the buildings, appliances, and, of course, the cyborgs.

cyborgs got their power — was it simply from food for the organic part? If so, how did the electrical parts get their power? XPS-15 answers that perfectly.