Broken Frontier

Arcturo Icaza de Araña-Goldberg is a police detective for Social Harmony, the peace-keeping force of the United North American Trading Sphere (UNATS).  The country is in a ceaseless war with its oversea neighbor Eurasia, a largely silent, guerilla war of technology one-upsmanship, the country to first outpace the other the likeliest victor.  Arcturo’s wife, a brilliant scientist, long ago defected to Eurasia, leaving behind their only daughter, Ada, with Arcturo.  But when Ada goes missing, her father teams up with robots limited by “The Three Laws”, and sets off on a journey that will change everything he thought he already knew.

Once again, comic scribe Dara Naraghi (author of the online comic Lifelike) orchestrates an effortless transition from pure prose to single-issue comic book format, a particularly impressive feat with a story as dense and information-laden as I, Robot.  The core of the tale is to show the Asimovian “Three Laws” to be culturally contextual, or, in other words, products of the politics of Asimov’s time.  With a further knowledge of the modern world and its workings, Doctorow manages a short but wild fable that speaks not of caution towards unlimited advancement, but caution toward advancement controlled by singular, monopolized sources.  In Doctorow’s I, Robot, the artificial intelligence is one that can either be the next step toward realizing mankind’s possible horizons, or a thing to forever benefit a chosen few alone.  Mostly, being a story for our times, Doctorow focuses upon capitalism as the sole advantage technology will give those subjugated by said “chosen few”, though freedom from anything beyond materialism is then quickly lost.  Technology unhampered, however, could create a culture far beyond the pleasures found via free enterprise.

And somewhere, within all that, is actually a pretty cool story, with sincere characterization and drama that hits hard, even for all the tale’s brevity.  Naraghi is a natural diologuist, and he further selects caption box narratives that enhance the story and allow for its full weight to be felt, without ever feeling slow or unnecessarily didactic.  The drama of I, Robot is still only that of a short story, meaning it’s cut-and-dry and to the point, its tide in perfect harmony with standard ebb and flow structure, but due to the tale’s complex exploration of heady truths associated with the modern man’s human experience, the entire effect is satisfyingly elaborate.

Erich Owen (Mail Order Ninja from Tokyopop) pencils, inks, and colors the story in full, and his style here proves wonderfully replete.  There’s dark strokes that hint toward his more manga-nese origins, though the overall look is compact and controlled, depicting a highly slice-of-life flavor while nevertheless allowing for the fantastical futuristic elements to flourish.  Think Blade Runner sans all the art-directed noir, a gritty but more real than hyper-real realization.  Even Owen’s coloring scheme is both fictional four-color and yet subdued, reigned in to also establish a baseline authenticity to a future world that’s, ultimately, meant to represent the present one.

One more issue to go of CD’s FTotHaN, and I wonder if they’ve saved the best for last.  It’s tough to pick a favorite from all the goodness this six-issue anthology mini-series has offered.  Even the one story I found weak(est) in execution (Issue #4 - “Nimby and the D-Hoppers”) was indelibly memorable, and a single-issue read that offered far more than most.  I, Robot is once again a fantastic speculative fiction comic, and I sincerely hope IDW has set a new standard for prose-to-comic fiction, which we frankly need more of in the modern day market.