If you’ve missed it, comic books have grown up over the last decade. It’s no longer the world of caped crusaders and villains with daddy issues. Don’t get me wrong, I love a good arch nemesis like the next guy, but more and more I find myself turning to comic books for the same thing I find in a novel. But with pictures.
The landscape of Alex + Ada is a familiar trope. It’s the future and artificial intelligence has been achieved but with disastrous results. The robots rebelled (eg iRobot, Bladerunner, Battlestar Galactica etc.) and are now, for safety’s sake, reduced to the I.Q.s of a fancy toaster.
Alex, a single man in his late-twenties/early thirties faces everything we all do when single at that age–nervous family members. In order to assuage his loneliness, Alex’s grandmother buys him a companion-bot for his birthday–a woman with Prime Intelligence who can keep him company. Ada is a few crayons short of a box; she looks human enough, but is unable to make any original decisions.
But Prime Intelligence robots can be jailbroken.
The story jack-knifes into a world of hackers and government officials. Of unlikely romance. Of insatiable sci-fi drama. What at first seems to be a predictable story is anything but.
Alex + Ada is a wonderful romp into a not-too-distant future that is uncannily familiar and questions what makes us human.
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