The Ugly American Report: Alex + Ada + Ryan Lee!

Alex + Ada
Image Comics
Scripts: Jonathan Luna & Sarah Vaughn
Art: Jonathan Luna

This week I'm going to walk you through what's going on in the Image book Alex + Ada, and why I think it's worthy of your attention.

My interest in the book stemmed from two sources. A) I don't always love what the Luna brothers do, but it's always pleasantly off the beaten path. B) I like all stories about losers banging robots.

The only problem with the "losers banging robots" schtick is that it always follows the same track. These stories are dressed up like science fiction, what with the mechanical woman and all. By the way, it's almost always a hapless human dude set up with a stunning female robot, rarely the other way around. Conventional wisdom says that women are too "emotional" to go in for the robotic cool indifference. Personally, I think a look at sales figures on the Rabbit vibrator speaks otherwise. But I'm digressing. The point is, these usually end up not being science fiction stories at all, but folk tales about social skills, relationships, and "soul".

The guy in these stories always have an interested flesh-and-blood woman lurking around in the background, and the man is just too oblivious too notice. At first the man is reticent to invest anything in the robot, but the script writers give her some sympathetic puppy dog moments, and the easy sex is just too good to pass up.

Inevitably, the robot dame completely loses her shit and starts killing everybody, starting with the rival meat woman. Then the loser finally gets some balls, dispatches with the psycho roboto-gina, and hooks up with the real girl. He finally realizes at the end that while there are advantages to a woman you can spray off with a hose when finished, what you really need is a woman with heart. There are tons of these things out there, but my all-time favorite is the new-fangled Outer Limits episode "Valerie 23", with Bill Sadler.

Imagine my surprise to find that while Alex + Ada knows the "loser bangs a robot" rules well, it carves itself a deeper path, and one built with some actual science fiction.

Alexander Wahl is the loser in question. It just wouldn't be a Luna brothers production without a healthy dose of sexual frustration and social awkwardness. I'm no licensed psychiatrist, but I have the distinct impression that neither of the Lunas ended up as King of the Prom in high school. Plus, we can smell our own.

Alex has been without his ex-girlfriend Claire for seven months when the story picks up. One gets the feeling that it was her idea, not his. He's sad, he's lonely, and he's not quite ready to get back on the horse.

Enter Betty-White-style inappropriate grandmother. She's enjoying the benefits of her own Tanaka X5 droid, and decides to drop the $800,000 and buy a girl robot for Alex on his birthday.

This is all pretty standard, and the story even includes Isabel, the obligatory "interested real girl" lurking in the background. All of the expected pieces are there, but then Alex + Ada starts separating itself with deeper thinking and world building.

A lot of care has gone into the technology background of the Alex + Ada set. You've got two major rivals in Prime and Nexaware. Alex actually has Prime wired into his head. He can give his house commands, and it obeys. He has a litttle hoverbot named Otto that brings him his coffee and cooks. He can think at his shower and specify the temp he wants. If another individual is also wired with Prime, the two can share an entire conversation without moving their lips - the thoughts simply transfer seamlessly. Kinda cool. Kinda creepy.

Nexaware is not doing as well as prime, because about a year before the story begins, there was an issue with the P-011 artificial intelligence program. Thirty four people died in a robot killing spree, and now robotic sentience has been outlawed. People are still using robots for all sorts of purposes, but there's a tension in the air. One of the characters is military, and lost a leg in battle. He claims he would have lost a lot more than that without robotic assistance. So it's complex. I like complex.

The devil, as always, is in the details, and the Luna/Vaughn tandem seem to get them all right. The tech is post-modern, but it all feels right. Ada needs 4,000 calories a day to run stay "full". One of the characters wonders if she poops. This is the first thing I would have wondered as well. Alex doesn't answer. Nothing's 100% efficient, so I think she does poop. But then, as a founding member of Chronic Insomnia, I sort of have to think that.

Alex activates Ada by pressing and holding her ear lobe, and then she delivers the most wonderful instructional speech. It's spot-on corporate PR-speak, but with a warm twist. I don't want to ruin it for you with specific spoilers, but the rules cover the usual Asimov territory and a few items Asimov missed that make perfect sense. Whichever writer has their fingerprints on that opening salvo from Ada - bravo!

It feels like Luna and Vaughn have carefully considered most everything about artificial intelligence and humans interacting with technology, or at least enough to make it easy to accept the world they're handing you. I think there will be some personal growth for Alex, and I look forward to all of that. But it's the "bigger picture" elements that interest me even more.

The Alex + Ada world is futuristic, but they're still dealing with the same types of human-disconnect issues that we are. The culture is simultaneously too comfortable with burying itself in tech, and also slightly horrified by it. I mean, is there anybody under the age of 30 not looking at their phone right now? We're into it, deep.

But we're also starting to recognize the psychic costs of that, particularly when examining the lack of empathy exhibited on forums, Twitter, Facebook. We're a torn beast, wearing a public face obsessed with sensitivity, and trigger fingers primed for action like never before. It's dissonant, and tiring, and it seems to be getting worse, not better.

The problem Alex has with Ada is that she isn't human enough for him. She's cute, but she has no agency. Ada is quite quick to tell anybody that she doesn't and can't have opinions. She laughs when Alex laughs, because Alex is laughing. It's gratifying in short bursts to have somebody cave to your needs once in awhile, but unless you're Jeff Dahmer, eventually you want to see some evidence that the other person is engaged with life.

So Alex calls Tanaka and asks if anything can be done, and of course they try to up-sell him with a couple of extra skill packs. Not what he was looking for, but another fantastic example of how Luna and Vaughn always seem to get the devilish details right.

What really struck me about that scene was when Alex asks the Tanaka rep if they are in fact human. It was subtle, but to me powerful. Because these days we don't know. We don't know if the person on the other end of the phone is really human, or a recording, or a person just running a script, which isn't really a person at all. We don't know if Manti Teo has an actual girlfriend or a fictional construction. Do we really need to see an actual politician at a press conference when we can all perfectly replicate the same old bullshit that it is going to tele-prompter out of their mouths?

The machines are getting too enticing, and we're getting altogether too machiney and disconnected, and that's the kind of thing I'm interested in. Alex + Ada is all over that stuff, but not in a sledgehammer, preachy way. Which is exceedingly rare in comics these days. Comics do so love the sledgehammer.

I don't know, I could go on and on about this book. Alex + Ada is currently three issues into its run, and I've read each of the issues multiple times. I don't do that with many comics. You can't just race through it, either, or you'll miss the subtle stuff. There's a scene where Alex and Ada are watching TV together, and news footage of the Nexaware Massacre comes on screen. There's no captioning or dialogue outside of what the newscaster is saying. Alex is just watching Ada, who is absorbing all this quietly, without expression, eating her bowl of cereal.

Tell me that wouldn't make your balls shrink straight up into their natural orifice.

There are potential trouble spots. The pages are laid out very cinematically - many of the pages feature vertical layouts of widescreen shots that vary only slightly. Sometimes to string out an awkward silence, focus on facial expressions, sometimes to cinematically spell out action points.
To me, that's not using the medium to its full advantage. If you slow down and allow yourself time to absorb the effects, they do still function. But these cinematic techniques are better suited for film.

Some may find the pacing an issue. There is an awful lot of talking in Alex + Ada, and when people aren't talking, they are often staring at each other. If you really had your hopes on the "loser bangs a robot" angle, they are certainly taking the scenic route. Not only are they not banging after three issues, they haven't had a proper snog yet.

I don't mind the talking, because I'm pulling quite a bit of story out of it. You could do an Alex + Ada book club and have plenty to talk about, because there's a lot buried in context. But some of you don't want context, so be warned. This is not robotic fetish porn. This is about people and their relationship with technology, and the nature of human intimacy.

I've been impressed by Alex + Ada, and more importantly, I've been enjoying it as a story. I don't know exactly where Luna and Vaughn are headed with this, and that's a good thing. At the end of issue three, Alex is getting into deep caverns of the Prime-net looking for somebody to (illegally) help him give Ada some sentience. This just can't end well, can it? I honestly don't know, because the creators are playing the story with a little more sophistication and a little against type... but I eagerly anticipate finding out.

If your store is not carrying this - ask. I think Alex + Ada would work very well in trade form, and some of you favor that format anyway. I'm telling you, though, if you want to see the work completed, you need to support the monthly comics. You can wait for the trade on Avengers, because that's going to sell enough copies without you to subsidize the collection. If you want Alex + Ada to live, (and I'm telling you that you really do) they need those sales NOW. Let your retailer know that you'd like this in your pull or on the shelves, so that the publisher knows there is a market for the material.

Ugly American's Bloated Halloween Part 4: Spawn the animated series!

When the Ugly American was just a hideous-looking little stunt tricyclist, he had less than zero time for traditions. Perform a prescribed action you may or may not want to do simply because you did it before??? The height of ignorance. And boredom. The young Ugly American was an innovator, not a conservator.

As my virility migrates south and my odds of developing any number of terminal illnesses starts climbing north, I become more and more interested in traditions. Maybe it's because I like the idea of setting aside time to remember things past, because someday that will be me. Maybe it's because as I get older, I'm building a greater respect for things that last. Maybe I'm just becoming a bigger, softer asshole. I don't know.

What I do know is that I have a couple of movies that I watch every Halloween. It's my version of tradition. It's not a chore, it's....comforting. It helps that both of them are outstanding films with solid replay value. Those two movies are The Crow and Trick R' Treat. I imagine the first is quite familiar to most of my readers, and the second mostly unfamiliar, and that's a shame. We'll get to both of them in the next installment of the Ugly American.

This time, I'm going to tell you about a prospective new addition to the Halloween tradition. It's horror based. It's comic bookey. But would it be good enough to make the Halloween tradition cut? Let's find out.....

Spawn: The Animated Series (1997-1999)

The animated Spawn series ran for three seasons on HBO, if you can believe it. I had vague recollections of it being a little buzzy when it first premiered. It must have garnered some interest, since it was picked up for two more seasons. But as for the episodes themselves? I couldn't remember.....anything, really.

Upon watching them again in 2013, I know why. The scientific explanation for my failure to latch onto any solid memories of this show is because it is "not good". Oh, the production quality is there, even down to the DVD packaging. The case is solid metal, you'll break your foot if you drop that case on it. The animation itself looks fantastic, albeit DARK. This was the late 1990s, when cel animation was still the norm, thankfully. Anything digital causes my brain to simply check out and leave me cold. I think the only digitally animated show I can watch and enjoy is the short-lived MTV Spider-Man series. But I'm getting off track.

So yes, the show looks good, and the show sounds good. They got Keith David to do Spawn, (you may remember him voicing Goliath on Gargoyles) and Michael McShane does a wonderful rendition of Twitch. There's nothing unprofessional about it.

I was surprised at just how spiritually dark the show is, even given the fact that HBO was unlikely to restrict them much. Al Simmons is depressing to look at, and depressing to listen to. He mostly sits by himself and moans things like "Who am I?" for no particular reason.

For sport, he sits idle while maniacs and former acquaintances murder homeless people around him. He can see it happening, and he almost always exacts some kind of vengeance when it happens. But he can never be arsed to prevent any Bum Abuse. Sometimes he abuses them himself, verbally shredding innocent people who are inexplicably interested in being friendly with Simmons.

Spawn exhibits no sympathy or empathy for anybody apart himself, his wife, and his daughter. He exhibits no interest in doing much of anything to improve his plight. Mostly he whines, moans, and kills people if they don't leave him alone. He's not an interesting or likeable character, which is a problem.

Then there's Clown. Hoo boy. At one point he snatches a picture of Wanda away from Spawn, fires his hand down his pants, and then just starts tugging. That's the kind of show we're dealing with here. And that's almost interesting, if relentlessly maudlin.

Todd McFarlane is the blessing and the curse of Spawn. No corporate entity would take the chances that he does with that IP. Masturbatory clowns? Never going to be drawn from a corporate well, but Todd is free to do what he likes, and some of that feels almost novel and fresh.

In fact, if I were to point one shining element of the series, it would be McFarlane's intros. Before each episode, a camera creeps up behind a doodling McFarlane, at which point he turns around and presents some thematic questions before advocating that you turn the lights off. There are usually skulls and potions about. It's all very spooky.

He comes off as a bit douchey and too serious about the whole thing..but you know what? He's also captivating. You learn more pertinent information about the Spawn mythology in those fleeting moments than any ten episodes of story content. He clearly has a clue about what he wants to do and what's driving his story, and he's genuinely passionate about it.

Here's the problem - somewhere along the way, Todd McFarlane got it in his head that reminding an audience they don't know things about the story is a story. And it's not. That's the opposite of a story. He still hasn't figured that out, by the way.

I guess we'll never know for sure, but if I may engage in a little story forensics, I blame the Hobgoblin frenzy of the mid-to-late 1980s. You remember the Hobgoblin craze in Amazing Spider-Man, right? I know Remy does! The Green Goblin was dead and gone, Peter had all the Osborns accounted for, so who in the world was this jacked-up asshole in the goblin glider throwing exploding pumpkins at Spider-Man? Nobody knew. For a LONG time. Spider-editor Jim Owsley (now Christopher Priest) kept the secret so well he wouldn't tell Jim Shooter. Sales rose, people were talking, and it was all over the mystery of the Hobgoblin.

Well, McFarlane comes onto ASM not long after that. He had been doing work for awhile, sure, but it definitely had to be in his brain. If you want to draw an audience, you dangle a mystery in front of them. That's what people want. That's what sells!

Unfortunately, what Todd forgot was that the Hobgoblin mystery was built on a foundation of hundreds of issues of meaty goodness, not obscure ghosts. The mystery worked because the psychological base was so juicy.

Quick impression of Gwen Stacy's spine for you:

"Snap!"

Ta-daaaa!

That's why Peter Parker and his audience cared about the Hobgoblin. There was a tangible, gripping history there. Spawn has none of that. Who is Al Simmons? I don't care. He's a mopey jerk. And a government hit man before that. Yuck.

And if I don't care about the main character, how many tons of apathy do I have toward the diabolical Jason Wynn, his missing gun shipments, and his plans for the White House? Those threads comprise about 40% of the plot, and they generate zero interest particles. I couldn't explain to you why those elements are in there.

I suppose those conspiracies connect to the main story because they put Wanda and her new beau Terry in jeopardy. But we have no idea who these people are, because Al doesn't really remember them, so who cares? Or maybe it's a cautionary lesson about government corruption?

It's hard to know what the lessons of Spawn are. I feel like somewhere deep below its nougat filling, Spawn wants you to know that there is no fate, and that you can always choose a redemptive path for yourself. You can almost sense that somewhere around chapter 2,354 Todd wants Al to find a way to break his pact with Malebolgia, disrupt the plans of hell, and then wait in heaven for Wanda and Cyan to return to him.

If that's the case, Spawn is taking a really bizarre path in getting there. Occasionally this cat named Cogliostro shows up and irritates the shit out of you. By the way, the only way you'd know the guy's name is Cogliostro is by reading the end credits, because he certainly doesn't advertise that fact. It's a mystery, so that it makes it interesting, right? (slaps palm with forehead)

Cogliostro knows everything you as the reader/viewer need to know in order to understand and care about the Spawn story. He reminds Spawn (and you) of this each time he appears, and revels in keeping all of those treasures to himself. Here's an encapsulation of an actual conversation between Spawn and Cogliostro in a dark alley:

SPAWN: Piss off, old man! I'm busy brooding!

COG: You're about to make one of the most important decisions in your life and the future of earth, and you'd better make the right choice!

SPAWN: Uhhhhh! So annoying! What are you even talking about?

COG: If I told you, it wouldn't even matter.

At that point you just kind of throw your hands up and concede defeat. That's not a narrative, it's a skeleton of a narrative so lacking in manners that it outright tells you that it will never have any meat on its bones.

Precious little of the skeleton makes sense, by the way. As the Spawn story is constructed, the Hellspawns sign a pact with Malebolgia. Apparently something about this process invariably produces amnesia, at which point Malebolgia sends them to earth so they can bitch about how non-compliant the Spawns are. What??? He doesn't remember making "the deal", why would you be surprised that he's not living up to it? And the only information you as the audience would know about "the deal" is from Todd's intro, not the story itself. All the "story" does is remind you that you don't know what happened, and neither does he. It's madness.

If you show Simmons make the deal to be the Devil's muscle in exchange for being re-united with his wife, and then watch him pop up five years later when she's already moved on, NOW you might give a crap about things. Particularly if you establish a real loving couple first. And it would help the audience invest in the character if they know more than Spawn, but are unable to help as they watch him get pummeled by forces out of his control. They might even identify with such a character.

But not this character and not this series, unfortunately. It's a lot of darkness, and child molestation, and shooting, and altogether too much interest in government insiders and conspiracies you couldn't possibly care about. But it's definitely Spawn. Is it worth watching? Ehhhh....no? I recommend viewing the Todd intros and skipping the rest.

Ugly American # 17 – Five Weapons

Hand Me That Cudgel…..Now Where Did I Put The Dead Horse?

Marvel just released Guardians of the Galaxy 0.1 on Wednesday, and I instantly got a headache. You’d think I’d be over this by now….but I’m not, because they keep upping the audacity ante. Look, Marvel, I didn’t make the rules, YOU made the rules! And the rules for .1 issues, while stultifyingly misguided, were quite simple:

• They were to signify a jumping on point for new readers
• They were to illuminate a tone or plot vehicle for the title’s direction
• They were to be followed by another book shipping that same month
• They were to be priced at $2.99 to encourage test-driving

Since the initiative started, Marvel has routinely made a mockery of the first two tenets. The transgressions are so numerous at this point that I think the blatant misuses far outnumber the times they’ve played fair. No trouble with point # 3, mind you. Everything Marvel publishes ships 2.8 times a month now, so does that even qualify as a .1 thing? And then I look at GOTG 0.1 and see that disgusting looking $3.99 on the cover, so now they’ve taken a hot dump all over principle # 4.

As if there were ever a shred of doubt, .1 is an unattractive turd of sound and fury, signifying NOTHING. So the program is confusing and ill conceived, but at least they lied to us about everything. Well, everything but the part where they gouge you for double the cost in a month by over-shipping. Whew! Dodged a bullet there, huh?

What’s extra funny about all this is that if you listen to guys like Brian Bendis or Jonathan Hickman talk about the marketing/numbers guys at Marvel, you’d think they were referring to extra-dimensional savants. These numbers guys at Marvel have come down from heaven to show us mere mortals how the science of selling works. Except if you look at the mass attrition, the over-saturation of every workable brand, the over-saturation of every non-workable brand, the failure to produce any title sustainable past twelve issues, and the embarrassment that is Marvel’s performance in the book market, you might wonder if these guys aren’t so smart after all.

News to the “wizards”….that red stripe at the bottom of all your books looks like ass. Propping up your numbers with variant covers is not smart, it’s poking an economic badger with a pointy stick, and it’s going to bite you sooner rather than later. You have the most vibrant and powerful IP library in comics, and Robert Kirkman’s Walking Dead outperformed your ENTIRE CATALOG according to Bookscans numbers. Don’t just gloss over that, folks. I want you to stop for a moment and consider that one independent black and white horror property outsold everything Marvel produced in 2012. And this with a billion dollar movie in the theaters! Yeah. Those are some sharp cats over there at Marvel marketing. Given the choice between the current regime and a pack of syphilitic hamsters…I’m taking the hamsters.

Meanwhile, the Distinguished Competition is learning all the wrong lessons from these kinds of shenanigans. Word from the grapevine is that the Geoff Johns Green Lantern Finale is going to have a big fat $7.99 price point, just like ASM # 700. Ugh. Yeah, yeah, extra pages. But what kind of pages? If this were 80 pages of Geoff Johns/Doug Mahnke swan singing, I wouldn’t champion the idea, but I’d understand. Everybody knows how this is going to work, though – it’s going to be 40% Johns/Mahnke, and a heaping pile of forgettable professional yeomen’s work.

Ask yourself this – if DC published one GL finale with just the Johns/Mahnke story for $4.99, and also published the $7.99 version with this “bonus” material, how many would purchase the comic with the extra content? I’m going to put the over/under at 3% of the $4.99 version. And by the way, half of that 3% would be savvy speculators betting on the “scarce” version for future profits. If DC really believed in the material, they’d publish it separately. But mostly, they just want as many $8 monsters as they can rape out of you for Q1. And that’s comics.

But this is also comics:

Five Weapons # 1
This is another new book from Image, and it’s Jimmie Robinson’s baby. Paul Little is handling the colors, but other than that it’s the Jimmie Robinson show. He’s doing the writing, the drawing, he’s washing the dishes, sweeping the floors, and tucking you in at night. That’s full service.

Five Weapons is the story of one intrepid Tyler Shainline. He’s the new kid at the School of Five Weapons, where today’s youth are trained to become tomorrow’s professional assassins. Tyler’s got a couple of wrinkles to work out, though. One, his father is a legend at this school, so he’s got a sizeable reputation demon to exorcise with everyone he meets. The other problem is that he appears to be a pacifist. This is kinda not what Weapon School is looking for.

The schtick seems to be that Tyler’s weapon is going to be his mind, and it’s a shockingly enjoyable schtick. If you’re super old like me and have favorable memories of Encyclopedia Brown, this will feel pleasantly like going home. For a more contemporary camp, I would say that if you liked Veronica Mars (and shame on you if you didn’t) you should absolutely give Five Weapons a shot. There’s the backdrop of fitting in at high school, dodging cliques, making an impression on the cute girl in home room. All good stuff, but standard. The twist is that the story is laced with puzzles and brain teasers. By the end of the issue I noticed I was on yellow alert, searching for clues about which rug might get pulled from beneath me. That was fun, and I don’t get that from many comics. The cliffhanger ending for the debut issue doesn’t have anything to do with shocking violence or a stunning reveal. It’s a puzzle. How the hell is Tyler going to pull that off? (You’ll have to read it to find out what that is) I don’t know. I’m interested enough to find the next issue, though.

This is an all ages book. It’s not labeled as such, and the marketing I saw beforehand didn’t suggest that. Perhaps if we asked Mr. Robinson, he would deny it. But it’s an all ages book. Frederic Wertham would feel comfortable handing this book to a 12 year-old. The sensibility skews a little young, and that’s not a pejorative, it’s just a fact. When Tyler was being introduced to the teachers, (one of whom has an arrow inexplicably jutting out of her head) it almost lost me. By the time I got to the “exotic weapons” student talking to Tyler through a presumably poisonous snake, I recognized that this is a book pointed more at the Ben 10 crowd and relaxed. There’s nothing wrong with Ben 10 or all ages material. Diary of a Wimpy Captain Underpants sells more books than comics can imagine. And like Han Solo, comics can imagine a lot. So I’ve been waiting for something in this vein to hit gold, and maybe this can do it?

I know Jimmie Robinson from his Bomb Queen work, so Five Weapons surprised me a little. Bomb Queen is, how shall we say this….saucy. It’s a little like hiring me and Chronic Mike to write for The Suite Life of Zack & Cody. We could probably do it, maybe even do it well. But you wouldn’t exactly expect it. I like that. I like creators stretching their creative muscles, and I like it when creators take on more control of their product.

Five Weapons is pretty darned good. Right now it’s in the “Oh, isn’t that sort of clever and interesting” category. If Robinson is able to really sell the brain teaser elements while naturally progressing the relationships in the book, Five Weapons could be really special.

Hawkeye # 8
I just couldn’t take it anymore. I wanted to wait for the trade to come out and then catch up and read it all, but all the cool kids kept talking about it, so I had to crack open Hawkeye and see what the hullaballoo was about.
This just in: Hawkeye is super cool. It’s so cool, it makes you feel cooler for having read it. This particular issue featured a series of full page splashes paying homage to golden age comics while simultaneously adding weight to the tone of the scene. In the hands of lesser men, those pages would feel like wasted fluff. In Hawkeye, it’s just cool.

FUN FACT: You know how the “track suit draculas” like say “bro” at least once every five words? Know where Fraction got that from? It’s a gentle ribbing of Warren Simons, currently the executive editor at Valiant. I’m guessing it’s exaggerated. Let’s hope so, at any rate.

Clint Barton is arrested in this issue. How cool is that? It’s Hawkeye cool. Also, between this and the Young Avengers - I’m officially in love with Kate Bishop. The end!

As always, your comments are very welcome so leave them below.