This won me over from the beginning. I’ve been complaining recently about the difficulty of enjoying “robots are people, too” media since the emergence of AI chatbots, but I didn’t feel any of that here.

Part of that is due to the way that Zdarsky works contemporary concerns about generative AI into some throwaway references. Maybe more importantly, he challenges us to think about whether we are all meat machines rather than special soul-having humans, which is a pretty good response, actually, even if I still think Anthropic is teetering on the edge of the deep end.

The bigger part, though, is that this is such a perfect comic. The art is great, the stories are compelling, it makes fun of dumb American jingoism, and there’s also some great gentle teasing of Canada by a Canadian (and the Canadian French is good—I learned a new phrase and appreciated a « tabarnak » in the dialogue).

It was really fun!

• Chip Zdarsky
• Rachael Stott
• Tamra Bonvillain
• White House Robot Romance