By Dustin Cabeal

This is my first comic from AWA. I have little interest in where the company came from and all the backstory. I just know that more comic book companies are a good thing especially as legacy companies continue to be bought by corporate entities. Though I’m fairly certain that AWA is likely owned by a corporation. At any rate, this issue does not make me want to further explore their line of books. That’s fucked up right? Well, that’s how it goes. Every book has the potential to be someone’s first or first book with your company and when you’re a new company every issue potentially decides a reader’s interest in your entire line. That said, I’m not an asshole and will give them further chances, but Not All Robots is a book that I would like to never think about again.

Humans have fucked up the planet to the point that they live in bubble cities and robots do everything for us. Humans are forced to have a live in robot like a weird stepdad… that lives with your dad. The issue spends a ton of time with a Fox news segment about whether humans are needed, and this is discussed between two robots and a human. That is until Walt Disney’s head kills the Orlando bubble for some reason.

There is no reason for humans to be alive in this world. Like none. The robots know it. The humans know it… so why are they stuck together? They shouldn’t be and it breaks the entire logic of the story. We follow Al Bundy the robot as he begrudgingly goes to work each day to hit a button before going home to the family that lives in fear of him murdering them. The story spends so much time with the talking head news segment that next to nothing happens in the story. There’s no character development. Stepdad robot is just a burnt out working misunderstood by his family, who give concerned looks to each other rather than saying anything other than “I think that robot is going to kill me”, while the father hilariously loves on murder bot. I wish I could have enjoyed that more and maybe this would have worked better as a comic strip with a murder bot gag each day.

Deodato’s artwork is consistent and well crafted, but it’s lacking anything to make it interesting. The panels are all safe. The designs are basic. It doesn’t feel like the future, but rather the 90s with knock off Futurama robots. Usually, I’m a big fan of Deodato’s artwork, but there’s something lacking here. Like he’s going through the motions but doesn’t have any interest in the story he’s telling. At least that’s what comes across in the artwork.

I’m not going to rip on this book further, but by the end of it, I had no interest in reading more. It was a chore to finish and the entire plot of robots running the planet and wondering why they keep humans around seemed pointless. Because if that were the situation, it would be pointless to have humans because that’s the entire plot to Terminator.

Mark Russell
Mike Deodato Jr.
AWA
Upshot Studios

Score: 2/5