Alex + Ada

I spent much of yesterday, in the backyard, munching on snacks, drinking beverages of various sorts, and reading. It was glorious. After I finished a memoir I’d been reading for the past several weeks, I decided to read a comic. And I chose Alex + Ada. It was the perfect choice given some of the things I’ve been thinking about this past week.

It is set in the future, but the date is never explicitly said, unless I missed something. But we rely on robots for all types of things, to make breakfast and clean up the kitchen, to wake us up, our cars are self-driving, and androids are a common part of life. Alex is turning older and alone and his grandmother decides to buy him an android to keep him company. There is so much going on here about androids, sentient life of non humans, how do you define a relationship between a human and an android, etc.

Needless to say, I found the entire things super interesting and now want to rush out and buy volume 2 to read as quickly as possible. I like the areas of gray that are involved in thinking about all this and the authors do a great job of showing those areas through Alex’s friends and their thoughts and ideas about androids.

In addition, the clean drawing style of this comic was super interesting. I love the large color blocks and the almost flatter style of shading and showing depth. Was a nice change from some of the things I’ve been reading recently.