Week 9: A Wide World of Comics

For this week I read Ranxerox, a futuristic, punk style story about a robot that was programmed to have emotions. In one panel, his supposed girlfriend states to a man who eventually kidnaps her, that she can control her boyfriend if she wanted to. Ranxerox is more so a futuristic version of Frankstein's monster, and with the underage Lubna, they are like a bizarre Beauty and the Beast. She proceeds to take off the top of his skull and unplugs a switch that turns him off.

The art style is very edgy and kind of off putting with the amount of shading; the coloring looks very blurred and gritty, which complements the story/genre really well, but is otherwise unpleasant to look at. The story is unusual and somewhat disturbing. There's a scene with a young girl who is handing out flowers and she offers one to Ranx and he crushes the young girl's hand. Bystanders applaud the robot for crushing the girl's hand.

This kind of comic is very wild, over the top, can be a bit silly at times, and overall, it can be offensive. Though I find that the comic is close to how the world is, such as dealing with drugs, violence, and sex; though I find that comics such as this were a bit of the norm in the early 80's considering a lot of things that were going on around that time were "weird" and "new." Though it's not for everyone for it is a sick, twisted, humorously dark comic, if that suits you, then it's definitely worth a read. As for me, I'll stick with the classic/cheesy superhero comic or anything of that norm over something like this.