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juushikaTitle: Alex + Ada Volume 1 (Issues #1-5)
Author and Illustrator: Jonathan Luna and Sarah Vaughn
Published: Berkeley: Image Comics, 2015
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 130
Total Page Count: 194,730
Text Number: 574
Read Because: interested in the trope, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: When given an top of the line android, Alex names her Ada and is drawn into the underworld of android sentience. This first third of the story spends most of it time on worldbuilding; character development and interactions are limited as a result, and perhaps that's for the best as Ada is a non-character for most of this volume. The worldbuilding is what one would expect from the premise, the art is beyond bland, but the underlying concepts are interesting—especially the localized, personal focus on the creation of and interaction with sentience.
Title: Alex + Ada Volume 2 (Issues #6-10)
Author and Illustrator: Jonathan Luna and Sarah Vaughn
Published: Berkeley: Image Comics, 2015
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 130
Total Page Count: 194,860
Text Number: 575
Read Because: continuing the series, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: An android's awakened sentience makes for a complicated relationship with her former owner. This continues to be surface-level good: it engages promising tropes and is nicely human—especially Ada's curiosity and burgeoning sense of self. I'm a sucker for sentient android narratives, and while this brings nothing new to the table it still satisfies those desires. But the interpersonal narrative is predictable and uninspired, and its heteronormativity is all the more disappointing for the diversity hinted at by background characters.
Title: Alex + Ada Volume 3 (Issues #11-15)
Author and Illustrator: Jonathan Luna and Sarah Vaughn
Published: Berkeley: Image Comics, 2015
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 135
Total Page Count: 194,995
Text Number: 576
Read Because: continuing the series, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: Alex and Ada are thrust into a political battle over android rights. I appreciate the scope of this conclusion, but otherwise it continues as it began: engaging tropes with unimaginative exploration. I wish this series had more creative worldbuilding, exploring AI personality construction and otherwise bringing to the foreground the teasing bits of information that make up the background (a sentient robot shaped like an egg! androids defying human gender conventions! androids switching off parts of their brains!). I also wish that the foreground cast were as diverse as the background characters; a star-crossed straight white cis pairing renders predictable the romance that motivates the story in lieu of interesting worldbuilding. Alex + Ada is consistently readable, and I wanted to love it, but what it does has been done better elsewhere; this is only mediocre, and I don't recommend it.
Author and Illustrator: Jonathan Luna and Sarah Vaughn
Published: Berkeley: Image Comics, 2015
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 130
Total Page Count: 194,730
Text Number: 574
Read Because: interested in the trope, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: When given an top of the line android, Alex names her Ada and is drawn into the underworld of android sentience. This first third of the story spends most of it time on worldbuilding; character development and interactions are limited as a result, and perhaps that's for the best as Ada is a non-character for most of this volume. The worldbuilding is what one would expect from the premise, the art is beyond bland, but the underlying concepts are interesting—especially the localized, personal focus on the creation of and interaction with sentience.
Title: Alex + Ada Volume 2 (Issues #6-10)
Author and Illustrator: Jonathan Luna and Sarah Vaughn
Published: Berkeley: Image Comics, 2015
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 130
Total Page Count: 194,860
Text Number: 575
Read Because: continuing the series, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: An android's awakened sentience makes for a complicated relationship with her former owner. This continues to be surface-level good: it engages promising tropes and is nicely human—especially Ada's curiosity and burgeoning sense of self. I'm a sucker for sentient android narratives, and while this brings nothing new to the table it still satisfies those desires. But the interpersonal narrative is predictable and uninspired, and its heteronormativity is all the more disappointing for the diversity hinted at by background characters.
Title: Alex + Ada Volume 3 (Issues #11-15)
Author and Illustrator: Jonathan Luna and Sarah Vaughn
Published: Berkeley: Image Comics, 2015
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 135
Total Page Count: 194,995
Text Number: 576
Read Because: continuing the series, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: Alex and Ada are thrust into a political battle over android rights. I appreciate the scope of this conclusion, but otherwise it continues as it began: engaging tropes with unimaginative exploration. I wish this series had more creative worldbuilding, exploring AI personality construction and otherwise bringing to the foreground the teasing bits of information that make up the background (a sentient robot shaped like an egg! androids defying human gender conventions! androids switching off parts of their brains!). I also wish that the foreground cast were as diverse as the background characters; a star-crossed straight white cis pairing renders predictable the romance that motivates the story in lieu of interesting worldbuilding. Alex + Ada is consistently readable, and I wanted to love it, but what it does has been done better elsewhere; this is only mediocre, and I don't recommend it.
