Alex + Ada #9: To leave the safety of the living room

Writers: Sarah Vaughn and Jonathan Luna
Artist: Jonathan Luna
Publisher: Image Comics
Released: 1st October 2014


Government agents hate it when androids become sentient, break free from their programming and no longer passively accept the subservient role that have been assigned to them.

In issue #9 of Alex + Ada the sentient android Ada decides to leave her differing and unsure owner/boyfriend Alex. Alex has a decision to make. Will he break free from his own programming, or will he continue to live his easy life of box ticking conformity and passive cowardice?

The panel of Alex contemplating a highly symbolic apple reveals the answer to that question. He refuses an offer to get lunch with a programmed and fearful work colleague, deciding instead to eat his apple, signalling that he is about to symbolically break free from his programming, just like the sentient android Ada.

It’s about time Alex, it’s about time.

Who is the more asleep, the more programmed? A conforming, fear-based human, or a sentient awake and brave android?

That is the question that this issue of Alex + Ada poses. It has obvious parallels to this world of 2014 where large sections of western populations live fear based, programmed lives where fear will make them vote for corporate asshole #1 or corporate asshole #2.

Far too many people waste their lives away watching fear based news and fear based serial killer ‘programming’ on their HD widescreen televisions, safe in their four walled box prison whilst the real world goes on around them.

It’s a life of a coward. A life dominated by fear. A life as a programmed android.

Alex + Ada is a must buy book. In a comic book universe of statist androids, this is a book with eyes wide open and a desire to leave the safety of the living room.

Rating: 9/10