Review: Robots, Horror, And Wholesome Family Vibes Collide Beautifully In ‘Byte-Sized’ #2

Stories focused upon children and robots are nothing new with pop culture, with entire eras finding new ways to spin such a tale. AWA Studio’s latest series Byte-Sized has tapped into those types of wonderous but also somewhat scary vibes from movies past in its own take on the children and robots genre.

Byte-Sized #2 picks up where the first issue left off and heavily works the childlike bad dream/horror angle for a good number of the first pages. The seamless shift between the slight horror into the more wholesome family-style only to fall back into a tension ratcheting horror vibe is wonderfully done.

Cullen Bunn is no stranger to writing things both horror-filled and more light-hearted. He truly nails the feeling of many of the old Amblin era or similar studio films that he mentions trying to emulate in the back of the first issue.

Nelson Blake II, Snakebite Cortez, and Sal Cipriano also nail it on the artistic side with the art being almost like an animated film in style and coloring, able to slide between eerie and light without missing a beat. The title splash page with one of the robots looking at a comic book about so-called killer robots stands out big time, saying so much with so little.

With there only being four issues in the series, one might think that the second issue focusing mostly on the main character kids engaged in a mystery about strange occurrences around the house would drag things down. In fact, it does the opposite. While the robots have not even been identified by name on page (named Socket, Otto, Dotty, Twobit, Sparx, and Spud in back page materials), the issue gives us way more about the relationship of the siblings and nicely builds on the child horror vibes.

This is the type of story that mimics another medium and eventually will likely end up in that medium itself, as it fully has the vibes of a kid-focused film or show.

Byte-Sized #2 is now on sale at your local comic shop.