Advance Review — Artificial Intelligence Takes Over In ‘Cyberarchy’ #2

Few, if any, topics have captured the public’s imagination and trepidation in recent years than artificial intelligence. Whether you think it will write your homework or cure cancer or enslave humanity, we seem hellbent on exploring this potentially transformative technology to whatever end it takes us.

The limited series Cyberarchy, explores the darker side of AI in a pretty compelling way. The first two issues to date are thematically linked, but don’t share main characters. In this second issue, writer Matthew Hardy explores whether organic beings (they are aliens, not humans) are the masters or if it’s really the sentient robots who are calling the shots on a farm moon Defa 10.

It’s nothing for a resident of Perl City to get eaten by a massive bug, melted down, then re-cloned within just a few hours. The AI-powered robots are there to ensure that the symbiotic cycle remains unbroken. Or do they?

Hardy’s writing poses a number of questions, though the answers are largely open to interpretation. (A statue of a robot, for example, rises high from the streets. Which came first, the robots or the aliens? Who is really serving who here?) Two robots, Ash and Rust, serve as the readers’ guide — filling us in where the dialogue can’t easily answer what’s going on.

Artist Clark Bint again impresses in this issue. Whether it’s illustrating the massive bugs that are making a meal of the Perl’s residents, or showing off the cityscape, or walking us through the cloning process, Bint forces readers to pay attention. It’s quite an accomplishment – and it could turn out to be the start of something much bigger for Bint.

Whether AI turns out to be a Godsend or a curse — or both — is yet to be determined. But issues surrounding it, as detailed by this innovative series, are worth exploring.

Cyberarchy #2 will be available in comic book shops and on digital platforms this Wednesday from Mad Cave Studios.