Customer Reviews

24seven Volume 2 (v. 2)

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In 24seven, Vol. 2, Ivan Brandon has once again gathered a wondeful stable of writers and artists from the comics biz who inhabit our very real world to weave tales about a city-world where robots are its inhabitants and robot sensibilities guide their lives. As before in Vol. 1, the list of contributors reads like a who's-who of talented, soon-to-be and established comic book illuminati who've been given free reign to their imaginations and in many instances, improve on the work that was done in the first offering.

In Vol. 1, the stories often used robots to provide insight as to what it means to be human. In that book, more than a handful of stories could have been played with human characters, but in Vol. 2, we're shown what it might be like to think and live more like robots and to understand a futuristic "robot-ness". By that, I don't mean stoic, unfeeling, homogeneous and mechanical. These robots have very human qualities and foibles but their existence and abilities (and foibles) are enhanced *because* they are robots. Their robot-ness is capably exploited in these stories as we see robots age, deal with broken relationships, become victims and participate in crimes, and very likely work through malfunctioning circuits.

It's easy to relate and equate the experiences of the mechs in these stories, but moreover, we're given more of an opportunity to imagine how we, as human types, could react to the human condition as robots. Losing your memory because of old age? Plug in and reboot from a back-up file. Feeling the loss of former lovers? Bolt on bits of metallic ephemera to your robot wings. Always wanted to be a dancer instead of say, a doctor (thereby disappointing your hopeful parents)? Submit to a kind of robotic genitoplasty to be the diva you've always dreamed of becoming.

And so on.

Some stories rise above the others as with any collected works of this nature, but there is well enough to please everyone. Writing and artistic styles vary from story to story, and that's the way it should be as we are provided a broad, imaginative vision from some very gifted human types.

Excellent continuation of the first volume. This contains fine writing and atristry. This is not, however, for children.