Interrupting a human press conference, WOL-421313’s trainers announce he has undergone illegal upgrades.

Rosa and the other humans are understandably upset and accuse the robots of cheating. A fight breaks out, which Rose stops, but insists the fight will go on, upgrades or not. The council (the original six engineered humans) argue about whether Rosa should fight, but she’s having none of it. She makes her own decision based on the basic human right to survive. Though no one thinks she can win, Abe has a plan that may help—analyzing a discarded, old fight bot to help her find weak spots.  As for WOL-421313, he’s coerced into giving an inflammatory speech at a pre-fight press conference which incites the robots to attack and partially destroy the human settlement. With such a volatile situation, will the fight even go on?

The story has done a nice job of ramping up the stakes, as well as the tensions between the robots and the humans,5 in each issue. What I find ironic is that the robots themselves fail to recognize the irony of their own desire to become more human. Not once have they recognized their increasingly violent tendencies, the need to connect on a personal level, or the desire to have a goal/purpose in life as uniquely human. The human community has noticed it, yet they haven’t figured out how to use it against the bots. Perhaps they will, perhaps they won’t. But the real question is: Will the bots continue to “other” the humans, or will they finally take on other uniquely human traits—compassion and empathy.

Be sure to check out the thumbnails and pencils of a few of the pages at the end. The pencils are gorgeous.

Creative Team: Zack Kaplan (writer), Guilerme Balbi (artist), Mark Lesko (colorist), Troy Peteri (letterer)
Publisher: Top Cow / Image Comics
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